The story is not over

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​This is how Alessandro Barbero in Caporetto explains the consideration that Italian generals had for the lives of their soldiers during the First World War. It was a cynical assessment, which took absolutely no account of the value and dignity of the soldier, elements that did not belong to the mentality of the time. Soldiers were a weapon like any other, like a simple bullet to shoot. The important thing was to have at least one more than the others.

Although a hundred years have passed since those tragic events, although we have lived through the entire twentieth century amidst various genocides and massacres, we have not yet managed to go beyond the logic of counting. We thought that the Second World War, the Holocaust and the atomic bombs had definitively changed our mentality. But the passing of the witnesses of those events and the progressive temporal distancing from those years are causing certain beliefs that seemed definitively established to give way. And so we find ourselves counting.

More than two years after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, it is practically impossible to have a clear and precise idea of ​​how many victims there are - wounded and dead. According to the United Nations, in February 2024, civilian victims would be over 30 thousand: 10 thousand dead and 20 thousand wounded. According to some Western sources, military deaths would fluctuate between 15 and 30 thousand units, in addition to 100 thousand wounded. Even more difficult to define the number of Russian victims: perhaps a figure between 45 and 60 thousand dead. Some US government sources indicate the number of dead and wounded in the world at 315 thousand. And let's not even start listing the dead and wounded in the Middle East...

Numbers. Always numbers. Only numbers. Why can't we understand that behind every number we find lives, faces, desires, flesh, blood, soul? People who are sons, daughters, fathers, mothers. Exactly like us... The cost/benefit logic alienates us and prevents us from understanding the tragic dimension of every armed conflict. If that number doesn't become a face, history won't change.

Renato Bonomo
NP June/July 2024