Nine out of 10 casualties in war zones are civilians, not soldiers, war surgeon and pacifist Dr. Gino Strada told a crowded Salomon 001 on Monday night. Strada described his experiences providing medical care to war victims in countries ranging from Iraq and Afghanistan to Sierra Leone and Cambodia.
Strada began by apologizing to the audience for the graphic nature of the images he planned to show. His photographs were representative of war in parts of the world "where the needs were huge and the resources almost absent," he said. Throughout his lecture, Strada repeatedly emphasized that ever since World War I, civilians rather than soldiers have been bearing the brunt of war, regardless of its nature or location.
He described taking a survey of 12,000 patients in a hospital in Kabul, Afghanistan, of whom 34 percent were children and only 7 percent were combatants directly involved in the conflict.
Strada mapped out the most common causes of civilian injury, which include high-velocity bullets, anti-personnel land mines and shrapnel from bombs and rockets. He then described in detail a type of land mine known as the "Green Parrot," eliciting stifled expressions of disgust from the audience with photographs of children's limbs shredded by such mines.
"'Green Parrots' are scattered by helicopters," he said. "They do not go off when you step on them. You have to pick them up." He said all the victims of "Green Parrots" that he treated were below 15 years of age.
"These landmines are de-signed specifically to create an army of mutilated children in the country you consider your enemy," he said. "You can mourn a dead body, but a mutilated child is a burden that the child's family and community have to carry for the next 30 or 40 years."
Strada went on to explain the work of Emergency, a nongovernmental humanitarian organization he established with a group of friends and colleagues in 1994. Using almost 94 percent of its $20 million annual budget, Emergency has treated over a million people in war-torn countries for 11 years through surgical centers, first aid posts and clinics and rehabilitation and social reintegration centers, as well as vocational training workshops. Strada showed the audience two photographs of an Iraqi civilian, named simply "Arshad." One photograph showed Arshad as a boy with an amputated leg caused by a land mine, and another pictured him 10 years later at work as a cook, equipped with a prosthetic leg.
"So he was able to win his own little struggle against war and against land mines," Strada said.
He said Emergency is moving forward, gradually shifting from a focus on response to urgent war-related needs to a new focus on human rights. One of its projects, "The Sudan Project," has already refurbished hospitals and pediatric centers in that country and now aims to build a center that will provide cardiac surgery of a high standard, free of charge.
Strada said many people think it is strange to provide cardiac surgery to a nation plagued by other diseases such as malaria and tuberculosis, but he said, "When we say 'human rights,' do we mean everyone's rights or the privileges of the rich ones? We are told by the television that we live in a global village, but there is an area in Africa, three times the size of Europe, where the few centers offering surgery are reserved either for the military or for the people who can afford to pay for them."
Strada concluded by reaffirming his belief that no war can be justified on ethical, political or historical grounds. "The growing tendency to fight wars for human rights is logical nonsense," he said. "All the objects of war materialize either partially or for a short period of time afterwards. What was always there was millions of corpses."
He expressed a hope that war will someday become obsolete. "I don't think a ban on war will ever come as a gift from anybody," he said. "It can only come from the pressure of millions of civilians. We're passing information by telling the story of the victims, because that is something people understand immediately. That is the only hope, I think, for a mass movement that rejects war as a means of solving problems."
Audience reactions to the lecture were overwhelmingly positive.
Annam Cerrutti, a Provi-dence resident, said the lecture had inspired her to volunteer for Emergency should a branch open in the city as planned.
"It's definitely something I would be interested in getting involved in," agreed URI student Patti Powel. "I was blown away by the pictures. I had no idea of what actually goes on in war areas."
"The lecture was inspiring, in terms of educating people as to the consequences of war happening in places so far away from us, sitting here," said Snigdha Vallabhaneni M.D. '06.
Charles Park M.D. '06 said he was amazed at what the dedication of people working for Emergency could achieve.
The lecture was presented by the Department of Italian Studies.
