Writings by Kathy Kelly

The Big Voice

Kathy Kelly — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 12:30:55 -0500

Project

WITNESS AGAINST WAR 2008: From Chicago to St. Paul

Short Information Teaser

Our "Witness Against War" walk is in Wisconsin, traversing traditional land of the Ho- Chunk Nation, also known in English translation as "People of the Big Voice."

Excerpt

August 9, 2008

Our “Witness Against War” walk is in Wisconsin, traversing traditional land of the Ho- Chunk Nation, also known in English translation as “People of the Big Voice.” In 1836, U.S. settlers, including farmers and miners, coveted this lush farmland and its rich mining resources and forced the Ho-Chunk to sell it all for a pittance.

VCNV Author

Kathy Kelly

Voices Author

Kathy Kelly

Body

August 9, 2008

About six months ago, Dan Pearson, co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence, swiveled around in his office chair in our tiny “headquarters” to ask what we thought about organizing a walk from Chicago to St. Paul, arriving just before the Republican National Convention. Our dedicated group of volunteers joined Dan to plan a project, which, to me, is one of the best organized efforts I’ve ever encountered, all aimed at voicing a witness against war, which particularly in Wisconsin, where 3,500 National Guard troops are on alert for a call-up to combat duty, in Iraq, in 2009. Generally, three to five “day walkers” will join our core group of nine walkers. We walk about fifteen miles each day carrying signs that call for an end to the war and for keeping Wisconsin National Guard troops home. The sign I carry on this walk reads “Rebuild Iraq, rebuild the U.S.” Another of our signs, decorated with the obligatory elephant and donkey, reads “We hold both parties responsible.” We began walking on July 12, 2008 and will arrive in St. Paul Minnesota on August 30th.

Our “Witness Against War” walk is in Wisconsin, traversing traditional land of the Ho- Chunk Nation, also known in English translation as “People of the Big Voice.” In 1836, U.S. settlers, including farmers and miners, coveted this lush farmland and its rich mining resources and forced the Ho-Chunk to sell it all for a pittance. The US government imposed repeated roundups and “removals” on them, resettling them from Wisconsin to Iowa, from Iowa to Minnesota, then to South Dakota and onward, in dangerous, and for some deadly forced transports. “In the winter of 1873, many Ho Chunk people were removed to the Nebraska reservation from Wisconsin, traveling in cattle cars on trains,” according to the Nation’s website. “This was a horrific experience for the people, as many elders, women and children suffered and died.” Some of the transports were imposed to remove the Ho-Chunk people from conflicts with other nations - conflicts created by previous forced transports. But after the removals by train, they walked back on foot to Wisconsin, to reclaim their former homes, It’s a tale of immeasurable suffering, but because of these walks back they are still here, as the “Ho-Chunk Nation” in this beautiful Wisconsin land where their ancestors were buried.

And we’re here too, walking on behalf of people in Iraq who’ve been made refugees to escape U.S. violence, and also the sectarian violence made inevitable by the U.S. government’s wholesale dismantling of their country, whether achieved deliberately or through incompetence we can’t know. We’re walking for people who, like the Ho-Chunk people, were told that if they didn’t cooperate with a U.S. project to seize their precious and irreplaceable resources, we would kill them.

The name of the “Ho-Chunk” nation means “People of the Sacred Language,” or “People of the Big Voice.” And when no-one was listening to them, they spoke to each other and chose to return, and strengthened each other for the return here where their action spoke louder than words and they eventually, after eleven removals and five weary returns, were ceded parts of their original land.

I and my companions here think of deliberate nonviolent action as a sacred language. Tomorrow we’re crossing the line into Fort McCoy to protest the cynical use of our young men and women, many of them seeking opportunities denied them in their communities, to kill and dispossess members of the Iraqi nation, to drive them into refuge in Jordan and Syria, to drive them into conflict the one against the other arming first this faction and then that with more and more weapons in the name of establishing “security forces”, so that we will have an excuse to occupy this oil-rich region for ages to come, whatever platitudes our leaders may offer now about eagerness some day to withdraw. Several of us may face several months in jail. Our leaders will continue to use these lands for wrongful purposes and we will keep walking back, until enough of our fellows join us that we are allowed to reclaim these lands, and our resources, to be the refuge and the comfort of all.

