A Civilisation Does Not Die in a Night
- 7 hours ago
- 8 min read
Image: IDP Camp 2017 Iraq. by Frazer Macdonald Hay
Click here for Arabic Text
Much has already been said in response to recent political rhetoric about the destruction of civilisations. Most of it is immediate, reactive, and quickly absorbed into an already saturated discourse.This piece takes a different position, grounded not in reaction, but in the experience of what happens when cities are destroyed, cultures are targeted, and people are left to rebuild what remains.
When I read the words posted by Donald Trump, “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again”, I stopped in my tracks.
The dread and the sense of escalating violent intent I have carried for some time, suddenly sharpened.
Not because of who said it, but because of how easily those words were used.
I have spent years working in places where the idea of a civilisation “dying” is not rhetorical. It is not a line written for effect or emphasis. It is something far more complex, far more unsettling, and far less absolute than that sentence suggests, though with today’s military capabilities, we cannot ignore that forms of destruction approaching that scale have existed before, as seen in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.
Civilisations do not disappear in a single night.
But the intent behind such language is terrifying, not only for those being targeted, but for humanity as a whole. Because if such destruction is imaginable for one, it becomes imaginable for all.
The past has taught us that civilisations are undone slowly, through conflict, displacement, and the erosion of trust; through the quiet dismantling of the physical and social fabric that allows everyday life to function. They fragment long before they collapse, and even in collapse, something always remains.
I have seen this firsthand in cities like Mosul, working alongside organisations such as UNESCO, IOM, and UNMAS. Places where entire neighbourhoods were reduced to rubble, where cultural landmarks were deliberately targeted, and where the scars of violence were etched into both buildings and people.
And yet, even there, civilisation did not “die.”
What remained were fragments of memory, identity, and routine. People returned. They rebuilt homes, reopened shops, and reoccupied streets. Not because the past had been restored, but because life insists on continuing, even when the structures that once supported it have been shattered.
This is what makes language like this so troubling.
To speak of civilisation as something that can vanish overnight is to misunderstand its nature. More than that, it risks normalising the idea of total erasure, as though entire ways of life can simply be extinguished, cleanly and completely.
They should not, and yet the fact that such a possibility can even be imagined is deeply unsettling.
What unsettles me further is not only the statement itself, but the relative absence of friction around it. We are living in a moment where the language of destruction has become disturbingly familiar. We are exposed to it constantly, through images, headlines, and commentary, until it begins to lose its weight.
There is another dimension to this that is harder to confront.
The way in which conflict is discussed, analysed, debated, and broadcast often seems to reward division rather than understanding. Across political commentary, media platforms, and public discourse, there is a growing tendency to frame events in stark, oppositional terms. Positions harden quickly. Nuance is treated with suspicion. Certainty is amplified.
This is not always driven by malice. It is, in part, structural. Attention gravitates toward clarity, toward strong positions, and toward moral certainty. These generate engagement, visibility, and, increasingly, economic value.
But the consequence is that complexity is flattened. Conflict is reduced to narratives that are easier to consume but harder to question. And in that process, mistrust deepens, not only between opposing sides, but within societies themselves.
We begin to relate to global events less as shared human realities and more as positions to be occupied and defended. In this environment, there is a risk that we become spectators to events we feel unable to influence, participants in a discourse that moves rapidly, but often without depth or consequence.
At the same time, we are witnessing multiple landscapes of destruction across the world. We have watched cities reduced to ruins in Gaza. We have followed the prolonged suffering in Ukraine since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. We have seen destruction unfold in Lebanon, and we continue to witness the devastating and underreported crisis in Sudan.
Each of these represents not just physical damage, but profound disruptions to culture, memory, and identity.
And yet, collectively, our response often feels muted.
It is easy (perhaps too easy) to place responsibility solely on political leaders. But the more uncomfortable truth is that this language persists because it is tolerated. It is absorbed into public discourse, repeated, shared, and ultimately normalised.
We become accustomed to it.
I do not say this to assign blame simplistically, nor to suggest that individuals hold equal responsibility for the forces shaping these events. But there is a quiet danger in disengagement, in allowing the scale and frequency of global crises to dull our sensitivity to what is being lost.
Because what is being lost is not abstract.
It is the everyday. Homes, streets, rituals, relationships, places of worship, places of work, those seemingly ordinary elements that, together, form the fabric of a civilisation. When they are damaged or destroyed, the loss is not only material; it is deeply human.
