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http://electroniciraq.net/news/printer1899.shtml electronicIraq.net Iraq Diaries "Please, Tell Your Military Families..." Sheila Provencher, Electronic Iraq 6 March 2005 Being in Iraq is so different from reading about it or watching TV. In Amman the week before I left, I felt scared and uncertain. All of my friends, understandably, warned me about going back to Baghdad: It is too dangerous, people kidnapped on the roads, foreigners could put Iraqi lives in danger. But in Iraq �-even hearing occasional distant "booms" or gunfire a neighborhood away- this place is most basically Home, home to millions of people. In my neighborhood, the same kids run down the street to shake my hand, my shopkeeper friends test out my new Arabic and give me a thumbs-up. My host family, once threatened, wants me to sleep over again. Iraqi human-rights colleagues are glad that CPT is still here, and they want us to stay even if there is risk. Last week, I found out one of the reasons why. Horrible things are happening, and too many people feel that there is no one left to tell the story. In the last week, I have seen the outskirts of Fallujah, talked with refugees, and heard several first-person testimonies of countless civilian deaths. The stories are hard to read and to hear. I also have been reading more about PTSD and returning soldiers who cannot adapt to regular life again after they have killed other human beings in Iraq and/or seen their friends killed. The following reflection is longer than usual. I am sorry, there was no other way to convey what happened. Peace and blessings to you... Sheila Provencher -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Fallujah neighborhood looks like the wreckage of sand castles or abandoned ruins. My CPT colleague Allan and I, as well as an Iraqi human-rights activist, an Iraqi pharmacist, and the driver, stare as we pass by on the highway. (It is February 24, 2005. We are on our way to a refugee camp in Amoriyah, a village between Fallujah and Ramadi.) The neighborhood on Fallujah's outskirts is only about 150 meters from the road. At least every third house is destroyed, ceilings caved in, walls disappeared or crumbling. The homes are deserted, the streets empty. A mile-long line of cars snakes from the highway onto the main road leading into the city, through numerous checkpoints so time-consuming that most men stand waiting outside their cars, talking and squinting into the sun. The highway leading toward Ramadi is closed, and we have to take back roads to Amoriyah. Our Iraqi host, a female human-rights activist and one tough lady, said that the U.S. military has surrounded Ramadi in the same way they surrounded Fallujah months ago in an assault that was supposed to "break" the resistance. I should feel scared, but somehow do not. It is a strange peace, to ride these back roads through Iraqi farmlands just starting to bloom. We pass apricot trees, white apple blossoms, date palms, and fields of barley and alfalfa. Cows grazing. Women, children, and men working the fields. A young man walks along the road with a six-foot sapling for planting, and a car bedecked with wedding garlands passes by in the opposite direction. We arrive in Amoriyah, a community of uniform white six-story apartment buildings created for employees of the nearby industrial complex. Today, Amoriyah houses more than 600 families who fled the U.S. assaults on Fallujah. We go to the primary school, now a refugee camp. Five makeshift tents fill one medium-sized room, one family per tent. The room's ceiling tiles are falling out, windows are papered over, and water puddles on the floor. One barrel-shaped gas oven sits in the center of the room. An elderly woman who cannot remember her age welcomes us and says that her whole extended family�-sons, their wives and children--lives there. I meet tiny Riaad ad Deen, a two-month-old baby who was born in the camp. Zaneb, a 13-year-old girl both smiling and serious, watches over the younger children who clamor for the foreigners' attention. Then the fathers and uncles come to talk, and I cannot keep up with the rapid Arabic full of stories of suffering. Our Iraqi friend translates: Most people have lost their homes in the bombing. Some have lost family members and neighbors. All are angry. After awhile we walk to another room, down the hall from the one bathroom that is shared by 40 families. A young man steps forward. "We did not know the evacuation deadline," he says. "I left the city by chance on the day the bombs began, and then I could not get back in. My brother, who is mentally handicapped, was left behind. When we went back after the attack, he was missing. I looked on the list of people killed, I asked at prisons, but there was no answer. The Americans told me to ask the Iraqi National Guard, and I did, but they gave me no answer." "Please," he says. "Tell this tragedy all over the world. There are whole families who were buried under the rubble." Children push to get closer. "Do you like George Bush?" one little girl asks. "Do you?" I respond. "No, I do not like him," she says. How can the children go to school now that their classrooms are filled with clothes, dishes, blankets and people? Answer: They study in the backyard. Gray-green tents fill the gravel playground, and desks and blackboards fill the tents. Children sit in the rising heat and try to concentrate as the teacher leads the lesson. A completely English sign hanging near the gate proclaims that this tent-school is "a joint project of Human Appeal International and The Ministry of Education, Government of Iraq." Allan asks the assistant director of the school why the sign is in English and not Arabic. "It is just for show," she says. "They want the media to think that they are doing something for Iraq." Allan asks if she is proud of her government. She answers with a resounding "No!" Classes change, children swarm around. I ask them in my simple Arabic if they would like to say anything to people in the U.S. "God willing, I will go back to my house in Fallujah," at least five different children say. Then someone hands the driver a note that says we must leave immediately. I can sense that our Iraqi activist friend, a woman not easily rattled, is frightened. Apparently, rumors have spread that "Americans from the American embassy" (referring to Allan, who is actually a Canadian, and myself) are at the school, and our hosts are worried that there could be trouble. Two men from the refugee camp, risking their own safety, drive us to the highway in an extra car, then wish us peace as we get back in our own car to return to Baghdad. . . . . . . . . . . I will never forget the speed with which they shuttled us out of there. Nor will I forget the helplessness both Allan and I felt when we realized that, without well-established relationships of trust, our presence can draw danger rather than peace into an area. Because Americans inflicted damage, all Americans are suspect. I do not doubt that Fallujah had its share of weapons caches and resistance fighters. I do not doubt the personal goodwill of many soldiers, some of whom, an Iraqi Red Crescent leader told me, gave their rations to help Fallujan civilians survive the siege. But I also do not doubt the testimonies of the Iraqi men, women, and children whose lives were irreparably traumatized (or ended) by the U.S. military's overpowering assault on the city. The reality of a violent resistance cannot legitimize such an overwhelmingly violent response. What's more, the military response does not work--it only solidifies hatred and deepens resolve. One young Fallujan who saw Iraqi women and children dead in the streets said to me, "Please, tell your U.S. military families what their children are being ordered to do." I am afraid for the children of Amoriyah refugee camp, and for the people of Ramadi who may be surrounded right now, and for what will happen to America's children if we continue to support violence as a plausible course of action. Christian Peacemaker Teams is an ecumenical violence-reduction program with roots in the historic peace churches. Teams of trained peace workers live in areas of lethal conflict around the world. CPT has been present in Iraq since October, 2002. To learn more about CPT, please visit http://www.cpt.org. 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