Civilian War Research Articles

The Civilian War: Confederate Women and Union Soldiers During Sherman's March

The Civilian War: Confederate Women and Union Soldiers During Sherman's March

Selling the War? System‐Justifying Effects of Commercial Advertising on Civilian Casualty Tolerance

In times of war, news media coverage of the plight of civilian casualties plays a critical role in shaping attitudes regarding war's human costs. We proposed that these attitudes may also be surreptitiously influenced by the commercial advertisements that often accompany this coverage. Specifically, we hypothesized that when newspaper articles pertaining to civilian victims of war are flanked by luxury ads, conservatives, relative to liberals, will subsequently exhibit less concern for these victims. This proposition was based on the notion that commercial ads, particularly those promoting luxury items, make salient the gap between the “haves” and the “have‐nots” and thereby, at least implicitly, threaten the legitimacy of the current socioeconomic system. Drawing upon system justification theory, we posited that this threat would lead individuals with stronger system‐justification tendencies (conservatives), relative to those more open to challenging the current system (liberals), to show greater tolerance for civilian war casualties in order to defend the system's integrity. Evidence consistent with this hypothesis was found in a quasi‐experimental study (n = 329).

Shootings and Shamans: Local Civilian Authority Structures and Civil War Violence in Colombia

Can local organizations give civilians the capacity to protect themselves from the vagaries of civil war violence? Civilians have traditionally been considered powerless when facing armed groups but new research suggests organized communities may be able to promote security through strategies such as resolving disputes between neighbors and managing relations with macro-armed actors. This paper tests civilian organizations as an explanation for reduced violence with evidence from Colombia on the experiences of indigenous group communities. In Colombia there has been great publicity about both violence against indigenous groups in the armed conflict and about indigenous movements for autonomy from the conflict. At the same time, there is evidence that ethnic minority populations have on average suffered relatively less violence compared to campesino communities. I explore whether the unique organizational forms of indigenous groups help explain how and why some groups have been better able to overcome armed conflict violence than others. I develop a theory about the importance of strong tribal authority structures to regulate the internal order of indigenous communities and reduce entanglements with external armed groups. To test this theory, I leverage never used before micro-level quantitative data on the incidence of violence against members of different ethnic groups and on these groups’ cultural and organizational characteristics. Interviews and second-hand reports are used as qualitative evidence to confirm the presence of specific mechanisms through which authority structures may operate. The findings yield important implications for managing violence against civilians and protecting human rights in Colombia and in weak states where local institutions or tribal structures play roles in the provision of local order.

(P2-102) Lessons Learned from Medical Humanitarian Mission During Somalia Civilian War 1992–1994. Moroccan Experience

Lessons learned from medical humanitarian mission during Somalia civilian war 1992–1994. Moroccan experience L. Safi. Chirurgical Intensive Unit Mohammed V Military Hospital Hay Riad Rabat Morocco Introduction Natural disasters and civilian war in Africa demonstrate a similar critical need for national preparedness. As one of a team of military physician who went on a medical mission, I would like to share glimpses of our experience and reflect our thought about humanitarian mission.ObjectiveTo report our experience during medical humanitarian mission.BackgroundDuring Somalia civilian war Morocco deployed level 2 hospital to provide medical and social aid to soma liens during united Nations interventions UNISOM. The specific mission was to provide immediate relief to the affected population of Mogadishu, to minimize loss of life, and to mitigate human suffering. A team of 21 physicians specialists and 40 nurses were deployed in an university campus to provided medical assistance.MethodsData were collected from interviews, observations, field notes, memos, and retrospective study of medical statistique.Results80% of all patients we examined have infection disease in all fields: dermatology, ophthalmology, ORL, pneumology etc 90% of childs have denutrition Only the emergency surgery was involved.Discussion and ConclusionIn doing so, the medical team learned many important lessons, including five of particular value to planners of similar relief operations in the future. A successful medical humanitarian mission will depend on accurate and relevant medical intelligence and socio-geographical mapping in advance of deployment.

Long-Term Outcomes of War-Related Death of Family Members in Kosovar Civilian War Survivors

Exposure to war-related experiences can comprise a broad variety of experiences and the very nature of certain war-related events has generally been neglected. To examine the long-term outcomes of war-related death of family members, the authors investigated the prevalence rates of major depressive episode (MDE), anxiety disorders, and quality of life among civilian war survivors with or without war-related death of first-degree family members 9 years after the war in Kosovo. Compared to participants without war-related death of family members, those who had experienced such loss had significantly higher prevalence rates of MDE, posttraumatic stress disorder, and generalized anxiety disorder, and reported a lower quality of life 9 years after the war. These results indicate that bereaved civilian survivors of war experience significant mental health problems many years after the war.

