When your home country is ravaged by war, is it possible to stay neutral? | Shadi Khan Saif

Refusing to take sides in wartime can be dangerous. The ‘choice’ for civilians trying to survive is often an illusion Get our breaking news email , free app or daily news podcast Living in London, my elder brother – someone I have always looked up to – makes good use of his relative proximity to our ancestral home in Afghanistan. He travels back and forth so often that, from my base in Melbourne, I sometimes joke he has visited our village more times in the past few years than I have visited any other Australian city.