And yet, in every place I have worked, I have also seen resistance to this idea of finality.
People do not accept that their civilisation has ended. They adapt, rebuild, and remember. They carry forward what they can, even when continuity feels fragile. In this sense, civilisation is not a fixed entity that can simply be erased; it is something lived, negotiated, and continually reassembled.
Perhaps this is what makes statements like “a whole civilization will die tonight” so dangerous.
Not because they predict destruction, but because they imply inevitability. They suggest a kind of finality that does not reflect the reality of how societies endure, even under extreme conditions.
My experience tells me something different.
Civilisation does not end in a night. It survives in the everyday, in the persistence of people who continue to live, remember, and rebuild, often in the most difficult of circumstances.
But survival is not the same as resolution.
Attempts to erase a people, a culture, or a way of life rarely produce silence. More often, they leave behind something harder: grief that settles into identity, memory that does not fade, and trauma that moves across generations. These are not easily contained. They shape how communities see themselves and how they relate to others, long after the violence itself has passed.
The consequence is not the end of civilisation, but the transformation of it, often in ways that carry the conditions for future conflict.
There is also a quieter question that sits beneath all of this.
If we allow ourselves to witness the destruction of others, absorbing it, normalising it, or treating it as distant, on what basis do we assume that such destruction would not one day be turned toward us?
Power has never been fixed. It shifts, fragments, and reconstitutes over time. The relative stability experienced in parts of the world today is not a permanent condition, but a moment within a longer historical pattern.
To imagine that the protections afforded by that position are guaranteed is to misunderstand how quickly such conditions can change.
The dread I felt reading those words does not come from the idea that civilisation can disappear overnight. It comes from how easily we are beginning to speak as though its destruction (total, absolute, and without consequence) is imaginable.
It is not.
And if we begin to accept that language without resistance, we risk not only misunderstanding how civilisations are lost, but how cycles of violence are sustained.
What endures is not absence, but memory, and memory, when shaped by destruction, has a long and difficult life.
الحضارات لا تموت في ليلة واحدة
لقد قيل الكثير بالفعل ردًا على الخطاب السياسي الأخير حول تدمير الحضارات. ومعظم هذا الكلام كان سريعًا، انفعاليًا، وسرعان ما يذوب في خطاب مشبع أصلًا.هذا النص يتخذ موقعًا مختلفًا—ليس ردًا لحظيًا، بل تأملًا يستند إلى خبرة العمل في أماكن دُمّرت فيها المدن، واستُهدفت فيها الثقافات، واضطر الناس فيها إلى إعادة بناء ما تبقى.
عندما قرأت الكلمات التي نشرها Donald Trump—"حضارة بأكملها ستموت الليلة، ولن تعود أبدًا"—توقفت مكاني.
ذلك الشعور بالرهبة—والإحساس بتصاعد النوايا العنيفة الذي أحمله منذ فترة—أصبح أكثر حدة.
ليس بسبب من قالها، بل بسبب سهولة قولها.
لقد أمضيت سنوات أعمل في أماكن لا يكون فيها الحديث عن "موت حضارة" مجازيًا. ليس تعبيرًا بلاغيًا أو جملة للتأثير. بل هو أمر أكثر تعقيدًا، وأكثر إزعاجًا، وأقل إطلاقًا مما توحي به تلك العبارة—رغم أن قدرات التدمير العسكرية اليوم تجعلنا ندرك أن أشكالًا من هذا الدمار قد حدثت بالفعل، كما في هيروشيما وناغازاكي عام 1945.
الحضارات لا تختفي في ليلة واحدة.
لكن النية الكامنة في مثل هذا الخطاب مخيفة—ليس فقط لمن يتم استهدافهم، بل للإنسانية جمعاء. لأن ما يمكن تخيله ضد حضارة ما، يمكن تخيله ضد أخرى.
لقد علّمنا التاريخ أن الحضارات تُقوّض ببطء—عبر النزاعات، والنزوح، وتآكل الثقة؛ عبر التفكيك التدريجي للنسيج المادي والاجتماعي الذي يسمح للحياة اليومية بالاستمرار. فهي تتفكك قبل أن تنهار، وحتى في انهيارها، يبقى شيء ما.
