October marks the 20e anniversary of the start of the Afghanistan campaign. The duty presents a series on security chain reactions and the major upheavals triggered by September 11, 2001. After the mercenaries, the obsession with anti-terrorism security and the future of NATO, the focus is on the suicides of soldiers and veterans .
Only the dead see the end of the war. Some fall into the field of horror. Others drag the conflict inside for a long time until they decide to end it on their own.
For Sergeant-Major Claude Lavoie, decorated with the Order of Military Merit – he carried out two missions in Afghanistan for the Canadian army -, the dark night fell after his separation, announced by his wife on the evening of the day of the year of 2012, to add pain to his injuries.
The survivor tells the To have to : “We lived together for 19 years, but I spent more than 7 on a mission. I found myself alone, and it was very hard. And then, in April 2013, on a Saturday night, I found myself in my room with a bottle of wine and a 410 caliber shotgun. I was narrowly saved by a friend who understood that I was did not “spin” according to my writing on Facebook. “
He often testifies publicly about his own tragedy and now comes to the aid of his comrades in distress as much as possible. One in ten Canadian servicemen will suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder in their lifetime.
“Everyone’s comebacks from war are different,” observes Mr. Lavoie. I went looking for guys who had swallowed handfuls of pills to fall asleep and never wake up. We watch each other. We do checks. We pay attention to the warning signs. In motorcycle clubs, when a guy starts to neglect his Harley, you understand it’s not right and you take care of it before it’s too late. “
Recent data from the US military allow us to take stock of the double lethal tragedy inherited from the long military campaigns that began twenty years ago after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The report published in June latest estimated that 7,057 members of the United States armed forces had died during military operations in the Middle East, while 30,177 veterans or soldiers of those conflicts still serving had committed suicide.
We repeat: Self-inflicted death claimed four times as many victims among surviving American servicemen as the battlefields of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
These morbid figures say nothing about the suicides among mercenaries of private security groups employed in excess in these conflicts. It is also important to remember that these wars, the longest in the history of the United States, resulted in approximately 900,000 direct deaths among the populations of the region.
And here ?
Canada was very active in the Afghanistan campaign, roughly between 2002 and 2014. Over 40,000 members of the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) engaged in one way or another in the mission under control. NATO, and 158 of them lost their lives.
How many more have committed suicide? “The statistics we analyzed allow us to see that, among serving Regular Force men, 84 of the 224 who died by suicide between 2001 and 2020 had participated in a deployment related to the mission in Afghanistan,” replied the To have to by email Alicia Gagnon, Forces Health Services Public Affairs Communications Advisor.
They are indeed “serving regular force men”. This gendered reference, constant in the documents, has its reasons. “The number of serving women in the Regular Force who have died by suicide each year is too low to perform a statistical analysis,” says Mme Gagnon. Analysis of deaths due to suicidal tendencies among Regular Force women and Reservists is not statistically reliable in the CAF due to low numbers. Even if we were to consider aggregating the data over several blocks of years, the sample size would still be too small for statistical analysis. “
These Canadian Forces statistics on military suicide also do not include veterans. Veterans Affairs Canada cannot provide information on this matter.
“Since Veterans Affairs Canada is not a direct care provider, we receive very limited information (if any) about what could have led a Veteran to suicide (i.e. no access to coroner’s reports, external medical and mental health reports) ”, wrote to To have to Émily Gauthier from the ministry’s media relations office. On the other hand, if a Veteran did not apply for benefits or services, their case would not be known to the Department. Thus, the actual incidence of suicide among Canadian Veterans is unknown. “
Suicide and sexual assault
Rather, the self-destruction catastrophe seems to be growing in the United States. The suicide rate for veterans aged 18-34 was 25.5 per 100,000 in 2005. This rate is close to 46 per 100,000 today. This is a record since World War II. On the other hand, these rates were probably higher after the First World War, at an even less enviable time when military machismo was combined with a lack of adequate care.
The explanations provided by the investigation by the Watson Institute of Boston University evoke the evidence of the fragile mental health of suicides, but also the increase in head injuries (especially after explosions) which themselves seem to promote development. post-traumatic symptoms.
Sergeant-Major Lavoie also suffered concussions from the impacts of the explosions. He was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and participated in a survey using magneto-imaging.encephalography to study connectivity differences in his brain that could indicate a physiological cause for his mental state.
However, the length of deployment and exposure to combat are not the only cause of suicidal behavior. Military personnel not deployed in combat zones commit suicide even more than soldiers often at the front, according to US data. Women are particularly affected by harassment and sexual assault. Experts speak of Military Sexual Trauma (MST) and 71% of veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder also suffer from STDs.
Other suicidogenic factors concern access to firearms and the general disinterest of the population. World War II veterans were greeted as heroes and celebrated as such throughout their lifetimes. The soldiers of the wars of Iraq or Afghanistan come back in divided communities on the justice of these conflicts.
“It’s worse in Quebec,” notes Claude Lavoie. Since the October crisis in 1970 and the War Measures Act, Quebecers no longer want to see soldiers. In contrast, in Kingston, a military man in uniform is told today in stores and is paid for coffee at Tim Hortons. “
He adds that the recent fall of Kabul and the return to power of the Taliban are adding stress to the former soldiers. “What is happening in Afghanistan is not helping to get your mental health back,” he said. I’ve been working day and night for months to bring back the Afghan I worked with for 14 months. He was also a soldier, a sergeant major, who therefore had the same rank as me. He received his visa for himself and his five children. We must now get them out of the country… ”