Damascus, Syria
June 26, 2009

Cathy Breen with Iraqi Child in SyriaDear Friends,

My time in Syria is coming to a close. Tomorrow I will head to Jordan for a couple of days and then back to the big apple on July 1st. A final session with UNHCR the other day brought a sense of closure in some ways, as I was able to discuss concerns and turn over concrete “cases” for their consideration. We spoke of the increasingly desperate situation of Iraqi refugees here, one hidden from the world by the lack of media coverage. But we also acknowledged the many small miracles and victories we continue to witness.

A young Iraqi woman (I will call her Zayneb), mother of four small children, wrote a little book about a horse with hidden wings. She wanted to honor the staff at the UNHCR here in Damascus by dedicating the book to them. “Everyone knows” she told her grandmother as a child “that horses can’t fly.” But her grandmother, still living in Baghdad, could not be persuaded otherwise. She insisted that the horse she saw could fly! But it is Zayneb’s deep sense of gratitude that leaps out from the pages.

June 25, 2009

A boy from Pakistan’s Swat valley now resides an an abandoned building outside Islamabad. (Photo: Dan Pearson)In early June, 2009, I was in the Shah Mansoor displaced persons camp in Pakistan, listening to one resident detail the carnage which had spurred his and his family’s flight there a mere 15 days earlier. Their city, Mingora, had come under massive aerial bombardment. He recalled harried efforts to bury corpses found on the roadside even as he and his neighbors tried to organize their families to flee the area.

by Bitta Mostofi and Bill Quigley

June 25, 2009

In Isfahan, Iran, an 80-year-old woman stood defiantly in her doorway. Twenty baton-wielding Basij men arrived on motorcycles and threatened to enter her house in pursuit of a group of young demonstrators. Instead of running with fear or turning her back on the demonstrators, this woman looked the pursuers straight in the eye and said, “You will not get past me.”

During the Month of May Gerald Paoli of Voices served for 28 days on the Christian Peacemaker Iraq Team (CPT). These are some images from that journey.

Damascus, Syria
June 16, 2009

Middle Eastern people are by nature gift givers. My room and the refrigerator outside on the patio attest to this. The homemade yogurt from Namir’s family and the jar of cherry jam from Sara, mother of four; are in the process of being consumed. However, the large oil painting from 16 year old Noor, a bar of soap carved into the shape of a foot by little Anfal and a large Arabic bible are just a few of the lasting items so lovingly given to me.

by Stephen Zunes
CommonDreams - original source
June 19, 2009
Additonal Analysis by Stephen Zunes

The growing nonviolent insurrection in Iran against the efforts by the ruling clerics to return the ultra-conservative and increasingly autocratic incumbent president Mahmoud Ahmadinjead to power is growing. Whatever the outcome, it represents an exciting and massive outpouring of Iranian civil society for a more open and pluralistic society.

Ironically, defenders of Ahmadinejad’s repression are trying to blame everyone from the U.S. government, to nonviolent theorist Gene Sharp, to various small NGOs engaged in educational efforts on strategic nonviolent action as somehow being responsible for the popular uprising in Iran. It appears to be based upon the rather bizarre assumption that millions of Iranians would somehow be willing to pour out onto the streets in the face of violent repression by state security forces only because they have been directed to do so by people from an imperialist power which overthrew their last democratic government and subsequently propped up the tyrannical regime they installed in its place for the next quarter century.

View photos from the 2009 Pakistan delegationShah Mansoor Camp, District of Swabi, North West Frontier Province, Pakistan

In Late May and early June 2009, Kathy Kelly, Gene Stoltzfus, Razia Ahmed, Steve Kelly and Dan Pearson traveled to Pakistan. They visited various cities and villages and met with people who have been forced to flee their homes in the Swat Valley amidst a violent military offensive against suspected supporters of the Taliban.

Through dozens of meetings, the delegation heard various perspectives on the crisis in Pakistan. Those with whom they met included professors, human rights activists, journalists, representatives of NGOs committed to humanitarian relief work and educators.

While each meeting included discussions about US drone attacks, the most informative was a meeting with a survivor of such attacks in north Waziristan. An account of this meeting and other reports are posted in the following articles: Visitors and Hosts in Pakistan, Down and Out in Shah Mansoor, A Weaver’s Welcome