When nations go to war, the language is always lofty - sovereignty, security, honour, strategic dominance. Yet beneath these grand abstractions lies a quieter, harsher truth: it is the common man who pays the heaviest price.

From the rubble-strewn streets of the Gaza Strip to the battered cities of Iran and Kyiv, and from border villages in Israel to displaced communities across Afghanistan and Ukraine, the cost of conflict is counted not in policy briefs but in broken homes. Men, women, and children — shopkeepers, teachers, nurses, drivers - find their lives overturned overnight. The headlines speak of territorial advances and military strategy; the ground reality speaks of funerals, hunger, and exile.

It is worth asking: for whom are these wars fought? If wars are waged for the protection of citizens, why do those very citizens become collateral damage? When leaders........

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