2008 Occasional Papers - AUK

Hadi and Llabre (1998) assessed intelligence, posttraumaticstress and depression among Kuwaitis one year afteroccupation. They found a difference in levels of parentaldepression between those who stayed in Kuwait ascompared to those who were out for all or part of theoccupation. Though Hadi and Llabre (1998) found lowlevels of depression in children, they found depressioncorrelated with levels of exposure to violence and levelsof PTSD. Children who had a martyr or POW in thefamily (Abdullatif 1995) and boys (Llabre and Hadi 1997)reported higher levels of depression, with social supporta protective buffer for girls.Abdel-Khalek (1997), in a survey of fears associated withIraqi aggression among Kuwaiti children and adolescents,ages 13-17 years, identified three significant factors thathe named Iraqi Aggressor, War Machinery, and WarCorrelates and Effects. Abdel-Khalek concluded that theIraqi aggression’s adverse effects persisted 5.7 years afterthe trauma. In 2004, Abdel-Khalek (2004) reported higherscores for Kuwaitis on the Arabic Scale of Death Anxiety(ASDA) than their Egyptian or Syrian counterparts.These psychological studies describe important experiencesand concerns of suffers and survivors, and criticalgenerational and gender dynamics of trauma in theaftermath of the 1990 Iraqi invasion and occupation. Thestudies, taken together, point to the ongoing traumaticeffects of the invasion and occupation. Yet, as one strandof human experience, studies based on the diagnosisof PTSD or depression alone mask the reshaping ofexperience through diverse memory processes that impactsocial relations, Kuwaiti communal recovery, and a social,historical analysis that might lead to collective politicalresponses. The question here is whether medicalizingand individualizing collective trauma supports communalrecovery, a question that has important moral, politicaland legal ramifications.Memory, PTSD and Child WitnessesContrary to popular ideas about memory, memory doesnot operate like a video camera, providing a continuousphotographic copy of events and experiences (Schacter2003). Instead, multiple learning and memory systems“extract details, meanings, and associations from thestream of experience according to specific needs,selective attention, and cognitive and perceptual salienceor relevance” (Kirmayer, Lemelson and Barad 2007:8).Memories also change, undergoing repeated revisionand transformation with each attempt at recollection. Weliterally narrate ourselves, reshaping an awareness of ourfeelings and sense of identification with others througheveryday life (Capps and Ochs 1995). This underminesclaims that symptoms, such as flashbacks, are simplyreplays of indelible records, rather than reconstructionsin complex memory processes. Symptoms, such asflashbacks, may reflect veridical recall, obsessional worry,vivid imagination or ruminations of “worst case scenarios”(Frankel 1994; Kirmayer, Lemelson and Barad 2007:8).The diversity of these memory processes leads toambiguity and debate about what is veridical recalland what is reconstructed, confabulated or fabricatedmemory, particularly when the stakes of research, beyondpsychological health, incorporate moral and legal credibilityand economic claims for compensation. While studies ofPTSD and depression offer us useful foci for psychologicaltreatment and the basis for economic compensation fromperpetrators of traumas such as violence, they may alsomask complex, relational experiences and the confluenceof diverse social memory processes.Nordstrom (2004:226) suggests that “part of the wayviolence is carried into the future is through creatinghegemony of enduring violence across the length andbreadth of the commonplace world, present and future.The normal, the innocuous, and the inescapable areinfused with associations of lethal harm”. Respondentsin our study, child witnesses of the Iraqi invasion andoccupation, vividly recalled the dangers of Iraqi checkpoints on main roads, and the destruction of communitycenters, religious sites, public parks, schoolyards, andmarketplaces, places where war was brought home. Maleand female respondents recalled intimidation, control,and powerlessness at Iraqi soldier checkpoints, andsexually aggressive or inappropriate advances toward theirmothers. Male and female respondents reported fear,anxiety, visual horror and a loss of control in response tomedia portrayals of tortured and mutilated bodies.Young men, out of the home more often than theirsisters, vividly described maimed and murdered bodiesin communal areas close to their homes: A 24 year olddescribed “torture houses”, with “piles of dead bodies,a tortured man, still alive, led from the torture house toan ambulance”. He recalled children playing football withthe head of a murdered Iraqi after the liberation. A 22year old recalled “men being executed in front of my owneyes”. He said, “I felt helpless, not only because I wasa child, but my family could not control anything…no19