Confronting the Human Costs of War: Scholars Reflect on Care and Responsibility in a Turbulent Middle East and North Africa

Omar Dewachi, Associate Professor of Anthropology at Rutgers University, examined how war lingers in bodies, communities, and even microbes long after the fighting stops. Describing what he calls the “biological afterlives” of conflict, Dewachi shared findings from his fieldwork in Iraq, where many injuries were not only caused by gunfire or explosions, but by daily life in unstable environments: falling into open sewage systems, traffic accidents, or infections from rebuilding unsafe cities. Each wound, he explained, carried both biological and historical traces of violence.

“The wound carries more than pain,” Dewachi said. “It carries wounds of history and microbes themselves.”

“Is it becoming a tradition that mothers hold their dead sons?” asked Kali Rubaii, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Purdue University. Her presentation focused on the long-term effects of military violence in Fallujah, Iraq, where high levels of lead and uranium contamination have been linked to birth defects and chronic illness, especially among women and children. Rubaii describes maternal health as a political battleground, where women’s bodies carry the lasting consequences of war.

She spoke about how families face heartbreaking decisions about bringing children into an environment marked by contamination, displacement, and loss. Rubaii calls this “anti-generational warfare,” a phrase that captures how war harms not only the present, but also the possibility of future life.

As the conversation shifted toward humanitarian response, Kaveh Khoshnood, Associate Professor of Epidemiology and Director of the BA-BS/MPH Program at the Yale School of Public Health, discussed the moral limits of technology and the politics of care. He explained that surveillance in conflict zones is both a scientific and an ethical issue.

“Withholding data isn’t just neglect,” he said. “It’s a weapon of war.”

His work in Sudan showed how local health workers, using mobile phones and open-source tools, maintained outbreak detection even as state systems collapsed. Their persistence, he noted, “kept eyes and ears alive.”

Sa’ed Atshan, Associate Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies and Anthropology at Swarthmore College, shared the story of social media figure and Palestinian neurosurgeon Dr. Mohammed Tahir, whose humanitarian work in Gaza has made him a symbol of compassion and “Ambassador for Humanity.”

Drawing on his digital ethnography, Atshan explored how images of care circulate online and shape global perceptions of heroism. “You can be Arab and Western at the same time,” he said, reflecting on how humanitarian identities often bridge cultures rather than divide them.

S. Can Açiksöz, Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles, examined the story of Kurdish filmmaker Lisa Calan, who lost both legs in an Islamic State bombing, and her surgeon, Munjed al Muderis, an Iraqi refugee who became a leading humanitarian and orthopedic surgeon. Açiksöz used their story to highlight the contrast between high-tech medical interventions and the slow, difficult path of long-term recovery. He asked what it truly means to heal when systems of care are as fragile as the bodies they serve.

From maternal health to reproductive rights, the discussion turned to how women’s experiences of health and care are shaped by systems of power. Jess Newman, Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Cornell University, shared her research on abortion in Morocco, describing it as both a political act of refusal and a form of repair. “Who erodes our personhood and punishes our resistance?” she asked. Newman’s work shows how women create their own networks of care and support, finding ways to protect one another even when official systems fail them.

The final panel centered on children, whose lives and futures are often most deeply shaped by war. Christine Sargent, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Colorado, Denver, spoke about disability justice as a call for visibility, dignity, and care. Samee Sulaiman, Postdoctoral Associate at Yale’s Council on Middle East Studies, described war’s “delayed death,” the slow, quiet suffering of children growing up without access to the medical tools and support that could help them survive.

During her closing remarks, Inhorn reflected on what every child needs to grow and thrive: parents who can care for them, safety from harm, nourishing food, stable homes and schools, access to education and healthcare, and love that allows them to feel seen and valued. Even in places where recovery feels out of reach, she said, the act of caring and rebuilding remains a powerful expression of hope. Inhorn reminded the audience that anthropology is not only a way of studying the world, but a way of helping to make it more just.