"Me and my home"
Charcoal drawing by 6 year old girl from Kosovo
Geber's Refugee Reception Centre, outside Stockholm, Sweden
Februari 1994.
Kosovo refugees arive in Sweden
SITE CONTENTS
"Me and my home"
Charcoal drawing by 6 year old girl from Kosovo
Geber's Refugee Reception Centre, outside Stockholm, Sweden
Februari 1994.
Regarding the Kosovo refugees, Sweden has agreed to take 5,000. How many are you taking?
They began arriving yesterday - 23/04-99 - flown in from the camps in Macedonia. Planeloads of refugees. Carefully chosen according to three criteria. In order of priority: those who are in the worst physical and mental state, those who are part of a tightly-knit group or family, and those who have relatives in Sweden. In practice one suspects that they will be chosen in reverse order, those with relatives in Sweden being selected first. It will be much easier for everyone if the relatives get the job of looking after the refugees. Above all, cheaper for the Swedish state. As for those who are in the worst state, well, who wants traumatised Albanians knocking on the front door? Another invisible criteria will probably be social status. With preference for middle class, educated, relatively blonde individuals. Excuse the cynical tone, but the possibility of this kind of underlying motivation needs to be aired, or it might sneak in the back door unnoticed.
Last time we received a Kosovo invasion was at the beginning of the 90's. In 1989, Slobodan Milosovic took away the province's independence, sacked most Albanians from their jobs, and threw their children out of the schools. Many fled to Sweden, afraid that the worst might happen. They were right.
When they came that time, most people in Sweden regarded them as thieves. Now, thanks to positive media coverage, they are heroes - suffering heroes. Somewhere between thief and hero (like most of the rest of us) these people are now "on our hands".
What are we going to do about it?
They're not on our hands for ever. They only get temporary residence permits - 11 months to 2 years maximum. Then they will be flown back. Exodus. That's the idea anyway. If there is a Kosovo to go back to, of course. Why can't they stay here? The idea is - don't do what Milosovic wants us to do. If the refugees stay in the countries they land in then Slobo has achieved his aims - clearing all Albanians out of what the Serbs regard as Serbia. If they don't get permanent permission to stay, this implies that the West refuses to kow-tow to Slobo. Who's right, who's wrong?
Anyway, few Kosovo refugees want to stay in Sweden (who'd want to stay here in the land of ice, snow, and emotionally buttoned-up people?). They all want to go back, eventually , when there is a Kosovo to go back to (by the way, do you know the difference between Kosovo and Kosova?).
So what happens to them here?
Leave it all to Invandrarverket (the Swedish Immigrant Authority). They must know what they're doing.
Really?
Well , maybe. Things have certainly improved since the beginning of the 90's, at the time of the first Kosovo invasion. At that time, they got no help at all. The immigrant authorities were terrified of offending the Swedish taxpayer, who was supposed to have the view: No money to refugees who have not yet been given permanent resident permits. They might be refused, and go back home, which would be a criminal waste of our hard-earned money. As a result only a very few meaningful projects took place during the early years, most of those on an experimental basis.
In our case (Cilla Ericson and myself), we began in 1992 by offering our services free. Afterwards, when we had shown the value of picture-making with the children, the money was found for further, limited work - see illustration above, made by a Kosovo girl during one of our projects in 1994. In that year, since so many months and years of waiting had gone by, a blanket residence permit was granted to most of the families on humanitarian grounds. By then it was too late. Most of them joined Swedish society with repressed traumas intact.
It is very short-sighted to ignore the needs of refugees that are only staying here (or are believed to be staying here) on a temporary basis. The most useful help that Sweden or any other country can give to a post-war society (like Bosnia, Lebanon, Somalia, Eritrea, etc, or, eventually, Kosovo) is to send back strong, psychically well adjusted families. Blankets, medicine, mobile telephones, rebuilt bridges etc. are not the most important thing. The real help is a solid fifth column of well adjusted individuals, a ballast of common sense infiltrated into a world of bitterness, national paranoia, and repressed hate. Only in that way can a repetition of the war be avoided.
We have learned a lot since the beginning of the 90's. We have learned that trauma has to be taken seriously. We have learned that the trauma of waiting in the refugee reception centres - for months and even years - in a state of acute uncertainty about the future, is a form of psychic torture far worse than the most hair-raising war experiences. The psychologists call it "secondary trauma", but for the refugees themselves it is a primary concern.