The United States is called a democracy. That means “People of the Big Voice.” A sacred language. But we as a nation are not yet ready to use our voices loud enough to be heard, or to use our feet, when our voices are ignored, in the sacred language of nonviolent direct action, in resistance to the greedy powerful few who would limit our choices to choices of war and claim all lands, heedless of the voices of the people living in them, for the purposes of greed. The world looks to us, much of it in genuine pain and anguish, asking when are we going to rescue them from our government, by expressing our wish for peace at long last in the Big Voice we have always claimed as our heritage?

Kathy Kelly () co-coordinates Voices for Creative Nonviolence.

Walk Blog: Visit to Governor Doyle's office (Madison, WI)

Kathy Kelly — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 13:17:33 -0500

Project

WITNESS AGAINST WAR 2008: From Chicago to St. Paul

Short Information Teaser

delivery of a letter to Governor Doyle

Excerpt

July 30, 2008

In Madison, WI, we delivered a letter to Governor Doyle, urging him to support State assemblyman Spenser Black in his efforts to prevent the National Guard from going to Iraq. Mr.Farland, an aide to the governor, met with about two dozen of us who crowded into the reception area of the governor’s office. The letter reads:

Governor Jim Doyle
Office of the Governor 115 East State Capitol Madison, Wisconsin 53702 Governor Doyle,

The Red Arrow 32nd Brigade Combat Team of the Wisconsin National Guard is currently scheduled to deploy to Iraq in 2009.

We urge you to take all necessary steps to prevent this deployment from happening. This includes, but is not limited to, taking legal action in the form of a lawsuit to prevent future deployments to Iraq.

VCNV Author

Kathy Kelly

Body

July 30, 2008

Governor Jim Doyle
Office of the Governor 115 East State Capitol Madison, Wisconsin 53702 Governor Doyle,

The Red Arrow 32nd Brigade Combat Team of the Wisconsin National Guard is currently scheduled to deploy to Iraq in 2009.

We urge you to take all necessary steps to prevent this deployment from happening. This includes, but is not limited to, taking legal action in the form of a lawsuit to prevent future deployments to Iraq.

We believe that you have the legal authority to prevent the deployment of the Wisconsin National Guard to Iraq. Specifically, the Authorization to Use Military Force against Iraq, passed by Congress in October 2002, achieved its objectives. Congress authorized the use of military force against Iraq for two very specific reasons:

to force Iraq to comply with U.N. Security Council resolutions; and,

because Iraq was considered to be a threat to the national security of the United States.

Each of these two conditions have been achieved. Indeed the U.S. is negotiating a Status of Forces Agreement with the current government of Iraq, indicating that the U.S. considers Iraq to now be an allied nation.

With the achievement of these two conditions, the purpose for the authorization for the use of military force against Iraq has terminated. This authorization provided the basis for the federalization of the National Guard. With the expiration of this authorization, the legal basis for the federalization of the Guard has also lapsed.

We encourage you to challenge the deployment of the National Guard by refusing to permit the deployment of the 32nd Brigade next year. This no doubt will result in legal action involving your office. But it truly is essential that such a constitutional crisis be created in order to challenge continuing deployments of the National Guard to the Iraq war.

Precedent exists for Wisconsin to challenge the federal government’s military decisions. In 1983 Wisconsin filed a lawsuit against the U.S. government seeking to prevent the operation of the Navy’s Project ELF, a transmitter key to the U.S. nuclear first strike strategy.

We look forward to your action to keep the Guard home.

Jim Cusack, a labor organizer and organizer with Voces de la Frontera (an immigrants rights and workers rights organization based in Milwaukee), spoke of displacement and loss caused by the war, recalling the hundreds of thousands of families, in the US and in Iraq, aching for loved ones who will never return.

Dan Pearson explained Representative Spenser Black’s proposal to Mr. Farland and emphasized that funds allocated for military spending should be redircted to ease the humanitarian crisis caused by ongoing war in Iraq. Dan briefly noted that he had lived amongst Iraqi refugees in Damascus, Syria, for five months and then worked with Iraqis resettled in Chicago. He could verify, through personal experience, that many Iraqis he met were unable to provide basic needs for their families.

