Blog Post #37

War is a powerful value. Some would argue that war is necessary, and that peace can never be achieved without it. No matter how it is viewed, war is an entity that has always been and will always be. It brings darkness and sadness into the lives of those it effects, and with the sacrifices and losses it demands war has always been something to fear. No one enjoys war. It is simply something that happens, and is completely unavoidable. This Earth we live on has always been built up through conflict, and the foundations for Peace are laid on the dead bodies of the enemy. War is harsh, unyielding, and powerful. The consequences of unrest between fellow humans is always a dark, and always results in just as many advantages as disadvantages -- for some.  

Samah Kalakh knows war from a first hand experience. Born in the small providence of Kuwait on the edge of the Arabian Peninsula, Kalakh was thrown into the life of a refuge at a very young age. Kuwait was still a developing country, and was prone to attack from the opposing Muslim Taliban surrounding their borders. When the Iraqi Taliban raided Kuwait's oil fields during the Gulf War, the United States stepped in to protect the civilians and innocent bystanders of Kuwait. The Iraqis knew they would lose, so as one last attempt at a Kuwait overthrow they conduced a "scorched earth" tactic. Raiding all the oil fields was the Taliban's main purpose, but since they couldn't have it, no one could. With a last strike on the capital of Kuwait, the Iraqis fled. The battle was over, but the scars left on the people of Kuwait, both emotionally and physically, were devastating. As she tried to put her life back together, Samah Kalakh wrote poems to help cope with the loss of her loved ones and to raise awareness to the terrible indignity of the Iraqi invaders. Today, Samah lives in the United States as a war refuge near New York. She works as a young writer and a poet, but is largely unaccredited for her works. Not a lot is known about her past in Kuwait, mostly because she doesn't want to talk about it. Still, some evidence of the war is evident in her poem Clouds of War. Samah is only seventeen years old, and yet she is a shining poet and a war survivor.