Jenna Dovydaiti is a senior at UCF studying political science and biology./news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/103450/n/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/103450/u201cThere/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/103450/u2019s a saying that /news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/103450/u2018biological weapons are the poor man/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/103450/u2019s atom bomb,/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/103450/u2019 /news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/103450/u201d she says. /news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/103450/u201cThese weapons are actually quite easy and inexpensive, from the science standpoint, to create. And so, a lot of terrorism scholars predict their usage is only going to continue as the future of war and conflict develops./news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/103450/u201d/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/103450/n
As she read the existing literature on Anfal, she learned about the lingering health consequences of being exposed to mustard and Sarin gas /news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/103450/u2014 a long list that includes chronic respiratory ailments, burns, damage to the eyes and an increased incidence of cancer./news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/103450/n
/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/103450/u201cBut what I didn/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/103450/u2019t find a lot on was how a society recovers from such a massive incident of chemical warfare,/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/103450/u201d she says./news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/103450/n
To get those answers, she would need to go to Iraqi Kurdistan, a country nearly 7,000 miles away that she had never stepped foot in. Fortunately, her program of study gave her a way in./news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/103450/n
/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/103450/u201cThe Kurdish Political Sciences program is really well connected to the university system in Iraqi Kurdistan, and so we have many connections to professors and politicians in that area,/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/103450/u201d Dovydaitis says./news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/103450/n
Dovydaitis spent two weeks doing on-the-ground fieldwork this summer, shuttling between the capital city of Erbil and other areas affected by the genocide. There, she interviewed the former deputy minister of Anfal and Martyrs, Baravan Hamdi Hussein, as well as activists, politicians, medical professionals, town council members and government lawyers./news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/103450/n
She also met with survivors, documenting first-hand accounts of the genocide/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/103450/u2019s emotional and psychological toll. In the mountainous rural town of Halabja, /news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/103450/u201cI met a mother who lost all of her children,/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/103450/u201d she says. /news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/103450/u201cI met a father who lost his wife and children, people losing eight to ten family members in a day./news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/103450/u201d/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/103450/n
/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/103450/u201cIt didn/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/103450/u2019t seem like anyone I met in that town wasn/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/103450/u2019t somehow affected by what happened./news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/103450/u201d /news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/103450/u2013 Jenna Dovydaiti, UCF student/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/103450/n
/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/103450/u201cI can/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/103450/u2019t even begin to imagine how horrible that would be, to lose all of my siblings and the people I love in a single day. It didn/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/103450/u2019t seem like anyone I met in that town wasn/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/103450/u2019t somehow affected by what happened./news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/103450/u201d/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/103450/n
The experience left a profound impression./news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/103450/n
/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/103450/u201cI had an academic understanding of my topics of study before I got there,/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/103450/u201d Dovydaitis says. /news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/103450/u201cBut it really was quite different to meet the people who are actually affected by it, and to gain a sort of emotional understanding. And now I feel this great sense of responsibility to do them justice in my thesis writing./news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/103450/u201d/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/103450/n
Dovydaitis plans to work in government after going to medical school and says her thesis fieldwork was a /news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/103450/u201ctransformative/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/103450/u201d experience./news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/103450/n
/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/103450/u201cIt/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/103450/u2019s different reading about it in books and doing assignments about your future career, and then doing something that would be like your future career,/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/103450/u201d she says. /news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/103450/u201cIt/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/103450/u2019s reassuring that what I/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/103450/u2019ve been saying I/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/103450/u2019ve wanted to do for a long time is actually what I want to do./news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/103450/u201d/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/103450/n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A UCF student recently conducted fieldwork in Iraqi Kurdistan for her undergrad thesis on the medical and societal ramifications of chemical weapons use during the 1980s Anfal massacre./news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/103450/n","protected":false},"author":57,"featured_media":103451,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"lazy_load_responsive_images_disabled":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":"","_wp_rev_ctl_limit":""},"categories":[12,23],"tags":[982,3750],"tu_author":[],"class_list":["post-103450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health","category-research","tag-college-of-sciences","tag-political-science"],"yoast_head":"/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/103450/nAssessing the Toll of Chemical Warfare/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/103450/n /news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/103450/n /news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/103450/n /news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/103450/n /news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/103450/n /news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/103450/n /news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/103450/n /news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/103450/n /news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/103450/n /news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/103450/n /news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/103450/n /news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/103450/n /news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/103450/n/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/103450/t /news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/103450/n/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/103450/t /news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/103450/n/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/103450/t /news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/103450/n /news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/103450/n /news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/103450/n /news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/103450/n /news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/103450/n /news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/103450/n/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/103450/t /news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/103450/n/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/103450/t /news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/103450/n/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/103450/t /news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/103450/n