ABU DHABI // Gulf countries must help neighbours in turmoil by tackling the mental scars left by the horrors of war, experts say.
The mental health of victims was as important as humanitarian assistance, they said.
“We’re talking about building homes in the eye of a tornado,” said Karim Sadjapour, senior associate of the Middle East programme at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
“It’s addressing a symptom, not a cause. We talk a lot about job creation in this region, but one of the most needed in today’s Middle East are mental health professionals who can work with people who’ve suffered horrific traumas.”
At the Beirut Institute Summit in the capital, he said that even if the conflicts in Syria or Yemen were to be resolved tomorrow, lasting trauma was a worry.
“There are institutions, like NYU Abu Dhabi for example, where they can train Arabic-speaking mental health professionals because it will be a hugely needed profession in the coming decades.”
He spoke of a psychiatrist who treated Taliban members in Afghanistan.
“A lot of them suffered from deep depression and they’ve undergone severe trauma in their lives because of civil war,” Mr Sadjapour said.
“Many of them were, in fact, suicidal but in their religion they couldn’t commit suicide and so they’d go to fight the jihad hoping they’d be killed.
“Likewise in the Arab world, you now have millions of people who have been displaced in Syria, Yemen, Iraq and elsewhere, and have suffered unspeakable traumas.”
With 80 per cent of people internally displaced in Yemen, he said, mental health issues in the region should be destigmatised.
“While it’s important to focus on IT jobs, I think we need to be realistic about these mental health traumas,” Mr Sadjapour said.
“When we’re thinking of these institutions, like the Cleveland Clinic in Abu Dhabi, and universities that are training physicians and pharmacists, there needs to be an added focus on mental health to create tens of thousands of Arabic-speaking mental health professionals. We focus a lot on people’s outward scars but I think the internal scars are far more damaging.”
Khalid Janahi, co-chairman of the summit and chairman of Naseej Co and Solidarity Group Holding, said sustaining development in the region was crucial for its future.
“The best thing is to put a fund together, managed by the US, coming from the reserves of this part of the world, over 25 years and create jobs and infrastructure as well as requirements needed in Egypt, Libya, Syria and Yemen,” he said.
“Infrastructure creates top jobs, and you need them in times of transition. We should be looking more at creating sustainable development rather than supporting the security of the status quo.”
He said Gulf countries could help kick-start this development in those countries in transition.
“If you create jobs and people see a light at the end of the tunnel, it helps,” said Mr Janahi. “The Gulf has the muscle to start this.”
Dr Philip Gordon, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Affairs and former White House coordinator for the Middle East, said many measures needed to be explored.
“So long as we have wars in these countries and a throbbing sectarian, civil and geopolitical conflict, there is no chance to go on or to contain it.” he said.
“There is an overwhelming priority on stopping the war. Events over the past several weeks underscore that the approach we have taken so far is not working and is not likely to work.
“What we have been trying to do for several years is not on a successful path but on a path to perpetuate this war with all the tragic consequences that go along with it.”
cmalek@thenational.ae
