Friends hear ‘the human cost of war’
‘There’s an average of around twelve attacks, airstrikes, on Yemen a day.’
Friends heard a harrowing reminder of the need for their peace witness during a talk on ‘the human cost of the arms trade’. The online event featured people from Yemen and Colombia directly affected by the devastation and carnage caused by some of the weapons on sale at the London DSEI arms fair.
Robin Bowles, from Huddersfield Meeting, opened the Quaker Roots gathering by citing figures from the Yemen crisis, now entering its seventh year.
Since the bombing began in March 2015, he said, the UK has exported £6.3 billion worth of weapons, although Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) estimates the real value is at least £16 billion. Bombs are made, or partly made, in Britain, it says.
More than twenty million people are experiencing food insecurity in Yemen as a result, said Robin Bowles, while 1.7 million children were displaced. ‘There’s an average of around twelve attacks, airstrikes, on Yemen a day.’
Khaled Motahar Anqaa, a frontline humanitarian worker in the country, gave an overview of the situation. Since 2015, he said at least 8,000 civilians have been killed, including more than 2,000 children.
More than 17,500 civilians have been killed or injured since the war began, according to Robin Bowles.
Khaled told the gathering that ‘indiscriminate attacks and repeated use of explosive weapons continue to be the distinguishing features of the conflict – almost all types of explosive weapons are believed to have been used in Yemen’.
He said that most weapons fail to hit military targets and cause damage hundreds of metres away. ‘The use of explosive weapons in densely populated areas has been particularly alarming with civilians reportedly making up ninety-five per cent of casualties.’
Critical infrastructure has also been damaged, including transport, health, education, water and telecommunications.
Meanwhile ‘5,000 houses and buildings have been damaged’ and ‘thousands of people have lost limbs’.
Khaled then described his personal experiences, including sitting for dinner and hearing the whistles as airstrikes began, forcing his family to take cover in the hallway. Over two hours, ten more missiles targeted his neighbourhood. Luckily, his family were not seriously physically harmed, but his eight-year-old sister still has trauma now. ‘These are the real end results of war trade. These are the things we experience almost every day.’
Sukaina Sharafuddin, a humanitarian worker based in Sana’a, the capital of Yemen, described struggling to find schools and nurseries for her six-year-old son as neighbourhoods are attacked, and trying to make him understand that when they see an aeroplane it ‘only means one thing’, that they must hide.
She also talked of spending ‘many nights under the staircase with my small family and calling my parents saying our last goodbyes, not knowing if we were going to wake up alive’.
Other harrowing incidents include witnessing her colleagues with ‘heads open and blood pouring out’ when the building was attacked.
Natalia Garcia Cortes, a sociologist and feminist in Bogata, Colombia, then spoke about the ‘state violence’ she has experienced at protests, which have included weapons on sale at the DSEI arms fair.
The human cost of the arms trade in Colombia, she said, is manifold: deaths, environmental damage, human rights violations, displaced young people and being illegally recruited by arms groups or the army.
There were crumbs of hope, however. Sukaina spoke about the hope it gave hearing about the work people such as the Quakers do. Now, when she visits a mother of six whose child lost his hands in an airstrike, ‘I get to tell her that people care… and I pass on this message every day… This means a lot to them’.
She also said that she has seen how aid helps, such as food baskets given to ‘a family of ten that have nothing to eat… I get to witness hope when it reaches them’.
The talk can be viewed via the Quaker Roots Facebook page.
