Around 1:30 p.m. Central Standard Time on November 5th, Major Nidal Malik Hasan – an army psychiatrist at the Fort Hood Army Base in Texas – opened fire at a Soldier Readiness Center where troops undergo medical screenings and complete paperwork before deployment to Iraq or Afghanistan. The incident left 13 people dead and more than 30 others wounded, including a female police officer who exchanged gunfire with him. Hasan, 39, joined the Army in 1997 and was promoted to major in May before he was transferred to Fort Hood in July.
The fact that this unfortunate incident hit so close to home prompted me to share my insight. I lived in Houston, Texas for almost 13 years where I focused my research on security issues. It is also worth mentioning that as a woman of Middle Eastern and Muslim descent, I was saddened by the media’s rush to portray Hasan as a terrorist even though the case has not yet been closed.
Making sense of this deadly incident will be a complex process as investigators are still searching for a motive behind the mass shooting. Preliminary evidence suggests that the assailant acted upon his psychological disturbance rather than religious or ethnic affiliation. Hasan was described by friends and family members as a conservative Muslim, but not an extremist. Born and raised in the United States to a Palestinian family, he was among thousands of Muslims serving in the U.S. military, and had counseled wounded soldiers for several years.
As investigators have not ruled out terrorism as a motive, U.S. Muslim groups – including Muslim Americans in the U.S. armed forces – have condemned Hasan’s acts of violence and argued that they were the result of a psychologically disturbed individual rather than of Islamic teachings. Sources close to Hasan’s family say the wartime horror stories he heard from his patients combined with his upcoming deployment to Afghanistan were what set him off. Hasan also experienced harassment and name-calling because of his ethnic and religious background after 9/11, according to one of his cousins.
Evidence so far suggests that Hasan does not fit the profile of a terrorist, but rather that of a mass murderer. Personal and professional accounts of his character indicate that he suffered from repeated humiliation, low self-esteem and conflicting loyalties. Hasan’s professional problems and personal reservations about the war may have led to his actions.
While investigators are still examining Hasan’s religious beliefs, especially whether he embraced extremist views and collaborated with others to attack U.S. troops, it is possible that stress and depression twisted his religious beliefs, making him a mass murderer, but not necessarily a terrorist. Dr. Antoinette Zeiss, deputy chief of Mental Health Services for Veterans Affairs told TIME that “anyone who works with PTSD clients and hears their stories will be profoundly affected.”
It remains unclear whether Hasan snapped and went on a murderous rampage because of a combination of stressors in his life or religious convictions. However, it is clear that the army missed a number of red flags that Hasan was a disturbed individual within its ranks. He apparently showed signs of stress when he had asked his superiors not to be sent to Afghanistan. On one occasion, Hasan warned senior Army physicians during a presentation less than two years ago that the military should allow Muslim soldiers to be released “as conscientious objectors instead of fighting in wars against other Muslims to avoid adverse events.” There were also reports that Hasan had even hired an attorney to try to come to a settlement with the government and leave the service. But because the Army had provided him with medical training, Hasan’s requests were denied and he was obligated to continue serving the country. I can’t help but wonder whether Hasan’s deadly mission could have been prevented if more attention was paid to him.
To many, the Fort Hood mass shooting came as no surprise. In a stunningly similar incident on May 11th, a U.S. soldier gunned down five fellow soldiers at a stress-counseling center at a U.S. base in Baghdad. Deadly incidents in the army are common. Suicides, for example, hit a record high in 2008, with at least 128 taking their lives, according to the National Institutes of Mental Health. Suicides are also expected to set a new high this year, exceeding the rate among the wider civilian population. Fort Hood soldiers, in particular, have accounted for more suicides than any other Army post since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. In this year alone, the base is averaging over 10 suicides each month – at least 75 have been recorded through July of this year alone. Several U.S. commanders believe long and repeated deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan have contributed to the increasing number of suicidal cases. A report released by the RAND Corporation in April 2008 revealed that “nearly 20 percent of military service members who have returned from Iraq and Afghanistan – 300,000 in all – report symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder or major depression, yet only slightly more than half have sought treatment.”
The latest Fort Hood incident sheds more light on the psychological effects of war and deployment to conflict zones. In response to the incident, U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said “the Pentagon needs to redouble its efforts to relieve stress caused by repeated deployments in war zones that is further exacerbated by limited time at home in between deployments.” The condition described by Gates is what veteran health experts often refer to as post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. Many war opponents have insisted that stories of a soldier killing his comrades are no longer shocking considering that the military has, for years now, been sending troops with untreated PTSD back into Iraq and Afghanistan. According to an Armed Forces Health Surveillance Center analysis reported in the Denver Post in August 2008, more than “43,000 service members – two-thirds of them in the Army or Army Reserve – were classified as non-deployable for medical reasons three months before they deployed to Iraq.”
The Fort Hood shooting investigation is far from over and conflicting reports will continue to emerge. However, one would hope that in the weeks and months to come, its aftermath will serve as a catalyst for decision and policy makers to effect significant policy reform on the recruitment and psychological scanning of the men and women serving the country. Ideally it will prompt the Obama administration to reexamine the level of pressure put on our military forces during such long and unpredictable wars, and seek better ways to diagnose early signs of stress and depression among them.
Aicha Lahlou is a native of Morocco who has resided in the United States for nearly 13 years. She attended the University of Houston and Rice University and completed her Ph.D in International Relations. She is a consultant for the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Region, and a former adjunct professor in the Political Science Department at the University of Houston. Her research areas of interest include international relations, women’s studies, and the politics of developing countries.
In 2005, Aicha founded Global Liaison Consultants, Inc., which specializes in risk assessment, project management and cross-cultural consulting. She is also the developer and manager of Eye on MENA, an online resource to track key developments in the 24 nations of the MENA region, including security incidents.
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