Inventing collateral damage: civilian casualities, war, and empire

Inventing collateral damage: civilian casualities, war, and empire

Creating a History: The Case for Lawrence as a Civilian War Writer

One of the legacies of our last, violent century is how our reading of the literature of its formative period, the First World War and the rise of Modernism, is split between history and aesthetics, the “Georgian” war writers on one side and the Modernists on the other. As the “Men of 1914” the Modernists both emerged and were obliterated on the first year of war. Wyndham Lewis recalled how “It was, after all, a new civilisation that I—and a few other people—was making the blueprints for: the...

Stephen J. Rockel and Rick Halpern, eds. Inventing Collateral Damage: Civilian Casualties, War, and Empire

Stephen J. Rockel and Rick Halpern, eds. Inventing Collateral Damage: Civilian Casualties, War, and Empire

The Strange Silence

Newly available documentation from the State Archive of Bosnia-Herzegovina indicates that the majority of sites where Muslim civilians were killed during the Second World War remained unmarked as late as the mid-1980s. The existing scholarship, most of which argues that Yugoslavia’s communist regime sought to “de-ethnicize” the remembrance of all of the interethnic violence of the war, has failed to notice and explain this apparent bias against Muslim civilian war victims. This article seeks to answer the question of why so many sites in Bosnia-Herzegovina where Muslim civilians were killed remained unmarked after the war. It does so through the reconstruction and analysis of the wartime and postwar history of Kulen Vakuf, a small town located in northwestern Bosnia. The analysis of the dynamics of mass killing in the region reveals that the communist-led Partisan movement absorbed large numbers of Serbian insurgents who had murdered Muslims earlier in the war. The transformation of the perpetrators of the massacres into Partisans created a postwar context in which the authorities, to avoid implicating insurgents-turned-Partisans as war criminals, and the Muslim survivors, out of fear of retribution and a desire to move on, agreed to stay silent about the killings. The end result was the absence of monuments for the victims.

Psychopathology and well‐being in civilian survivors of war seeking treatment: a follow‐up study

The goal of the current study was to examine types of exposure to traumatic events and affective and anxiety disorders of 81 civilian war survivors seeking treatment for war-related stress almost one decade following the war in the area of former conflict. Furthermore, the study investigated changes in symptoms of mental health and in well-being amongst these individuals during a treatment period of 6 months. The results indicated that civilian war survivors seeking treatment reported multiple war-related traumatic events and high levels of psychiatric morbidity. Individuals assessed at follow-up (n = 67) reported no change in post-traumatic stress symptoms or psychological well-being, but improvement in symptoms of depression, overall psychiatric distress and quality of life. The only significant difference between participants classified as achieving clinically significant improvement as compared with those who did not achieve such change was in less symptom severity of depression, post-traumatic stress, general distress and higher psychological well-being at the time of first assessment. Neither the assessment of initial diagnoses nor war or post-war trauma types emerged as significantly different amongst the two groups.

“Terrorists Are Human Beings”: Mapping theu.s. Army's “Human Terrain Systems” Program

This article puts an emerging war doctrine archive through the paces of its philosophical analogues. Establishing in the first part of the article the “weaponizing of culture” (a now-common U.S. military phrase), which is occurring autogenically, that is, within and without the remnants of the liberal representative state, the author argues that war is now a fully operational part of the organizational work that terms like community, culture, and humanity are now doing (and doing differently than before). War in the sense invoked here is activated at various levels of intensity and visibility (think Katrina, the Patriot Act, Wall Street) as a civil or civilian war within the United States that is everywhere present but is hardly recognizable as such. In addressing one essential area of governmentality—demographics—the author makes the case for a change in liberal governmental reason that is evident in the U.S. Census 2000, concluding that demography has taken a uniquely post–civil rights turn in the unprecedented context of a coming U.S. white minority. Categorical self-identification within the permeable race and ethnic categories that the state now endorses paradoxically releases it from whatever previous civil-rights obligations the state may have had. In unpacking how this process works—call it autogenic violence at the level precisely of “recognition”—this article revisits Habermas's reliance on a juridically grounded base for intersubjectivity. Habermas extends the appeal for liberal international law to an updated endorsement of Kant's quest for perpetual cosmopolitan peace. With the problem of history and the relationship between temporality and the “cultural” disciplines such as philosophy in mind, the author updates Habermas's updating of Kant in a context of perpetual war that neither figure is willing to imagine.

