Peacekeeping Missions and PTSD: From Korea to Srebrenica
How do the traumatic experiences of war affect the soldiers' lives and their ability to cope with their emotions?
Peacekeeping Missions and PTSD: From Korea to Srebrenica brings together Dutch veterans of United Nations missions, from the first UN war in Korea in 1950 to Lebanon, Cambodia and Bosnia in the 1990s. Heddy Honigmann asks each of them about the music they listened to on deployment, and the songs become a way into memories many have rarely put into words. The result is an intimate, participatory portrait of how peacekeeping missions and PTSD can shape a life long after the uniform is put away.
As each veteran listens again to his song, from Seal’s “Crazy” to Pergolesi’s “Stabat Mater”, the film returns to the moments that stayed with them: the cold and chaos of Korea, the poverty and child prostitution they encountered in Cambodia, the drives through Bosnia’s “Bomb Alley” and the fall of Srebrenica in July 1995. Danger, helplessness and moral doubt run through their stories, and so does the difficulty of explaining at home what they saw abroad.
The film does not offer neat resolutions. Some veterans speak of nightmares, anger and years of silence; others of the help they eventually accepted. Music works throughout as both a trigger and a refuge, bringing back scenes they would rather forget while also helping them cope.
By listening to these voices, the film returns to the big question of how the traumatic experiences of war affect soldiers’ lives and their ability to cope with their emotions, and shows the lasting imprint of peacekeeping missions and PTSD. Watch Peacekeeping Missions and PTSD: From Korea to Srebrenica to hear their stories for yourself.
In the Cold War era, conflicts in Korea and Southeast Asia drew foreign troops into proxy wars shaped by anti-communism, decolonization, and shifting alliances. Civilians endured massacres, displacement, and poverty, while soldiers faced brutal combat and a growing public debate about the human cost of war.
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This film’s dominant mode is participatory. It centers on direct, first-person testimony and dialogue, making lived experience the main evidence. That closeness shapes a personal, emotional view of war’s aftermath, letting the message land through what the veteran can say, remember, and struggle to express.
Director & Year: Heddy Honigmann, 1999.
Main Subjects: The central protagonists are Dutch United Nations “blue beret” peacekeepers who describe post-deployment trauma and how particular songs became tied to specific wartime memories. Eye Filmmuseum
Key Protagonist: Patrick Cammaert, a Dutch Marines commander featured among the interviewees, recalls using the song “Crazy” (performed by Seal) in connection with the 1994 Sarajevo marketplace attack. Wikipedia
Protagonist Focus: One interviewed Dutch peacekeeper describes repeatedly driving through Bosnia’s dangerous “Bomb Alley,” using loud music (including Guns N’ Roses) as a coping mechanism during those trips. Eye Filmmuseum
Protagonist Focus: A female Dutch UN peacekeeper recounts confronting child prostitution in Cambodia and describes using Pergolesi’s “Stabat Mater” as a private mental refuge during her deployment. Eye Filmmuseum
Backstory: The stories span multiple generations of Dutch UN deployments, from the first UN peace mission in Korea (1950) through later conflicts including Cambodia, Lebanon, and Bosnia. Festival La Rochelle
Geopolitical Context: The experiences described come from UN peacekeeping operations in hotspots including Korea, Cambodia, Lebanon, Rwanda, and the former Yugoslavia (including Bosnia and Kosovo), situating the testimonies within late-20th-century international interventions. Wikipedia
Production Context: The film’s approach centers on at-home interviews with veterans, using their personal photos and home video from the conflict zones to anchor their accounts in lived experience. Eye Filmmuseum
Topical context
This film is part of the World Map of Conflict dataset—an interactive documentary collection that combines curated films with conflict data and country context to explain geopolitical developments since 1945.
Within the collection, the film sits in the Pax Americana educational pathway, which explores the U.S.-led effort to prevent another global war by promoting, and at times enforcing, liberal democracy and capitalism.
Within that pathway, the film falls under the subtopic The Human Cost of Peacekeeping. It explores what UN missions demand of the soldiers sent to keep the peace, from danger and helplessness in the face of violence to the trauma many carry home.
