With US’s lingering Iraq and Afghanistan presence, the number of the country’s troops taking their lives has hit unprecedented highs.
Iin 2007, 121 soldiers committed suicide, a Washington Post report said alluding to the statistics produced by an internal army study.
The number is still due for confirmation, but added to statistics from the past two years, it attests to the fact that suicide rates in the US Army have reached highs which have not been seen in more than 25 years.
Last year’s attempted suicide rates also shows a six-fold increase since the start of the Iraq war, with about 2,100 soldiers having tried to take their own lives or intentionally inflicted injury on themselves.
“Historically, suicide rates tend to decrease when soldiers are in conflicts overseas, but that trend has reversed in recent years. From a suicide rate of 9.8 per 100,000 active-duty soldiers in 2001 — the lowest rate on record — the Army reached an all-time high of 17.5 suicides per 100,000 active-duty soldiers in 2006,” the report noted.
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Subhanallah! One’s heart cannot be present in a conflict without feeling the negative effects of war, especially a war that is unjustified. I only wish that the suicide rate would go down, the troops would pull out and that our Afghani brothers and sisters would set up a government that functioned according to the Shari’ah, with a Constitution, and on the basis of Mercy, rather than fear and domination.