LOGISTICS MONITOR
A million is the United Nations’ figure to quantify people who have left war-torn Ukraine at the end of week one (3rd March 2022) since the Russian invasion of its erstwhile member-state under the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR). Watching the hordes of Ukrainians of all age groups driving or walking or taking the train to exit before being hammered by bombs is nerve-wracking.
The conflict has sparked massive population displacement that could soon constitute one of Europe’s largest refugee crises since the Second World War. Half a million children have already fled Ukraine to neighbouring countries, with the number of refugees growing, says UNICEF from Geneva.
According to UN data, more than half of those fleeing Ukraine went to Poland and more than 116,000 to Hungary to the South. Moldova has taken in more than 79,000, and 71,200 have gone to Slovakia. Germany has reported 18,000 so far. The one million refugees from Ukrainian constitute 2% of its population. Women and children constitute the majority of refugees because Ukrainians decided to stay put into fighting the invaders.
No one knows where they are heading, except they are being evacuated to save their precious lives. When will they reach their destination? There is no clear idea. The primary challenge is what to carry and how much when they emigrate under such trying circumstances – clothes, food, medicine, whatnot. It is next to impossible to carry all belongings. Inclement weather (minus 1 Centigrade). How long this generosity may last can be jettisoned for the time being. Today, the hosts are generous by providing free accommodation, food, etc. After all, feeding additional mouths has a certain financial angle.
Fleeing Ukrainians’ fate is better than those staying. Reports of the warm welcome of refugees by neighbouring countries are laudable. What about the 98% inside Ukraine? Particularly about their daily necessities? Food, medicine, etc. Leave aside the fighting equipment and materials requirement. How do people hunkering in bomb bunkers or underground metro stations manage their necessities?
Since the invading armed forces have not gone in for carpet or incessant bombing – aerial or otherwise – people sneak out to their homes to retrieve whatever they can lay their hands on. But how long these supplies will last with shops more or less closed is a moot question.
Geneva-headquartered UNICEF points to the deteriorating situation in Ukraine. “Humanitarian needs across the country are multiplying by the hour. Hundreds of thousands of people are without safe drinking water because of damage to water system infrastructure. Many have been cut off from access to other essential services like healthcare. The country is running low on critical medical supplies and has had to halt urgent efforts to curb a polio outbreak.”
Wartime invariably burdens daily living. Logistics is hit badly. Production and procurement suffer, followed by distribution nightmare. Even if shops were to remain open, transporting goods would be a nightmare, and few would venture. Therefore, dwindling supply lines for essentials. The bleak chances of humanitarian aid reaching the needy by air or sea are not forgotten. No logistician would willingly risk that.
Ukrainians are not the first to face such daily existential challenges. History is replete with solid facts. Samuel Hideo Yamashita, Henry E. Sheffield Professor of History at Pomona College and author of ‘Leaves from an Autumn of Emergencies: Selections from the Wartime Diaries of Ordinary Japanese’, captured the life of ordinary Japanese at the height of World War II.
Yamashita draws upon diaries and letters written by servicemen, kamikaze pilots, evacuated children, and teenagers and adults mobilized for war work in the big cities, provincial towns, and rural communities to capture how the nation coped with during wartime. (1)
In ‘Daily Life in Wartime Japan, 1940-1945’, he provides a glimpse: Here is the housewife struggling to feed her family while supporting the war effort; the eager conscript from snow country enduring the harshest, most abusive training imaginable to learn how to fly; the Tokyo teenagers made to work in wartime factories; the children taken from cities to live in the countryside away from their families and with little food and no privacy; the Kyushu farmers pressured to grow ever more rice and wheat with fewer hands and less fertilizer; and the Kyoto octogenarian driven to thoughts of suicide by his inability to contribute to the war.
Rewind 60 years to the unsuccessful American war in Vietnam. Stanley Karnow writes in ‘Vietnam: A History’, that “the United States, motivated by the loftiest intentions, did indeed rip South Vietnam’s social fabric to shreds,” Stanley Karnow comments in Vietnam: A History. (2)
The destruction of the South Vietnamese countryside with bombs and defoliants took a terrible toll on the people who lived there. “For the common people. As many as four million Vietnamese (one-fourth of the total population of the South) fled to the outskirts of cities and towns, where they hoped to escape the bombing and find a way to make a living.”
“One-fourth of Vietnam’s population in the South fled to the outskirts of cities and towns to escape the bombing and find a way to make a living. The war was a dreadful random infliction [cause of suffering] that on any given day or night could disrupt their lives, destroy their homes, wound their loved ones, or kill them outright,” Kim Willenson writes in ‘The Bad War: An Oral History of the Vietnam War’. Many people left the rural villages where their families had lived for generations and became refugees.
When would the unequal Russian Ukrainian battle end? No answers yet. Until normalcy is restored, the evacuation would continue. Hopefully, neighbours would keep their hearts and door open to accommodate them before a structured rehabilitation strategy is penciled and rolled out to alleviate the sufferings of the fleeing Ukrainian civilians.
Unlike in the past when there was a huge time lag between what transpires on the battlefront and the news reaching the home front, today we have a ringside drawing-room seat to the happenings anywhere in the world, thanks to the 21st-century technological marvel. Thus, the anxiety levels for the entire world, just not the affected or involved parties alone, has topped.
“What they (civilians) had taken for granted in peacetime was no longer so easy amid the fighting. Nonetheless, civilians often strive to create the humdrum amid the unfamiliar to seal off the war going on around them, a process that has been described as an imitation of life.
“Death, however, became a constant in the civilian experience; and before long, it was those who had died naturally that generated curiosity in the media and public mind,” wrote late historian Nicholas Atkin in the preface to the collection of essays by other histories he edited in ‘Daily Lives of Civilians in Wartime Twentieth-Century Europe’ (2008).
[Also read by the same author: Marc Engel, a great catch for Maersk. He stands out like a colossus in his domain – THE NEWS PORTER]
What are the chances of the fleeing Ukrainians escaping the Russian attack today return to their homeland: to their cozy homes to cook their favourite food, wash and dry their clothes, switch on their favourite television channel to watch their favourite entertainment program, and sleep on their warm bed at night in the embrace of their beloved spouse or tugging their thumb-sucking children? Not so quickly, it seems. Why? Assuming peace is restored by whatever means tomorrow, the return and recovery of the war-battered Ukraine would need unspecified time to regain poise and normalcy. Keeping fingers crossed.
Ref:
1) https://kansaspress.ku.edu/978-0-7006-2462-1.html
2) https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/wars-effect-vietnamese-land-and-people
3) https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/one-week-conflict-ukraine-half-million-children-become-refugees
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