This film lets Dutch veterans of UN missions in Korea, Lebanon, Cambodia and Bosnia recall their deployments through the songs they listened to there.
Learning Throughlines
The gap between mandate and expectations.
In the Srebrenica testimony thousands of refugees come to the Dutch compound because they want protection; the veteran says they thought they were safe there, and that this turned out not to be the case. About 200 soldiers stand among 25,000 to 30,000 refugees and form a corridor between them and the Serb soldiers, which helps only up to a point: the men are picked out anyway. All he could still offer, he says, was a little food and water. A corridor between refugees and Serb soldiers: the men are picked out anyway
Guilt, shame and the trauma of the witness.
Most of what haunts these veterans is not something done to them but something they saw and could not stop. A soldier in Lebanon regrets ramming his rifle into a panicking boy and asks what will happen to the people he leaves behind; a mine-clearing team in Cambodia has to let a man bleed to death 500 metres from the road. The film never uses a term like moral injury; the one label it does name is PTSD, and the Srebrenica veteran describes it as dreams of women and children looking at him with a pleading face. Back home: sleeplessness and dreams of refugees asking for help
Memory and music as a way into what went wrong.
The veterans name the music that belongs to their mission, and the music opens the memory. An army captain says that one opera aria takes her straight back to the misery of Cambodia, a colleague played a Pergolesi piece perhaps a hundred times after being offered a child on the street in Phnom Penh, and a driver turned hard rock up loud to get through Bomb Alley sixty or seventy times. A marines commander explains the title: a pop song used under images of the shelled Sarajevo market stands for the absurd madness he tried to improve while it slipped through his fingers like sand. The commander on the Sarajevo market shelling and the song that stayed with him
From veteran testimony to a wider reckoning.
The film shows no public debate or change of doctrine; what it offers is the testimony such a reckoning depends on. One veteran says he felt abandoned by NATO and the UN, another is put in a military prison for nine months before a lawyer gets him psychiatric help, and the interviewer remarks how coolly a story is told. The film ends with a new detachment being sent off to Kosovo and told that it is making history, which leaves the viewer asking what has been learned. Farewell speech to the detachment leaving for Kosovo
Related topics
Documentary Mode
This film’s dominant mode is participatory. It centers on direct, first-person testimony and dialogue, making lived experience the main evidence. That closeness shapes a personal, emotional view of war’s aftermath, letting the message land through what the veteran can say, remember, and struggle to express.
Key Facts
Director & Year: Heddy Honigmann, 1999.
Main Subjects: The central protagonists are Dutch United Nations “blue beret” peacekeepers who describe post-deployment trauma and how particular songs became tied to specific wartime memories. Eye Filmmuseum
Key Protagonist: Patrick Cammaert, a Dutch Marines commander featured among the interviewees, recalls using the song “Crazy” (performed by Seal) in connection with the 1994 Sarajevo marketplace attack. Wikipedia
Protagonist Focus: One interviewed Dutch peacekeeper describes repeatedly driving through Bosnia’s dangerous “Bomb Alley,” using loud music (including Guns N’ Roses) as a coping mechanism during those trips. Eye Filmmuseum
Protagonist Focus: A female Dutch UN peacekeeper recounts confronting child prostitution in Cambodia and describes using Pergolesi’s “Stabat Mater” as a private mental refuge during her deployment. Eye Filmmuseum
Backstory: The stories span multiple generations of Dutch UN deployments, from the first UN peace mission in Korea (1950) through later conflicts including Cambodia, Lebanon, and Bosnia. Festival La Rochelle
Geopolitical Context: The experiences described come from UN peacekeeping operations in hotspots including Korea, Cambodia, Lebanon, Rwanda, and the former Yugoslavia (including Bosnia and Kosovo), situating the testimonies within late-20th-century international interventions. Wikipedia
Production Context: The film’s approach centers on at-home interviews with veterans, using their personal photos and home video from the conflict zones to anchor their accounts in lived experience. Eye Filmmuseum