During the last several months, many civilians throughout the Western world have voiced their opposition to the war in Iraq.
In the United States, advocates for peace have overtaken the streets in organized marches for peace, sent thousands of letters to senators and representatives asking them to end the war and formed boycotts of products and people directly supporting the Bush administration. Although most major battles in Iraq have been fought, the war has not ended.
Iraqi and coalition forces and civilians of many different nationalities have died in the war. Coalition leaders have maintained that the war is necessary to ensure the safety of the world.
“The safety of the American people depends on ending this direct and growing threat,” President George W. Bush said in a press conference at the end of February. “Acting against the danger will also contribute greatly to the long-term safety and stability of our world. The current Iraqi regime has shown the power of tyranny to spread discord and violence in the Middle East.”
A handful of organizations have dedicated their efforts to showing the people of Iraq, and the world community, that not everyone believes in or wants the war.
Voices In The Wilderness was established in 1996 as a joint U.S. and U.K. campaign to end the economic sanctions and military warfare against the people of Iraq. Since its inception, more than 60 VITW delegations have traveled to Iraq in violation of U.S.-opposed sanctions. VITW advocates nonviolence as a means for social change. The group opposes “the development, storage and use by any country of weapons of mass destruction, be they nuclear, biological, chemical or economic.”
In September, VITW initiated the Iraq Peace Team, a group of revolving members who travel to Iraq to live among civilians and join in a stance of solidarity with the Iraqi people. Members of the group bring aid and food to civilians in war torn areas.
Kathy Kelly, co-founder of VITW and a two-time Nobel Peace Prize nominee, has been in Iraq with the peace team for the majority of the last four months. She was on the ground when the U.S.-led bombing began in March.
Kelly has been working with other Peace Team members to show solidarity with the Iraqi people. She recently encountered several U.S. soldiers who questioned her and other members’ reasons for being in Iraq and explained their own.
“Each of them has assured us they didn’t want to kill anyone,” Kelly said. “One young man said he was desperate for financial aid to care for his wife and young child while struggling to complete college studies and work full-time. He felt he could gain some respect in this world and also help his family by joining the Marines.”
The soldier told Kelly he hadn’t shot anyone, but he saw a U.S. soldier shoot at a civilian car carrying two adults and a child. Both adults were killed immediately. The child survived.
“They could have shot the tires,” the soldier said. “Some just want to kill.”
Kelly said the majority of the soldiers have been respectful toward the Iraqi civilians and the Peace Team. She said many are already tired of the war and ready for the fighting to be over.
“Looting and burning continue, here in Baghdad,” Kelly said in an e-mailed letter back to VITW headquarters in Chicago. “I’m sick of war — disgusted to the point of nausea. I think all of us at this intersection, residents of Al Fanar, journalists in the Palestine Hotel next door and soldiers on patrol, share the same queasy ill feeling. The line ‘War is the health of the state’ makes no sense whatsoever here.”
According to VITW speaking coordinator Laurie Hasbrook, there are still four members, including Kelly, in Iraq.
A few groups have traveled to Iraq with the hope of placing their own bodies between the fighting and buildings like hospitals and food storage facilities. These people, called human shields, operate on the hope that armed forces will see a Western face among a planned target and make the decision not to fire. Iraqi leaders often station the human shields in front of areas that could be considered military targets.
“Our strategy is potentially dangerous, but that is a risk we must take in standing beside our brothers and sisters in Iraq,” Organizer of the Human Shield Project Ken Nichols O’Keefe said. “There are literally billions of people around the world who are opposed to this war, yet our so-called ‘democracies’ in the U.S. and Britain are plunging us into it. We can, and we must, stop this war, and all we need to achieve this is a few thousand volunteers to migrate to Iraq.”
Human Rights Watch Executive Director Kenneth Roth said the use of human shields by either side of the war was a criminal act.
“If Iraq uses people as human shields, that is a war crime,” he said. “If the United States attacks targets that are shielded by civilians without demonstrating an overwhelming military necessity to do so, that would be a war crime, too.”
Military forces have already killed several civilians acting as human shields. Many of the shields have been asked to leave the country, or have been deported to Jordan and other surrounding countries.
Peter Bergel, executive director of Oregon PeaceWorks, said aid groups such as VITW are very different from the human shield movement, but both are forms of civil disobedience.
“People are beginning to see that if they can risk their lives as soldiers than they can also risk their lives as peace advocates,” Bergel said. “We are primarily saying we want a different way of dealing with conflict.”
For more information on aid groups, visit the Voices In The Wilderness Web site at www.vitw.org.
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