On Dec. 4 Canada reported fourth suicide of a veteran of the Afghanistan war in one week. Former defense minister Peter McKay described the news as “heart-wrenching” and “troubling.” Military police have been tasked to investigate cause of the death of Master Cpl. Sylvain Lelievre who committed suicide at Valcartier base in the eastern province of Quebec, according to a Canadian Press report.

Earlier studies of the tragic trend suggest “lack of sleep” among the veterans. On Dec. 3, Canadian Senator Romeo Dallaire, a retired general, had fallen asleep at the steering wheel and crashed his car into a traffic barrier on Parliament Hill. The retired general commenting on three suicides last week, said the reason was many of the servicemen were “unable to sleep, even with medication.”

He said the accident was caused by a lack of sleep due to reliving the events he saw as a general during the 1994 Rwandan genocide and the apparent suicide of three Afghan war veterans last week. The retired general, who in the past had attempted suicide, was “still battling post-traumatic stress disorder two decades after heading up the UN peacekeeping mission in Rwanda.” As McKay admitted “an increase in the stress” as a result of the Afghanistan war, the Canadian government said it was determined to provide support to soldiers facing difficulties upon their return from battlefronts.

Stress. Lack of sleep. Of course it is not because the soldiers on duty work round the clock, without time to relax that they have to make up for the lost hours of sleep while driving cars. Is this stress only because long hours of tension they suffer while on the warfront?

Psychiatrists may try to figure out causes by visiting crevices of brains of suffering soldiers or physicians by analyzing reactions and side effects of medications. Their findings and opinions will be respected academically, but they would not lead to the core of the problem.

Physiologically, man is a mechanism, more delicate than a Swiss wristwatch of olden times. Human body quickly reacts and responds to situations and its reflexes often become visible within seconds.

An observer may not, however, retain visual or psychic impact but the one who is reacting to an object or situation continues to experience that condition for a long time. Intensity of hallucination is determined by degree of horror in a phenomenon. A casual visitor to mortuary remembers eerie, cold, soundless scene and likely lose sleep for a few nights. View of dying men, writhing in pain and filling the air with agonizing screams leave longer effect on brain cells. Probably deforming or killing them.

War, especially modern mechanized warfare with high-tech mass-murder tools, is a horrible experience for men using those senseless machines at the hint of index finger. Pakistani General Pervez Musharraf once told a group of Indian editors that they could not understand what it was like to run with the dead body of a fallen comrade on shoulder seconds after he was talking to you.

Another factor that is often sidestepped in studies is the role of the media — and political leaders — who create hate of an alien society for whatever strategic, political, religious objectives. Incessant propaganda demonizing the real or imaginary enemy is the hallmark of the armed conflicts since the World Wars era. In the past wars were waged and battles fought obviously for political objectives and domain expansion but they were not marked by extreme hate of the other side.

The opponent was rarely described as “enemy.” Today a war is animal expression of uncontrolled anger. Political leaders transfer fury to the media and academia where it quickly degenerates into mass hysteria. Innocent young men drafted into the armed forces are primarily affected by daily overdoses of this hysteria and they express this rage through the gun — killing the “enemy” with the force of brutal vengeance, which they cannot justify logically or legally.

They also do not know why they are killing people except that the enemy must be eliminated. During one year of tour of duty they might actually kill or maim more living men, women and children than they might have seen dying in a violent Hollywood movie. Their psyche retains indelible marks of those moments forever.

On return to peace, these young men are feasted daily on bestial violence in movies on TV and in computer games. Their senses are numb and images of battlefield with dismembered bodies strewn all around them are etched on their minds further more deeply. Medications fail to erase these memories. No wonder if these images haunt men of raw age who lose sleep, sometime crying or shrieking out of horror. Hate has its own rule. It always returns to the disdainer. Those who despise others ultimately begin despising themselves. Innocent young Canadian veterans are suffering from this syndrome.

These unfortunate men can no longer live with themselves. So they kill themselves. This problem cannot be solved only through scientific studies and psychoanalyzes. It is a riddle that common people have to resolve. They can save innumerable lives by just saying no to hate campaigns, to start with.

Can they do it is itself a big question.

- Courtesy: CARAVANDAILY.COM