|
|
A retired professor's reflections on being a human shield in Iraq
By C. Lynn Coultas
In 2003, after months of letter writing, phone calls, and participating in anti-war vigils in front of Florida's capitol, I felt I had to do more to oppose the impending war in Iraq. A friend who had been carrying medicines to Iraq recommended the Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT), a group that has been and still is taking direct action in the Mideast to promote peaceful solutions in violent conditions.
So, in late Feb., 2003, at age 74, I found myself in Amman, Jordan, with a group of 15 people heading for Baghdad. We were mainly U.S. citizens, but a few came from Canada, Scotland and Holland. We represented all walks of life. I was a retired Florida A&M professor. Others included students, a doctor, a retired businessman and a pastor. We ranged in age from people in their twenties to one person who was 76. Two long-term CPTers were our leaders. The leaders and some of the others had already had experience in the Mid-east such as helping Palestinian school kids get safely to school past Israeli soldiers, and trying to stop the bulldozing of houses in the West Bank.
We were to spend two weeks in Iraq. For several months on a continuing basis, CPT had sponsored similar delegations to that country. What did we do? At hospitals, waterworks, and at a bridge over the Tigris River, we held up signs saying that under the Geneva Convention, it was illegal to bomb these sites. We visited hospitals and churches and met with a variety of Iraqis. We were warmly welcomed, especially after we displayed our letter explaining the mission of the CPT. Many journalists from Muslim and European countries took our pictures and interviewed us, but no one from the United States media did.
Most of the group, including me, returned home just before the start of the war, but some stayed. Later, in the CPT newsletter, Peggy Gish, one of the leaders described their experience during the bombing:
It's 11:20 at night in Baghdad, and series of loud explosions shakes the building. The eighth night of bombing has begun. Feeling an initial surge of fear, we awake from our sleep. Most of us grab our "crash kit" and wander down into the fortified area of the Al Dar Hotel, designated our "shelter." Others stay upstairs in their rooms and try to go back to sleep. Like the Iraqi people we are becoming accustomed to the reality of war.
They survived the severe bombing of Baghdad and in the days that followed assessed how they could redefine their mission. Peggy wrote:
Some of us continue our presence in the peace encampment at the Al Wathba Water Treatment Plant in northern Baghdad, next to a hospital complex. Up until now, we had been able to walk the streets around the plant, meeting families, and visiting the hospitals, using our presence as an accompaniment of the whole neighborhood. At night we sleep in tents symbolizing the vulnerability of the Iraqi people in this war.
As the bombing and shooting lessened, they found a new mission--helping Iraqi families find their husbands, brothers, and sons who had been imprisoned by U.S. forces. The CPT members organized a Muslim Peacemaker Team, who with Sunni and Shiite Muslims, helped clean the terrible destruction left behind by the severe bombing by U.S. forces in Fallujah. The Muslim Peacemakers are still at work.
After three of the CPTers were kidnapped in November, 2005, the remaining CPT team members remained in Baghdad, continuing their work and joining with various groups to try to get their friends released. Last year, after Tom Fox -- one of the three kidnapped CPT members -- was killed and the other two kidnapped CPT members were released, the CPT team followed the urging of their Iraqi friends and left Iraq for Amman, Jordan. However, the team has since returned to northern Iraq, a more secure area where they are continuing their peacemaking efforts.
Personal observations
and feelings
In addition to the planned demonstrations and visits, I had the opportunity to talk with individual Iraqis in Baghdad--young men on the street, people in churches, women in a hospital waiting room, a family raising dollars to flee to Syria. All asked that the U.S. not start a war. None mentioned Saddam Hussein.
We visited various sites near Mosul and around Baghdad. A grim reminder of the 1992 war was the Amerya, a bomb shelter, now a war memorial, in which 438 persons were killed by two "smart" bombs that penetrated six feet of reinforced concrete. Our visit to a date farm demonstrated the effects of the embargo that the U.N. had imposed in 1990. Iraq produced 75 percent of the world's supply of dates and the embargo shut down this part of their economy. In spite of the embargo's destruction of their livelihood, the farmers gave us a meal fit for royalty. Our visit to a pediatric hospital also demonstrated the results of the embargo: We saw an infant dying for lack of repairs to a dialysis machine.
I was also moved by our visits to Biblical sites: Jonah's mosque and burial site and the remnants of the Nineveh royal palace. This emphasized for me the commonality of beliefs between Jews, Muslims and Christians. They all revere Abraham and the prophets. The Muslims accept Jesus as a prophet, but not as God.
What we were doing was illegal because the American government forbade us from going to Iraq, and I fully expected jail upon returning to Atlanta, but this did not happen. In the weeks after my return, I gave several talks in Tallahassee about my experiences. This was the role of those of us who were short-term CPTers: to try to show the people back home what life was like for the ordinary Iraqi, to let the Iraqis know we were not their enemy, and to show the folly of what our country was doing in Iraq. Later that year, I invited Cliff Kindy, a long-time CPT member, who has served in Columbia, Israel, Iraq and with Native-American groups in Canada, to come to Tallahassee. He had been in Iraq during the early days of the war, but had to return to Indiana in spring, 2004 to help with his organic gardening--his livelihood. Cliff spoke to a number of groups and gave several media interviews.
An episode that occurred when Cliff fled Iraq for Jordan reminds me of Jesus' story of the Good Samaritan. As Cliff sped for the Jordanian border, a tire blew out, causing his car to careen off the highway. Cliff received a serious head injury and was taken to an Iraqi surgeon, who sewed up his wounds. The surgeon told them of how U.S. war planes had recently bombed a nearby children's hospital. The surgeon would not take payment for his services.
Now back in the U.S., Cliff has been trying to stop the production of depleted uranium (DU) artillery and armaments. Researchers have found in troops who fought in the 1992 war evidence of genetic damage from the use of such materials. DU is being used widely in the current conflict in Iraq. It is known that breathing the heavy metallic particles and ingesting water polluted by DU can cause serious problem. I fear that thousands of Iraqis and our soldiers have been exposed to DU and will suffer from this exposure as did civilians and soldiers who were exposed to Agent Orange during the Vietnam War. I also fear that as occurred with Agent Orange, the U.S. government will avoid any responsibility for ensuing health problems unless the evidence becomes unavoidably massive.
The first thing one reads on the Christian Peace Makers Teams' website is a thought-provoking question: "What would happen if Christians devoted the same discipline and self-sacrifice to non-violent peacemaking that armies devote to war?" I value my association with a group trying to do just that.
C. Lynn Coultas, Ph.D., is a retired Florida A&M professor of soil and plant science. He was drafted and served in the Korean War, and has been a peace activist since the 1960s. For information about the Christian Peacemaker Teams: http://www.cpt.org/.
|