Somatic distress among Kosovar civilian war survivors: relationship to trauma exposure and the mediating role of experiential avoidance

The current study examined the prevalence and correlates of somatic distress (SD) in the aftermath of war, and the role of a process hypothesized to contribute to posttraumatic stress: experiential avoidance. Civilian war survivors (n = 163) from Kosovo were assessed in structured interviews, reporting on average more than ten types of traumatic war exposure. One in eight (12.9%) of the participants meet criteria for SD, which was associated with greater psychological distress, experiential avoidance, and lower quality of life after accounting for the effects of war-related variables, demographic variables, as well as posttraumatic stress disorder and major depressive episode. Experiential avoidance partially mediated the association between SD and psychological distress and quality of life. The results indicate that SD is prevalent among war-exposed civilians and that experiential avoidance may be a significant factor in understanding and treating traumatized people who are experiencing SD.

Prolonged Grief Disorder, Depression, and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Among Bereaved Kosovar Civilian War Survivors: a Preliminary Investigation

This study aimed at examining diagnostic concordance between Prolonged Grief Disorder (PGD), Major Depressive Disorder (MDD), and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) among bereaved war survivors who had lost relatives due to war-related violence. We investigated the rates of PGD and its association with PTSD and MDD among 60 bereaved people who had lost first-degree relatives due to war-related violence seven years ago and had also experienced other war-related events. The results indicated that 38.3% of the sample fulfilled the criteria for PGD, 55.0% for PTSD, and 38.3% for MDD. Thirty per cent of the participants without PTSD and 21.6% of those without MDD met criteria for PGD. Women were more likely to have PGD than men. The immediate threat to life was significantly associated with an elevated risk for PTSD and MDD, but not PGD. The findings suggest that many cases of PGD would be missed by an exclusive focus on PTSD among bereaved war survivors.

Effects of Land Mines and Unexploded Ordnance on the Pediatric Population and Comparison with Adults in Rural Cambodia

This paper was designed to evaluate and compare the impact of explosive war remnants on children versus adults in rural Cambodia. A prospective review of trauma database from November 2003 to January 2006 of the Civilian War Victims Surgical Centre in Battambang, Cambodia, run by an Italian NGO called "EMERGENCY" was performed. Age, female ratio, time of evacuation, type of ordnance, pattern of injury, number of operations, transfused patients, hospitalization, mortality, and residual disability were registered and compared. A total of 356 patients acutely wounded by antipersonnel land mines, antitank land mines, or unexploded ordnances (UXO) were admitted. Among these, 94 (26.4%) were children (younger than aged 16 years). Females were more common among children than adults (31.9% vs. 11.8%); 61.7% of children were injured by UXO, whereas 72.1% of adults were victims of antipersonnel land mines. Antitank mines victims were uncommon in both groups. The majority of adults (49.2%) were injured to lower limbs, whereas 50% of children were injured to upper limbs, face, and torso. Random wounds, typical of an explosion in vicinity, were observed in 32.9% of children and 18.7% of adults. All differences were statistically significant (P < 0.005). Time of evacuation, number of operations, and hospitalization did not statistically differ among groups. Number of transfused patients (23% vs. 7.2%), mortality (6.3% vs. 1.5%), incidence of blindness (21.2% vs. 9.5%), and maimed upper limbs (23.3% vs. 8.8%) were significantly higher in children compared with adults (P < 0.05). Long after ceasefire, antitank mines, antipersonnel land mines, and UXO continue to injure and kill civilians. Children are commonly injured and sustain more severe injuries.

Complex Sequelae of Psychological Trauma Among Kosovar Civilian War Victims

The impact of war trauma on civilians may include, but also extend beyond, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) to include complex sequelae such as those described by the syndrome of Disorders of Extreme Stress Not Otherwise Specified (DESNOS). In the present study, 102 civilian war victims were interviewed in Kosovo, assessing traumatic life events, PTSD, DESNOS, and depression. Full DESNOS rarely occurred (2% prevalence), however, clinically significant DESNOS symptoms of somatization, altered relationships, and altered systems of meaning were reported by between 24-42% of respondents. Although DESNOS symptoms were correlated with PTSD symptoms, DESNOS symptoms were associated with poorer overall psychological functioning, self-evaluations, satisfaction with life, and social support independent of the effects of PTSD. The findings suggest that DESNOS warrants attention in addition to PTSD in the assessment and treatment of civilians who have been exposed to war and genocide.

