The government has to therefore, plan for a longer stay, at least till the spring of 2000. These people also need to be helped to re-start their life as most of them will have lost all their possessions. It may be said that this not the time to raise these issues when the country is facing a war and soldiers are getting killed every day at the front. These issues will be taken care of after the war. Without belittling the tremendous sacrifice being made by the soldiers, it is necessary to point out that the lives of non-combatant civilians are as important.
War takes a heavy toll on the lives of soldiers and civilians.
The countries that go to war suffer huge losses due to war expenditure. What is not computed is the loss of production, destruction of civilian assets and the disruption of civilian life. The humanitarian disaster created by the Pakistani army in erstwhile East Pakistan was the reason for Indias armed intervention which led to the the emergence of independent Bangladesh. More recently, the human suffering of the Albanians in Kosovo at the hands of Serbs created an opportunity for the western powers to go to war against the Millosovic regime in Yugoslavia. The Kargil war in its seventh week, has already created 200,000 refugees in Pakistan and India.