لقد رأيت ذلك بنفسي في مدن مثل الموصل، أثناء العمل مع منظمات مثل UNESCO وIOM وUNMAS. أماكن دُمّرت فيها أحياء بأكملها، واستُهدفت فيها المعالم الثقافية عمدًا، وترك العنف آثاره على المباني والناس معًا.
ومع ذلك، حتى هناك، لم "تمُت" الحضارة.
ما بقي كان شظايا—من الذاكرة، والهوية، والروتين. عاد الناس. أعادوا بناء منازلهم، وفتحوا متاجرهم، واستعادوا شوارعهم. ليس لأن الماضي عاد كما كان، بل لأن الحياة تصر على الاستمرار، حتى حين تتحطم البُنى التي كانت تحملها.
وهنا تكمن خطورة هذا النوع من اللغة.
الحديث عن الحضارة وكأنها يمكن أن تختفي بين ليلة وضحاها هو سوء فهم لطبيعتها. بل وأكثر من ذلك، هو تطبيع لفكرة الإبادة الكاملة—كما لو أن أنماط الحياة يمكن محوها بالكامل وبشكل نظيف ونهائي.
لا ينبغي أن يكون ذلك ممكنًا—ومع ذلك، فإن مجرد إمكانية تخيّله أمر مقلق بعمق.
وما يثير القلق أكثر ليس فقط هذه العبارة، بل غياب رد الفعل عليها. نحن نعيش في زمن أصبحت فيه لغة الدمار مألوفة بشكل مقلق. نتعرض لها باستمرار—عبر الصور والعناوين والتحليلات—حتى تبدأ في فقدان ثقلها.
هناك بعد آخر يصعب مواجهته.
طريقة تناول الصراعات—تحليلها، نقاشها، وبثها—غالبًا ما تكافئ الانقسام بدل الفهم. تتشكل المواقف بسرعة، وتُقابل الدقة بالشك، ويُضخّم اليقين.
ليس هذا دائمًا بدافع سوء النية، بل هو جزئيًا نتيجة لبنية النظام نفسه. الانتباه ينجذب إلى الوضوح، إلى المواقف الحادة، إلى اليقين الأخلاقي. وهذه تولّد التفاعل، والانتشار، والقيمة الاقتصادية.
لكن النتيجة هي تسطيح التعقيد. تُختزل الصراعات في روايات سهلة الاستهلاك، لكنها صعبة المساءلة. وفي هذه العملية، يتعمق انعدام الثقة—ليس فقط بين الأطراف المتنازعة، بل داخل المجتمعات نفسها.
نبدأ في التعامل مع الأحداث العالمية ليس كوقائع إنسانية مشتركة، بل كمواقف يجب تبنيها والدفاع عنها. وفي هذا السياق، نخاطر بأن نصبح متفرجين—مشاركين في خطاب سريع، لكنه يفتقر إلى العمق والتأثير.
وفي الوقت نفسه، نشهد مشاهد متعددة من الدمار حول العالم…(يمكنك الإبقاء على الفقرة العالمية كما هي أو اختصارها حسب المنصة)
…
لكن البقاء ليس هو الحل.
محاولات محو الشعوب أو الثقافات نادرًا ما تنتج صمتًا. بل تترك وراءها شيئًا أكثر تعقيدًا—حزنًا يتحول إلى هوية، وذاكرة لا تتلاشى، وصدمة تنتقل عبر الأجيال.
والنتيجة ليست نهاية الحضارة، بل تحولها—غالبًا بطرق تحمل بذور صراعات مستقبلية.
وهناك سؤال أكثر هدوءًا يكمن خلف كل هذا:
إذا كنا نشاهد تدمير الآخرين ونستوعبه أو نطبّعه، فعلى أي أساس نفترض أن هذا لن يُوجَّه إلينا يومًا ما؟
القوة ليست ثابتة. إنها تتغير وتُعاد تشكيلها عبر الزمن. وما نعتبره استقرارًا اليوم ليس إلا لحظة ضمن مسار تاريخي أطول.
الرهبة التي شعرت بها لم تأتِ من فكرة أن الحضارة يمكن أن تختفي في ليلة، بل من مدى سهولة الحديث وكأن ذلك ممكن.
وإذا قبلنا هذه اللغة، فإننا لا نسيء فهم كيفية تدمير الحضارات فحسب، بل نساهم في استمرار دورات العنف.
ما يبقى ليس الفراغ، بل الذاكرة—والذاكرة، عندما تتشكل بالعنف، تعيش طويلًا وبصعوبة.
