THE PARTICIPATION OF THE POLISH SOLDIERS IN MILITARY OPERATIONS IN IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN – AN OUTLINE OF THE REASONS AND THE EFFECTS OF THE PARTICIPATION (ON THE BASIS OF AUTOBIOGRAPHIC RELATIONS OF THE WAR VETERANTS)

The article presents the preliminary findings of the author concerning the reasons and the effects of the participation of the Polish troops in military operations on the territory of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan and the Republic of Iraq. The author has used the research materials collected by a sociologist Olga Nowaczyk, PhD and the author’s own sources, as well as the books which describe the issue of the Polish participation in military missions abroad. The passages of the stories told by the soldiers are the result of the autobiographical narrative interviews conducted by the author and Olga
Nowaczyk, they also come from other written sources. The author verifies the hypotheses which she made when she began studying the narratives created by the soldiers. The article also raises the problems of the ethical aspects of conducting this kind of research.