I was born during a war that still engulfs my country, Afghanistan. When I was growing up, violence was all around me. I remember sitting in my living room with my family when a distant thud would jerk us all out of our seats. As the sound of the rockets came closer and closer, our bodies would coil and freeze. My grandmother would take charge of her terrified flock and shepherd us into a room in the back of the house. No less exposed, but to us, it somehow felt safer. I'd cling to my granny and clench my fists wondering why this was happening to us. I clearly remember my little brother's face wincing every time we heard a rocket fall.
It was this violence, this war that still goes on today, which forced my family to leave our home. We left early one morning not knowing where we would end up. Along the way, there was more violence. We drove on roads with landmines, and everywhere we went, there was hostility. The overriding memory in my body of those years is of feeling unsafe. Feeling as though something terrible would happen to me or to my family. We worried about our friends and family back home. My grandmother was still in Kabul, and I missed her terribly. I'd go to bed at night and say the prayers she taught me to pray for her safety. We wanted nothing more than to go back home. But when the Taliban took over the country in 1996, my parents realized that was no longer an option. So after four years of living in exile, we sought asylum in the UK and began a new life. I started going to school. And almost 25 years later, I'm standing here with you.
I'm now working to help others overcome devastation by war. To overcome the trauma of being expendable. In my work, I see how living under constant threat of violence and feeling unsafe can affect people, even when they manage to get out. War leaves a physical legacy in our body, our mind and in our spirit.
When I tell people about my life, they sometimes say it's a remarkable story. But this is not true. Millions of people are living through war and displacement, trying to survive. For these people, like my family, the dream isn't to get rich or to go on vacations or to buy that perfect house. They have a modest, yet somehow still extravagant dream of being safe. They dream of a day when they can go to the market without the fear of violence. Or send their kids to school without being afraid for their lives.
War is dislocating. It gets inside your body and makes you into a thing, a corpse. It can dislodge empathy, hope and joy and replace them with fear. The fear that comes from living in the violence of war can break social bonds, disbanding the very communities we rely on for safety. Women and children I work with complain about pain in their body. Children as young as three or four talk about hurt in their bellies and not because they're hungry. It's a pain I know well. A constant, dull ache all over your body, and it feels as though nothing can alleviate it. People have nightmares and experience overwhelming emotions: grief, sadness and anger. "Why did I deserve this," they wonder.
This is the situation facing 84 million forcibly displaced people. And according to UNHCR, more than half are women and children. What's even more startling is the number of people living in active conflict zones. According to Save the Children, 420 million children are growing up in places where violence is the norm. These are families and children subject to forces they cannot control. Yet war and violence don't become normal.
The stress and trauma experienced by people who go through war is itself deadly. Illnesses like cancer, diabetes and heart disease have been linked to trauma and chronic stress. But it's the psychic pain that affects people the most. Depression, PTSD and other psychiatric disorders affect a significant percentage of people who go through war. I was shocked when I learned that since 9/11, four times more US soldiers have taken their own lives than died in combat.
Reconciling to normal life after you've seen life-shattering war can be the hardest of tasks for a human being. But mental health and healing are often overlooked when supporting people who have survived war. And that's why I set up Refugee Trauma Initiative, to help support the mental health of those affected by war and displacement. Our organization is one of several around the world that helps people so they can begin to feel safe again. When feeling safe is splintered and you feel unsafe and unseen, we work to help bring the internal safe system back online. We create spaces where people can convene and heal as a community. In our groups, men, women and children reconnect with their bodies, have the space to express what they are feeling, and most importantly, reconnect with others. We use art, mindfulness, dance and storytelling to help make sense of the dislocating experiences of violence and of being forced to leave your home. And everything that we do is underpinned by value-based practice. We practice understanding, curiosity and respect to everyone who comes through the door. We recognize and acknowledge their trauma without pathologizing or medicalizing their very normal human reaction to the reckless violence they've experienced. And we recognize that these experiences are the result of systemic injustice and oppression that often have colonial roots, which has dehumanized and killed people for centuries.
At the heart of our work is a simple yet fundamental notion that feelings of safety are inextricably tied to feeling connected to a community. A community where you feel worthy and seen. Where your suffering will be recognized and cared for, where you can experience belonging. Understanding how violence and conflict affects and changes people is more important than ever. Our world is embroiled in multiple chronic conflicts that seem to have no end in sight. Since 1945, there have been 150 conflicts around the world, and the overwhelming majority of casualties have been civilians.
We can't talk about this human toll of war without talking about the war industry. The war on terror over the last 20 years unleashed a new kind of violence, displacing 38 million people. This is a war that made drone warfare the norm. Drones enable automated extermination. As we are moving closer and closer towards automation of war, what happens when we outsource violence, the extinguishing of a human life, to a computer? What happens to us as an interconnected global community when a machine and not a human decides whether a life is worth something?
This is all bleak, but not hopeless. There's always room to adjust our trajectory to a better future. I'm standing here in the most powerful country in the world, a citizen of the United Kingdom, two countries that have long held power over war and peace. And the first thing that we can do is demand that our governments stop investing in mass destruction. At a time when we need to invest in tackling climate change and in health care, our governments are financing weapons and drones. Every vote that we cast should be against weapons of mass destruction, against automation of war.
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And you can do something in your own community. Right now, there are literally millions of Afghans who are brutally forced to leave their home. Like them, there are Syrians, Iraqis, Burundians who all have to deal with the fallout of war and displacement. And the antidote to their suffering lies in the kindness and connection of the communities where they find themselves. If they can feel safe there, they can begin to heal and start a new life. It's sometimes hard for us to see that the answers to some of the most complicated problems in the world lie in the simplest of human actions. It may sound too easy that a good neighbor can help to heal the wounds of war. But in my experience, this is true. Before we landed in London, after months of hardship, we stopped in a poor neighborhood of a town in Central Asia. I was forlorn, grief stricken and not yet able to imagine a future without violence. One day, a neighborhood teacher knocked on our door. When we opened the door, we saw a kindly middle-aged woman carrying a box of pens, colored pencils, paper and children's books. She asked my parents if she could come in and spend time with us. They let her in, and from that day, she visited us most days after school. When I told her that I desperately wanted to go to school, she took me to her classroom, where the girls had prepared gifts. They taught me how to sing a song. It wasn't long before we had to move on, and once we left, I never saw her again. But what she did made me feel valued and safe. The memory of that experience had left a blueprint of what it felt to inhabit my body, if only for a moment, without fear. A memory of joy and belonging. And to this day, when I feel the opposite, I can close my eyes and feel that connection. And it carries me through the dark days.
Thank you.
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