A few months ago, I called my younger brother, a carpenter in Baghdad, to gauge his interest in leaving Iraq. Without hesitation, he told me that he had no intention of getting out. "I'm not better than the people who die here every day," my brother said. "I don't want to flee my country like a coward."
I was shocked by his response. He had made comments before about my living it up in New York City with a cushy job at The Wall Street Journal as he and the rest of my family remained in hell. I left Iraq a few years ago to come to the United States for graduate school, and meanwhile, my mother, sisters, and brother have endured constant fear of suicide attacks. So why should my brother want to stay?
Experts who have studied traumatized adolescents in war zones such as Iraq say this stubborn, proud reaction may be an indicator of how Iraqi adolescents think about themselves and deal with the ongoing conflict that surrounds them. A published study of Iraqi teens conducted in 2004 found that the more they felt their country was threatened by the U.S. military occupation, the greater their self-esteem.
A traumatized person may take several different courses of action, says Adrianne Aron, a clinical psychologist in Berkeley, California. Think fight or flight. Some react by killing, others by seeking peace in another location, and still others by developing an irrational sense of loyalty to their culture. A traumatized adolescent may feel guilty for having survived when so many others perished and may need to incur great risk to assuage that overwhelming guilt. (Our father disappeared in the vicinity of a suicide attack in 2006, an obvious source of trauma for my family.)
Iraq's adolescents felt a strong sense of nationalism after the U.S. invasion, says Miriam Sabirah Ashki, a fellow at the Mustafa Barzani Peace Fellowship program who has been doing human rights work in Iraq for the past few years. Among Iraqi teens, who are known for strong nationalistic feelings even compared to adolescents from other Muslim countries, responses like my brother's are to be expected, says Steve Carlton-Ford, a sociologist at the University of Cincinnati who did the self-esteem research. "I suspect that, on average, Iraqi nationalism has gone up—a typical response when one's nation is under threat." When a key part of your social identity is attacked—your country or religion or belief system—you'll likely jump to its defense, and also strive to enhance your own self-regard.
Carlton-Ford found, however, that threats to personal safety or the safety of one's family and neighborhood did not boost self-esteem. And according to Ashki, Iraqi adolescents' egos also have to fight the dispiriting effects of hardships such as problems with electricity, water, health care, and education. Some become so demoralized by their lack of amenities and opportunities that they consider suicide.
It's unclear whether Carlton-Ford and his collaborators would obtain the same results today as they did in 2004. Viewing engagement in the war as an ideological struggle might buffer against any negative effects of war, he says, but "coping with the continuing turmoil might weigh heavily on one's sense of self."
Tags:
adolescents,
berkeley california,
clinical psychologist,
constant fear,
coward,
cushy job,
ego,
global psyche,
hesitation,
Iraq,
nationalism,
overwhelming guilt,
suicide attacks,
trauma,
vicinity,
war zones
