Kosovo

["Oddone Virginio" <oddovir@xxxxxxxxx>]

My additions to my latest posting have been too turgid; the risk is that of
transforming the whole matter into a sort of violent indictment against the
Serbs. My goals are rather different. First, to help mutual understanding
by pointing to all parties involved - Serbs, NATO and everybody else
(because in reality it is mankind that is involved when such disasters do
happen) - one of the common denominator of the whole tragedy: the
irrevocable damages that all this has not just on the expelled people or
the families of the slain, but to all, Serbs, Western Europeans and the
everybody else in the wolrd, through the psychological pollution of entire
generations, on both fronts. Second, to draw attention - beginning with
Kosovo, because it is what we have now as an urgency - toward the
maltreatment aspects of these kind of phenomena. 

Usually people look at such humanitarian emergencies in term just of
"emergency", i.e. food and shelter and security; what will happen
afterwards is basically left to the refugees; donors are always called in
on the basis of PHYSICAL poverty, not of the long-term PSYCHOLOGICAL and
MORAL consequences on the minds of the victims and their offspring. If you
think for a moment to the ads for the many charities working in the world -
say, Oxfam or Charitas etc. - they will always focus on poverty (the
undernourished child stretching his arms, etc.). Now, such crises do entail
also - and above all - a psychological and moral crisis, which spreads over
time and generations, something which is lacking in the media information,
but also in what is usually known of intervention planning on them. Russel
Miles remarked that such phenomena ought to be object of research and
discussion on the listserv. I agree, with a difference, however: I think
that what has been developed - mainly in the US - about prevention,
risk-indicators and the like, already offers some important insights that
could be used for such mega-crisis as Kosovo, or any other. 

As for the other world humanitarian crisi, well, people and ideas do mature
with time. The horror and the sorrow for me were the same for Rwanda or for
what I regard as the worst of all situation, that of Sierra Leone. It has
been only with Kosovo that I began to realize the possibility of doing
something more than just look and give some money to charities.

Virginio





Virginio Oddone MD
V. Avogadro 6
10121 - Torino (Italy)
e-mail: oddovir@ipsnet.it