Missiles, drone strikes and retaliation have dominated headlines, with thousands feared dead.

The news has been difficult to ignore this week. The escalating conflict involving the US, Israel and Iran has quickly turned into one of the most serious geopolitical crises in recent years. Missiles, drone strikes and retaliation have dominated headlines, with thousands feared dead and entire neighbourhoods reduced to rubble.

But war has a strange way of entering our lives even when it is happening thousands of kilometres away.

A few nights ago, as the television carried footage of explosions and smoke-filled skies, my 11-year-old son asked a question that was both simple and devastating.

“Why are they fighting?”

It is the kind of question children ask without understanding the weight behind it. And it is also the kind of question adults often struggle to answer honestly.

Because how do you explain war to a child in a way that makes sense?

How do you tell them that in a world where we have diplomats, peace talks, international courts and global organisations, nations still end up launching missiles at each other?

We live in an era where humanity prides itself on progress. Technology connects people across continents in seconds. Leaders hold summits about cooperation and global stability. The language of diplomacy is everywhere.

And yet, when tensions reach a boiling point, all that progress seems to crumble remarkably quickly.

War, it seems, remains humanity’s most primitive response to disagreement.

The consequences are tragically predictable. Cities become battlegrounds. Hospitals and homes are damaged or destroyed. Families flee with whatever they can carry, unsure if they will ever return.

The death toll continues to climb but numbers can sometimes numb us to the reality behind them. Each casualty is not just a statistic but a person – someone’s child, parent, sibling or friend.

When my son asked why people were fighting, I realised there was no simple explanation that could justify what he was seeing.

Politics, power struggles, alliances, history – these are the words adults use to explain war. But to a child, it still comes down to something much simpler: people hurting other people.

What makes this conflict even more worrying is that it does not stay confined to the battlefield.

One of the most critical global shipping routes, the Strait of Hormuz, has been disrupted amid the escalating tensions. The narrow waterway carries a significant portion of the world’s oil supply, making it one of the most strategically important passages on the planet.

When that artery is threatened, the consequences ripple far beyond the Middle East.

Energy markets react almost immediately. Oil prices become volatile. Shipping routes are disrupted. Some countries, analysts warn, have barely a month of fuel reserves if the situation worsens.

In a globalised economy, those disruptions eventually find their way into everyday life.

Transport costs rise. Food prices climb. Inflation creeps higher.

In other words, a war thousands of kilometres away can quietly make life more expensive for families who have nothing to do with the conflict.

It is a stark reminder that in today’s interconnected world, no crisis truly remains local.

As I tried to explain this to my son, another thought crossed my mind.

For all the political drama, economic challenges and noisy debates that fill our news cycles, we often forget something about the country we live in.

Malaysia is, in many ways, a remarkably peaceful place.

Our society is diverse and sometimes messy. We argue about politics, religion, language and policy with great enthusiasm. Social media ensures that every disagreement feels louder than it probably is.

But despite all that, most Malaysians wake up each morning without the fear of missiles overhead.

Children go to school without the sound of air raid sirens. Families gather at night markets and Ramadan bazaars without worrying about whether the street they are standing on will become a battlefield.

Peace, when you live with it every day, can feel ordinary. But it is not. In many parts of the world, peace is fragile, temporary or painfully absent.

Watching the war unfold this week was a sobering reminder of how quickly stability can collapse when dialogue fails and leaders choose confrontation over compromise.

History shows that wars rarely start overnight. They build slowly through mistrust, political brinkmanship and unresolved grievances. But once the first missile is fired, the momentum of conflict often moves faster than diplomacy can catch up.

By the time calls for restraint grow louder, the damage is already unfolding.

Perhaps the question my son asked is the one the world should be asking more often.

Why are we still fighting? Why, in an age where humanity has the tools to communicate and negotiate more effectively than ever before, do wars continue to erupt with such devastating consequences?

There may never be a simple answer.

But perhaps the lesson for those of us watching from afar is to recognise the value of something we too easily overlook.

Peace is not just the absence of war. It is something societies must constantly protect – through dialogue, tolerance and the willingness to resolve differences without violence.

As I eventually told my son that night, wars may happen far away, but they remind us of something important.

The peace we live with should never be taken for granted.

Hashini Kavishtri Kannan is the assistant news editor at theSun.

Comments: letters@thesundaily.com

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