Global Policy Forum

By Gerry Bellett

Traumatized former peacekeepers will be offered counselling in B.C.: The program, the first of its kind in Canada, follows two years of studies at UBC.

''We came into contact with absolute evil.''

Canadian peacekeeper and witness of ethnic cleansing and other atrocities in the Croatian wars. Contact with evil and unimaginable suffering has traumatized a significant number of Canadian soldiers who served in international peacekeeping missions, says University of B.C. counselling psychology professor Marv Westwood. In September Westwood, aided by physicians and former peacekeepers, will offer a 15-week counselling program for former soldiers suffering the effects of trauma induced stress.

Since 1947 Canada has dispatched approximately 125, 000 soldiers on peacekeeping duties as part of United Nations contingents. The B.C. program is the first of its kind in Canada It follows two years of clinical studies at UBC involving a number of former peacekeepers who found it difficult to adjust to civilian life after returning from Bosnia and Croatia where they witnessed widespread ethnic cleansing.

News of the program's availability comes almost a week after Romeo Dallaire -- the Canadian general who led the ill-fated United Nations force in Rwanda -- was taken to hospital after being found drunk beneath a park bench in Ottawa. Dallaire, who took early retirement from the military in April with the rank of lieutenant-general, is the highest-ranking Canadian soldier to be stricken by post traumatic stress after being exposed to the horrors of the 1994 Rwanda civil war.

The UBC program is supported by the Victoria-based Canadian Peacekeeper Veterans Association, said national president Harold Leduc, who served in Cyprus. ''It's beginning to look as if 30 to 40 per cent of peacekeepers will be affected by what has happened to them -- similar numbers to what they found in the Vietnam war,'' said Leduc. Members of the association will take part in the sessions as para-workers to provide support to former comrades.

Physicians who will help are being trained by Dr. David Kuhl, a specialist in the treatment of dying patients, who is an expert in resolving trauma associated with psychological, spiritual and emotional suffering. The program that was to be offered throughout B.C. has been cut back following a decision by Veteran Affairs Canada to not provide a $150, 000 grant, said Westwood. Sole funding for the program now rests with the Royal Canadian Legion, which has given $150,000. ''We wanted to take it to Prince George and Kelowna but we'll have to restrict it now to just Vancouver and Victoria which is a great pity,'' said Westwood.

Counselling was to be offered to about 200 former peacekeepers and Second World War veterans, but the 45-hour course will only be available to about 100, he said. It evolved from a Life Review program that Westwood designed for Second World War veterans still suffering the effects of trauma fifty years after that war ended.

Linda Sawyer, executive director of the Royal Canadian Legion's Pacific Command, said the Life Review program was to help elderly veterans ''deal with issues that should be put to rest before they pass away. '' Sawyer said many of the problems suffered by Second World War veterans were also found in later generations of soldiers who'd served as peacekeepers. ''I asked him to design a program for these younger soldiers many of whom are dealing with problems that are far worse than those of World War Two veterans,'' said Sawyer.

Sawyer said older veterans had a discernable enemy to fight and were allowed full use of their weapons. ''But some of our peacekeepers have had to stand by and watch babies get their heads cut off and spiked to walls without being able to do anything. ''We know of one peacekeeper who runs out of the house if his kids cry. He had sat all night on a river bank listening to the screams of children being mutilated on the other side,'' said Sawyer.

Westwood said stress results from being helpless in the face of unfixable suffering, being exposed to unnatural events or having one's life or that of another threatened. ''Ethnic cleansing, coming into a house and finding it full of bodies, having children massacred while you have to stand by unable to prevent it -- these events don't just affect the mind, they enter your bones. The memory of it is stored in your whole body. ''People's emotions just shut down. They become socially isolated. They have intrusive thoughts, sleepless nights, startle responses -- some of them can't stand the smell of freshly killed chicken -- they suffer flashbacks, which lead to despair and depression.''

Mark Lundie was 21 years old when he found himself in what was then Krajina, the Serb autonomous region of Croatia. A reservist with Vancouver's Seaforth Highlander Regiment, he was sent to the second battalion Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry that was attempting to stop the Croatian army carrying out ethnic cleansing in Krajina in 1993. They saw the effects of ethnic cleansing and watched villages being blown up and some of the troops came across the bodies of murdered civilians.

Now an RCMP officer in Richmond, Lundie said he came back unsettled and aimless. ''A lot of my friends came back with problems. They turned to alcohol and couldn't get their lives on track. Some of them haven't done anything since they came back. They shouldn't just lose five or seven years of their lives because their problems aren't being treated,'' said Lundie, a para-worker with the program.