Furthermore, we have learned that there are too few psychologists to go round. Leave it all to the psychologists and you can kiss strong, psychically well-adjusted families goodbye. How in heaven's name can 5000 Kosovo refugees receive the help they most definitely need, when all that is offered is individual interviews with a psychologist. Because that is all the Swedish psychological system has to offer. The individual interview is basically their only tool. They haven't yet seriously admitted the value of the group as a healing method - the "rap-group", originally developed by the Vietnam veterans themselves (and others, eg psychologists working with violence and sexual abuse in the home) during the late 60's and 70's, and since then adopted as standard practice in the treatment of war trauma by psychologists everywhere, especially in the USA and Britain (eg Haslar Naval Hospital, Portsmouth, the most well known trauma treatment centre in England, where a group program for many kinds of trauma has been successfully run since the beginning of the 80's). The lack of Swedish interest in the group as a healing tool means that the skills needed to run such groups are sadly lacking here today.
The Kosovars will certainly receive help when they reach Sweden. They will have the right to work (but is it likely that any of the almost exclusively albanian-speaking Kosovars will get any work before they have to leave?), and their children will have the right to schooling (see further below). Regarding their mental health, the basic approach is defined by the synonym STOP, originally developed in work with refugees in the Lebanon. STOP stands for "Structure" (the establishment of reliable routines, enabling refugees to regain stability in their daily lives), "Talking out" (which is where the interview with the psychologist comes in), "Organised play" (enabling the children to work out their traumas through play), and "Parental support" (obviously essential if the parents are to be of any help to their children). This system is adequate as far as it goes, but is a weak tool for dealing with the present situation. It defines minimum requirements rather than encouraging optimal solutions.
5000 refugees from Kosovo is the same as 5000 acutely traumatised individuals - no doubt about that. Especially if the Swedish representatives in Macedonia choose according to the criteria laid down in their instructions. How many of those women and men have been raped on the journey is a figure one can only guess (recent studies indicate that at least 10-15% of rape cases among refugees in Sweden from all countries are men!). Each of these individuals needs a thorough therapy program if they are to have a chance of getting back on an even keel. We simply don't have the foot-soldiers to provide them with that service, if the individual interview is the only tool at our disposal.
So, what should we really be doing?
1/ As soon as the refugees arrive, they should be introduced to the idea of forming groups with the aim of processing their experiences together (covering both "Talking out" and "Parental support" in the STOP system). The groups should be divided according to sex and type of trauma, eg women in one set of groups, men in another, and perhaps special groups eg for those who have been raped and those who fought in the Kosovo Liberation Army (ie war veterans). The groups should be run by people who know what they are doing, perhaps psychologists with the right experience, but preferably people of their own nationality who have been given a simple course in how to run this type of group (by this means, one avoids the need for interpreters).
Groups are important, partly because no children are involved (refugee parents tend to avoid all talk of the war in order to protect their children, which is no help for their children, and none for themselves), partly because the group can tap the latent healing powers that reside in us all. This kind of group is called a "self-help" group. "Empowerment" is the name of the game. It can transfer the impetus of healing to the refugees themselves. Furthermore, such groups also work on a social and practical level. They provide a forum for discussion and planning in regard to practical matters at the reception centre, enabling the refugees themselves to gradually take command over the re-structuring of their lives that is so essential if they are to deal successfully with their own mental problems. Indeed, exactly the same principles should be applied in the refugee camps in the Balkans, where the practical and psychological problems are stupendous, and the dearth of experts even more acute.
However, this approach does not deny the need for psychologists. The refugees should, of course, have access to professional therapeutic help on a one-to-one basis. Group leaders need professional psychological guidance and backup. It's just that a system of groups takes the load off the psychologists. They have more time for what they are best qualified to do, that is, dealing with the most severe cases. What we are talking about here is not only groups with qualified psychological/psychiatric backup. More than that, there should be active interplay between the groups and the individual therapeutic interviews. Groups and interviews complement each other, being two different modes of working with the same problem complex.
2/ Children, especially small children, do not have the words to relate their traumatic experiences, even in their own tongue. Rap-groups, except perhaps in the case of teenagers, are useless. "Organised play" of one sort or another is certainly needed, since traumatised children tend to be apathetic, depriving themselves of this natural tool for processing trauma. But this method tends be applied on a very simple level, limited mostly to small children.