Post-traumatic stress disorder, social anxiety disorder, and depression in survivors of the Kosovo War: Experiential avoidance as a contributor to distress and quality of life

Few studies have been conducted on psychological disorders other than post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in war survivors. The aim of this study was to examine PTSD, social anxiety disorder (SAD), and major depressive disorder (MDD) and their associations with distress and quality of life in 174 Albanian civilian survivors of the Kosovo War. This included testing of conceptual models suggesting that experiential avoidance might influence associations between anxiety and mood disorders with psychological functioning. Each of the three psychiatric disorders was associated with greater experiential avoidance and psychological distress, and lower quality of life. Being a refugee was associated with a higher likelihood of having SAD and MDD. We found evidence for experiential avoidance as a partial mediator of the respective effects of SAD and PTSD on quality of life; experiential avoidance did not mediate the effects of disorders on global distress. We also found support for a moderation model showing that only war survivors without SAD and low experiential avoidance reported elevated quality of life; people with either SAD or excessive reliance on experiential avoidance reported compromised, low quality of life. This is the third independent study, each using a different methodology, to find empirical support for this moderation model [Kashdan, T. B., & Breen, W. E. (2008). Social anxiety and positive emotions: a prospective examination of a self-regulatory model with tendencies to suppress or express emotions as a moderating variable. Behavior Therapy, 39, 1–12; Kashdan, T. B., & Steger, M. F. (2006). Expanding the topography of social anxiety: an experience sampling assessment of positive emotions and events, and emotion suppression. Psychological Science, 17, 120–128]. Overall, we provided initial evidence for the importance of addressing PTSD, SAD, MDD, and experiential avoidance in primarily civilian war survivors.

Experiential Avoidance in Civilian War Survivors With Current Versus Recovered Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: A Pilot Study

AbstractThe present study investigated the role of experiential avoidance in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) following war-related stress. Eighty-four civilian war survivors were assigned to one of three PTSD groups — current PTSD, recovered PTSD and non-PTSD. Groups were subsequently compared in regard to experiential avoidance. Results indicated significantly higher rates of experiential avoidance and psychological distress in the current PTSD group as compared with the recovered PTSD and non-PTSD groups. The recovered PTSD and non-PTSD groups did not significantly differ.

Fifty years later: the long-term psychological adjustment of ageing World War II survivors.

Most studies of the long-term after-effects of war have focused on survivors seeking treatment or financial compensation. The present study examined the current psychological adjustment of a community sample of ageing World War II (WW II) survivors, including survivors of bombardments, persecution, resistance, combat and other violence. A community sample of 4057 Dutch WW II survivors answered a 4-page postal questionnaire. Of these, 1461 survivors answered a second follow-up questionnaire. Even 50 years after World War II, a statistically significant but modest relationship was found to exist between exposure to shocking war events and current psychological adjustment in terms of symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety and anger. A total of 66 respondents (4.6%) met the criteria for PTSD. The highest level of current PTSD (13%) was found among survivors of persecution. The lowest level of PTSD (4%) was found among civilian war victims and resistance participants, while military veterans had an intermediate score (7%). With regard to absolute numbers, civilian war victims represented the largest proportion of PTSD sufferers. In a study of a community sample of WW II survivors, we found that most of these survivors had no severe symptoms of PTSD. Nevertheless, probably tens of thousands of Dutch individuals are still suffering from long-term after-effects from World War II. For these vulnerable survivors, the ageing process will complicate the coping process.

The Role of Experiential Avoidance in Psychological Functioning After War-Related Stress in Kosovar Civilians

The current study examined the relationship between experiential avoidance and psychological distress after war-related traumatic experiences among 152 Kosovar civilian war survivors. Results showed significant correlations between experiential avoidance and psychological distress. Participants who scored high on experiential avoidance reported more impaired psychological functioning and lower subjective quality of life than those who scored low on experiential avoidance. Results of this study indicate that experiential avoidance may be a significant factor in understanding war-related psychological distress.

Relaciones internacionales de las guerras civiles, Colombia, 1885-1903

Esta investigación se propone hacer un estudio de las relaciones internacionales de (o producidas por) las guerras civiles. Se plantea el hecho de que las Relaciones Internacionales de Colombia tiene una organización especial y dedicada exclusivamente al tratamiento de la Guerra Civil bajo la perspectiva histórico-internacional: las relaciones con sus vecinos, las formas como se incorporan los tipos de Derecho Internacional, Derecho Diplomático y Consular, los Tratados de extradición, comercio, unión, cooperación, son los mecanismos más utilizados por el Estado colombiano para darle tratamiento o una solución negociada a la Guerra Civil.