The Human Cost of War
Six years ago today marks the start of the Syrian revolution/crisis/war (call it whatever you want, I call it “The Fucking War ” or “TFW” for short). Which developed from a revolution to a civil war/proxy war and of course the war against ISIS. This post isn’t going to talk about how and why or who started this, because after a few years into TFW I realized that pointing fingers doesn’t matter. What matters is the result of what’s happening.
Instead, I’m going to focus on the human side, the human cost, the human result, and the affect it’s leaving on humans.
This article won’t be very technical but it has some technical roots to it.
I’m a programmer, I’ve recently finished a data management course in the Open University and started doing some data analysis programming at work. So, I decided to use that knowledge to write this piece. If you’re interested in the technical details of how the data was handeled check out the notebook on github.
At first sight, we can see that the numbers started going down after 2014, which means that the situation is improving. But still, 4836 dead in just two months in 2017 is a tragedy and just because less people are getting killed doesn’t justify the war.
We can also see that there are groups that have lost more than other. But what I’m really here to argue is: does it matter? Aren’t they all human? Don’t they all have friends, families, loved ones and more people that care about them?
Out of 22.85 million Syrians (population of Syria 2013), 312,372 died in the war. Which doesn’t seem like a big number, but think of the lives each of these deaths affected. Let’s assume that each death would affect 10 people (family and friends. 2 parents, 4 cousins, and 4 friends.) meaning that 312,372*10=3,123,720. That’s 3,123,720 people who’ve lost someone because of the war.
The bigger numbers that the rest of the world are familiar with are refugees escaping the war. Some didn’t make it crossing the Mediterranean.
“UNHCR reported that 3,740 lives had been lost so far in 2016, just short of the 3,771 reported for the whole of 2015.” source.
That’s another (3,740+3,771)*10=75,110 people who’ve lost someone at sea.
The numbers over here are cumulative. I’m happy that UNHCR doesn’t publish who was fleeing which side because again, these are human lives who had to leave their homes because of TFW.
What most of people don’t know is that the Internally displaced numbers are far higher than all of refugees in other countries. These 6,5 millions who had to move inside Syria, just a bit further away from danger and unsafe areas.
If we applied the same formula as above, of multiplying the numbers by ten to find out how many know of people who had to flee their houses. That’ll be 6.5*10= 65 millions and 5*10= 50 millions.
Adding the numbers and dividing by the population(65+50)/22.85=5.03. Meaning every Syrian at least know of 5 people who had to seek refuge inside or outside of Syria.
I’m going to take myself as a random sample of Syrians (one out of 22.85 millions). Which isn’t statistically accurate at all but it is a random example. I know at least one person of the following: killed by government forces, killed by rebel forces, imprisoned by the government, kidnaped by rebels, internally displaced, took a boat to Europe, and lastly died at sea. These come from close friends, family and various social circles.
To recap. TFW resulted in 312,372 dead, 75,110 dead at sea, 5 millions refugees, 6.5 millions internally displaced, it left almost every Syrian with a tragedy, and of course trauma.
Nevertheless, Syrians inside Syria are still at war. But the upside is that most inside and outside Syria aren’t fighting to kill. They’re fighting to live, to help each other, and to achieve great things.
