Beirut, Mostar, Kabul, Grozny, Aleppo in the last three decades. Hue in the sixty-sixth. Stalingrad, Warsaw, Dresden, Tokyo by the forties. Atlanta a century and a half ago. All these states have something in common in the history of human warfare. Its urban centers were destroyed after massive bombings or fires. Its citizens, great losers of lowly ranks, and far from the dialectics (if) of the struggle, had been gifted by the emperors without mercy or scruples, who had practically no consequences for their crimes.
In Ukraine, especially in the east of the country, dozens of villages and neighboring cities have been devastated by frequent indiscriminate attacks. The Geneva Conventions were quickly trampled upon by the military, which used the civilian population as the preferred target of systematic terror campaigns.
Although the war in Ukraine began in 2014, the escalation of the fighting and the entry into the battle of the Russian Army with major artillery muscle starting in February of last year has brought destruction. The heavy use of missiles, rockets, high-caliber projectiles and drone attacks has turned a large part of eastern Ukraine into a wasteland of destruction.
Civilians have seen their homes systematically targeted by severe bombings and frequent infestations and are often deprived of water, electricity and heating in an especially cold part of the world from autumn to spring. “The people of Ukraine have suffered incalculable terrors during this war,” says a report by the humanitarian organization Amnesty International.
51. The Geneva Convention on the Protection of Civilians in Time of War, signed by 194 nations of the world, states that “the civilian population shall enjoy common protection against the dangers arising from military operations…” and confirms the prohibition. “acts or threats of violence, the primary purpose of which is to intimidate non-combatants.”
Organized war has existed in Europe for millennia. For a long time it was fought most fiercely by the tribunes, among the civilians in the front line, whether they agreed or not, they were forced. Until World War I, battles took place in open trenches where soldiers were held for months or years. The fronts of infernal battles such as Matrona, Verdun or La Somme hardly changed between 1914 and 1918, although they cost millions of dead and wounded.
During World War II, attacks against civilians were carried out indiscriminately. Systematic bombardments against large capitals that were not prepared to defend themselves had multiplied since the beginning of the war. The civilian death toll doubled the military figure and it was clear that innocent wars would have a major future.
The most widely publicized war of the last eighty years, that of Vietnam, has already been compared to an increase in military-related civilian deaths. For every one of the 57,000 American soldiers killed, nine Vietnamese civilians died, and the consequences of chemical weapons are suffered in the United States today.
The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, secretly decided by a small group at the highest level of the government, killed 15 thousand invading soldiers, while the number of civilian deaths exceeded one million. After the withdrawal of Russia, a civil war began between the Afghan wardots, armed to the teeth by the United States of America. The capital, Kabul, whose principal approaches are miles long, was the principal scene of artillery fire.
They used pagan soldiers as human targets and viciously destroyed a large area of the city center. Years later, the number of people injured and killed by tunnels between planted houses made the Asian region one of the countries with the most victims in the world. The city was completely destroyed.
Civilians also took a heavy toll in the Lebanese civil war that lasted from 1975 to 1990. Beirut and other cities were razed to the ground by fighters from various militias throughout the neighborhood. Between 130,000 and 250,000 people died and another million were injured, some thousands with varying degrees of disability.
In the Balkans, so-called ethnic cleansing was used systematically, while in both Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina almost all those killed belonged to the same ethnic group. Ten thousand houses were dynamited to prevent the return of the inhabitants of another religion. Unfortunately, the peace plan allowed religious purification and allowed the killers to achieve their goals.
In the last two decades, in wars such as in Iraq, Libya, Syria or Yemen, the destruction of cities and towns has become one of the main goals of the fighters. The United States has bombed civilians beginning in 2003 in Iraq, causing indiscriminate carnage, and Russia has destroyed the infrastructure of Syrian cities and towns over the last decade. A large part of those who were killed by the brutal bombing were civilians.
Cicero said that “laws are silent in war” and are constantly being violated by the combatants. Shame grows in the darkness of war and impunity is used to commit war crimes under the guise of anonymity. All orders which violate the laws of war are to be rejected by the warriors.
