Unpacking conflict: “We don’t import conflict. But we do import trauma.”

2016/03/21 Leave a comment

Roma Berns-McGown, author of a Mosaic Institute on imported conflicts:

“What happens over time is that people come to re-understand the conflict. They re-frame it. People start to see that what they experienced was a function of an interest group or an ideology,” says Berns-McGown.

“It’s a revolutionary difference.”

It depends on how the conflict affected each person, says Berns-McGown. One interview subject said the conflict ‘was my childhood,’ she says. Others said they could see it still it being played out by their parents.

Berns-McGown then asked how they felt now. It opened the door to think about how they had changed.

“The most powerful thing was inclusion. If they really felt included, and they had a future and they belonged, that helped them to reframe the conflict,” she says. “The sense that they belong here, which they might not have felt at home. The more inclusion, the better.”

Berns-McGown’s own parents came to Canada from South Africa in the early 1960s because they opposed apartheid. In Canada, they did not associate with other South Africans. The major difference between her family story and the Syrian refugees, she says, was that her parents could choose to come to Canada on their own terms.

“This war in Syria is particularly complicated. You have a bunch of factions, all competing for power. We can view some of them as worse than others, but its not like there are good guys and bad guys. Everyone who is not an aggressor is a victim of that power struggle. Everyone is a victim. ”

Everyone who has come from Syria has experienced some form of trauma, she says.

“Moving to a place where there is no trauma doesn’t make it go away. We see it with military veterans and first responders,” she says.

“We don’t import conflict. We do import trauma.”

People have different ways of coping. Some choose to disassociate themselves. Others find solace in forming tight communities. Some find support in other people who have experienced similar trauma in a different context.

For young people in Toronto with roots in Eritrea, Ethiopia and Somalia, for example, the problem they perceive isn’t other black youths, it’s systemic racism, says Berns-McGown.

“They don’t see each other as the problem. One of the enormous advantages of Canada is that it helps them meet people from different parts of the world who have experienced similar conflict. It means they’re not alone.”

Source: Unpacking conflict: “We don’t import conflict. But we do import trauma.” | Ottawa Citizen

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Homegrown jihadis: Canadians have always fought in other people’s wars – Granatstein

2014/07/11 Leave a comment

Jack Granatstein’s fine reminder that Canadians have often fought in other wars and conflicts:

The government of Mackenzie King tried to stop Canadians from going to Spain, and it passed the Foreign Enlistment Act in April, 1937, to prevent men from signing up for foreign wars. The volunteers went to Spain anyway, while countless others donated money to the cause. Most of the Canadians who went to fight – 76 per cent, according to Michael Petrou’s fine study of the Mac-Paps – were Communist Party members, most recent immigrants to the Dominion. The Mac-Paps earned a reputation for political unreliability and combat effectiveness, and at least 400 never returned home. These “premature anti-fascists” suffered for their political sins in the Second World War and Cold War years.

The Foreign Enlistment Act remained on the books, but it didn’t stop Canadian Jews from fighting for Israel or raising millions of dollars for its support. Ben Dunkelman, who had served with distinction with the Queen’s Own Rifles in Europe, went to Israel in 1948 and led a brigade with great success in Israel’s independence war. Many others did so, including George Buzz Beurling, a Royal Canadian Air Force fighter ace and a gentile, who joined the Israeli Air Force as a well-paid mercenary. Beurling died in an air crash in Rome on his way to the Middle East. Many other Canadian Jews served in the major Arab-Israeli wars of the following decades. Others serve in the Israeli military to this day, all presumably in violation of Canadian law.

Then there was the Vietnam War. While hard numbers are unavailable, estimates are that as many as 50,000 Canadians served in the U.S. military during that long, bloody struggle. Some enlisted out of the conviction that North Vietnam was an aggressor state, others presumably because of an adventurous spirit that could not be satisfied in the Canadian Forces because of Ottawa’s preference for United Nations peacekeeping. Once again, the law was not applied against Canadians who fought abroad.

None of those war veterans brought jihad home to Canada, a legitimate concern we live with today, although some communists who fought in Spain might have had attitudes inimical to the Canadian capitalist state. Most of the Islamist volunteers, if they survive to return to Canada, will likely settle down to a “normal” life. But so long as ideology, religion, adventurism and a soldier’s pay still matter, Canadians will likely continue going off to fight in other people’s wars.

Not sure where he stands on citizenship revocation in such cases, but clearly his expectation is that most will “grow out of it” and return to Canada, which may be a bit naive given the intensity of their beliefs and the nature of the organizations they are fighting with.

Homegrown jihadis: Canadians have always fought in other people’s wars – The Globe and Mail.

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Do new Canadians leave old conflicts behind? – The Globe and Mail

2014/03/19 1 Comment

Good report from Mosaic Institute on imported conflicts and some of the factors that increase and decrease the likelihood and impact:

Social inclusion is the single biggest factor in encouraging that change to happen; respondents spoke over and over about the importance of meeting, speaking with, living and working alongside people who are different from them in affecting that change of perspective. That is Canadian multiculturalism living up to its full potential.

Conversely, racism and exclusion can undermine that process of reframing conflict, and can impede new Canadians’ attachment to Canada. Sadly, all across the country, the darker our skin and the more we are visibly identifiable as a member of a racialized community, the more likely we are to experience racism and other forms of social exclusion at school, at work, and on the street.

Do new Canadians leave old conflicts behind? – The Globe and Mail.

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