February 28, 2008
Dear Friends,
I began this letter the other day on a bus returning from a two-day trip to D.C. where Maryknoll’s Social Concerns office had set up meetings with various groups to address the Iraqi refugee crisis. This was the third trip to D.C. since my return to the states in early December, part of an ongoing strategizing with Maryknoll colleagues as to how we might make real the desperate situation of Iraqi refugees. We’ve been able to convey concrete concerns and questions to a Congressperson with an entry to Homeland Security, to the Congressional Progressive Caucus, to the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, and others.
On this particular trip I was not traveling alone. I was accompanied by a dear Iraqi friend who was also going to D.C., and it was wonderful to have so many hours to catch up with each other. While on the bus a member of his family in Baghdad called on his cell phone, bringing their reality there close to us. Security has improved we heard due to the fact that the city is divided up with countless checkpoints and barriers. “It is like being in prison” he said.
A recent communication from another Iraqi friend in Baghdad spoke of improved security in recent months, but that all the streets are blocked. “Though this has helped stabilize the security, it has put a burden on people. It used to take me 10 minutes to get to work….now I spend around 60-90 minutes to do the same.” The friend continued “It is as if we were living in a nightmare to awaken and find that we have a country with no systems, something very difficult to understand. You can do anything you want with money or threats, but you can’t do anything if you walk in a correct and honest way. There is a complete collapse of most governmental institutions and no hope to improve things as long as political issues control the VIP positions….The people who control the Ministries (apart from the very few honest ones) are not eligible to be in this position or any other position because most of the honest people have been killed or threatened. Those who remain are those who can protect themselves by being in one of the groups or parties. They are the same. …We feel desperate and hurt from what is going on, as if we don’t belong to this society.”
In the stack of papers I’d brought with me on the bus were two articles I would refer to those of you who are stout-hearted enough to bear more bad news. On is of an interview of Dahr Jamail by Jeremy Scahill for the Nation. The other is “Iraq’s Tidal Wave of Misery, The first history of the planet’s worst refugee crisis” by Michael Schwartz. Though hesitant to burden my Iraqi friend with the heavy content in these pieces, I was also anxious for his opinion. I wish time and space would allow me to share some of his comments but he shared, for the most part, in the viewpoints of both articles.
One thing that struck me in some of the meetings I had in D.C. was the marked lack of Iraqi perspective and input. What are they experiencing, sensing, wanting? What is their advice in the face of the chaos and suffering that seems to have no end? In the years since the war and occupation, I often recall the words of an Iraqi to me when I was in Baghdad (about ten months into the US-led occupation) “You Americans took the cotton out of our mouths that Saddam had placed there, but you put it in your ears!” To quote Michael Schwartz (professor of sociology at Stony Brook Univ.
“Most horror stories come to an end, but the most horrible part of this horror story is its never-ending quality….From the vast out-migration and internal migrations of its desperate citizens comes damage to society as a whole that is almost impossible to estimate. The displacement of people carries with it the destruction of human capital. The destruction of human capital deprives Iraq of its most precious resource for repairing the damage of war and occupation, condemning it to further infrastructural decline. This tide of infrastructural decline is the surest guarantee of another wave of displacement, of future floods of refugees.”
I see the smiling face of a ten year old Iraqi boy in Amman before me. Not in school, he is working in a carpenter’s shop for 1 Jordanian Dinar a day (approx. $1.40). The father faces immediate deportation back to Iraq should he be caught working. Once this family owned a home and two cars in Baghdad, but they had to flee because of sectarian violence. He is Sunni and his wife is Shi’a. Their money has run out and they have been reduced to a beggarly status. I met the mother and the youngest of their four children as we got off a bus to walk the remaining blocks to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR). We struck up a conversation, albeit haltingly on my part, in Arabic. I was going to attend a meeting; she was going to beg assistance. I later visited the family in their dismal rented apartment and was able to leave a gift of money for them from donors in the states.
This letter is becoming quite lengthy and so I will try and bring it to an end. What now? What do we do in the face of such calamity? It is clear that everybody must be doing something. For myself, I am aware that I’ve taken great advantage of my community in being absent for such long periods of time over the last years. I was gone for six months in 2006 and for another six months in 2007. Mindful that the war goes on, the needs around me are also great. We have an eight-month old baby in the house and another baby due in early June, and I find that I am needed here for the next months. But we are blessed indeed! I can’t tell you what joy the children are to all of us. .
My own thought is to return to the Middle East in July and to stay on for a three to four month period. En Shallah. God willing. In the meantime, we are aware of Iraqis in Jordan and Syria who face an imminent return to Iraq as their money has run out. They can no longer pay for rent, electricity, gas, water and food. Due to contributions of friends here in the states who hear of their desperate situation, we have been able, on occasion, to wire money to some individuals and families so they can remain in Jordan and Syria. It seems like such a drop in the bucket, but then every drop counts. I will close now sending you my love and gratitude. It is your constant friendship, prayers and support that help me realize we are all part of one family wherever we might be.
Cathy Breen
(Cathy is a Catholic Worker at Mary House in New York City who lived in Iraq prior to the U.S. invasion in 2003 and during the occupation. When not at Mary House, Cathy is most often in Amman, Jordan living amongst Iraqis forced to flee their homes by the war. She expects to return to Amman this summer).