We also have at our disposal another, more sophisticated method of "organised play": Art - the oldest tool of healing available to mankind. By "art" I mean drawing and painting (eg sandpainting, as in native America), music (eg drumming), drama (eg games and psychodrama), song (eg the songs of the national group in question, although avoiding nationalistic war songs) and dance (eg folk dances, which have proved their therapeutic value in the case of earlier refugee invasions of Sweden, eg the Bosnians). Much of this is as appropriate to adults as it is to teenagers and children. Healing through Art also by-passes the stigma and shame attached to psychological treatment in the eyes of many refugee groups, including the Kosovars. Psychologists "want you to be mad", as one child perceptively put it during one of our other projects with Bosnians.
When Cilla and I were working with creative art projects in the reception centres during the first Kosovo invasion, we saw the effectiveness of this approach. Certainly only on a small scale, because at that time the resources simply didn't exist for anything more ambitious. But even once-a-week painting sessions with the children totally changed the atmosphere in the reception centre, joy and laughter for a time blowing away the oppressive odour of fear and worry that stifled all life in the centre. The silent, but heartfelt look of gratitude in the eyes of the parents was reward enough for our labours.
Not that the joy and laughter prevented the children from processing their traumas. For example, I remember well the drawing of the two hand-grenades sitting innocently on the stone wall by the road as the car drove past, luggage piled high on the roof. This girl was not remembering a holiday trip in her picture, but a vivid sight seen on a flight from very real danger. On the basis of this and similar experiences, we, and the few other artists involved in this kind of work at that time, were absolutely agreed afterwards that: "Never again - no more isolated, one-off projects. Next time the job must be done properly".
What does "doing the job properly" mean?
Soon after arriving at the reception centres, the refugees, and especially the children, should be drawn into a constant whirl of "cultural" activities. These activities should, again, be run by people who know what they are doing - well qualified artists, musicians, etc. who understand the creative process and have experience of this kind of work. No enthusiastic, but artistically undereducated kindergarten teachers please. Nor a few psychologists using art-therapy only as a means of identifying the most traumatised children. Diagnosis without treatment is meaningless. The point about constant creative work, as opposed to one-off, once-a-week sessions, is that it actually heals. No, the refugees deserve real quality. It may cost, but if we are serious about what we are doing, these costs have to be met.
The intensity implicit in this approach has the goal, partly to provide relief from too much thinking about the war, partly to see that all the children get an equal opportunity to process their traumas through creative activity (both those children that are obviously traumatised and those who are not so obviously traumatised - an important point ), and partly to reinforce the individual identity of the refugees, which under the uncertain circumstances of their position (only resident in Sweden on a temporary basis) is subject to constant threat.
Parallel with all this, there should be some kind of school activity organised in the reception centres, preferably run by Albanian teachers. The aim would be to establish a link with the past: the schooling of the children in Kosovo, so violently disrupted by the forces of ethnic cleansing - as well as with the future: the eventual return. At present, the only schooling promised the Kosovars is access to the "preparation classes" that are run for immigrants in Swedish schools. The problem here is that these classes have the goal of teaching the pupils enough Swedish to be able to transfer them to ordinary classes in the school, with a view to integrating them into Swedish society. In other words, the preparatory classes are primarily designed for pupils with permanent residence permits who intend to stay in Sweden. Such classes are not necessarily suitable for the Kosovars, since the intention is to return them to their home country as soon as possible. What they need is a schooling that will prepare them for the task of rebuilding their war-ravaged land, something that demands quite another curriculum.
So there you are. A vision of how the current wave of Kosovo refugees should be received by Swedish society. And indeed, also the wave of Serbian refugees that may well materialise before very long, further victims of war and persecution, fleeing a Kosovo given completely over to the Albanians in the wake of a NATO invasion, and what is left of Yugoslavia, disintegrating under the double burden of bombs and economic blockade. We can hardly welcome the one and deny the other.
This vision is not specifically limited to a Swedish context. I believe that it could, and should, be applied anywhere in the western world where Kosovo refugees land. In principle, it is also appropriate for groups of war refugees from other conflict areas in the world. Take this approach for what it is worth. Think about it, and then, if you feel there is value in it, work actively in your own country to see that it is applied in practice. Good luck!
24/04-99 Peter Tucker: peter.tucker@telia.com
GRAPHIC PRESENTATION OF GROUP MODEL FOR WORK WITH REFUGEES