I wanted the governor’s aide to know that we’re planning to visit Ft. Mc Coy, which is training soldiers from other states to deploy for combat duty in Iraq. I told him that after living under aerial bombardment of Baghdad throughout the Shock and Awe bombing, I felt acutely responsible to help prevent the terror and horror that these attacks cause.

A teacher from Wisconsin told Mr. Farland that the state had abruptly cut funding for a program to teach English as a Second Language to refugee families that have just arrived in the state, many of them families displaced by the Viet Nam war who, for decades, awaited resettlement in the U.S. and who have now finally arrived here. She asked if the war in Iraq would likely create new waves of displaced people whose needs would be unmet while the military demands dominated state and national budgets.

Alice Gerard told Mr. Farland about a crossing guard, in Jefferson, WI, who told Alice that she supported our walk because she had a son who is in Iraq now and this is his fifth deployment. “Mr Farland, there is a hole left in these families,” said Alice, “a hole in their homes and their hearts when their loved ones go off to war.”

“Witness Against War” walkers and supporters presented earnest, well-informed and persuasive testimony to Mr. Farland. We encourage anyone reading our reports to echo the sentiments we presented by writing letters to Governor Doyle.

Pictures From Summer Camp

Kathy Kelly — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 10:16:07 -0500

Short Information Teaser

Joel Gulledge attacked by Israeli settler while escorting children to summer camp

Excerpt

July 27, 2008

At 6:45 a.m. this morning, our friend, Joel Gulledge, called from At-Tuwani, a village in the West Bank where he and another Christian Peacemaker Team (CPT) member were escorting Palestinian children to a local summer daycamp, protecting them from hostile Israeli settlers. A masked settler, carrying a slingshot, was threatening the children. While Jan Benvie, the other CPT team member, raced the children to safety, Joel paused to film what was happening. The masked settler caught up with Joel and attacked him. “He smashed my head again and again,” said Joel, “with my video camera, and punched me in the face, repeatedly, with his other hand.” Joel managed to remain standing. He didn’t fight back, but he screamed for help. The attacker broke Joel’s glasses, and Joel was bleeding from a gash over his eyes. When he called, he was waiting for an ambulance to arrive.

Body

July 27, 2008

Earlier this week, CPT’s website, (www.cpt.org), reported that on Wednesday 23 July, “three Israeli settlers, one masked and wielding a stick, pursued fourteen Palestinian children who were on their way to a summer camp in At-Tuwani. The children from the villages of Tuba and Maghaer Al-Abeed waited thirty minutes for the Israeli military escort that should have accompanied them on the most direct road between the villages of Tuba and At-Tuwani. When the military failed to arrive, the children began walking along a long path through the hills to At-Tuwani. When the children neared the Israeli settlement outpost of Havat Ma’on, three settlers with two dogs came out from the outpost and began walking in the direction of the children.”

“Members of the At-Tuwani team yelled at the children to alert them that settlers were coming at them from behind. The children ran down and across a valley to a location further from the settlers. They continued to At-Tuwani. The settlers remained on a hill top near Havot Ma’on, watching the children as they walked toward the school.”

“The previous day, Tuesday 22 July, the military escort never arrived to escort the children to summer camp. Seven children took a long path to the school. They told the At-Tuwani team that at least eight other children did not attend summer camp because they were too afraid to come to school without an escort. The mayor of At-Tuwani spoke with Israeli military to coordinate the escort for the children. However, several military spokespersons and soldiers on the ground denied receiving orders to escort the children.”

“In 2004, the Israeli Knesset recommended that the Israeli military carry out a daily escort of the children of Tuba and Maghaer Al-Abeed to their school in At-Tuwani because settlers repeatedly attacked them.”

Yesterday’s New York Times carried a front page article, “Dear Parents: Please Relax, It’s Just Camp,” about parents in the U.S. who experience separation anxiety when their children go to sleep-away camps. Summer camps frequently post videos and still photos of the children on their websites, allowing parents to keep in touch with the children’s activities. But now it’s customary for many camps to hire a full-time “parent liason,” because the parents become very involved in their children’s lives at the camp, so much so that some camps are bombarded with phone calls, daily, from anxious parents. Could these parents understand the terror of Palestinian parents whose children are at risk of being beaten and killed as they walk between their village and the local summer camp, each day.

“Nobody goes to school for how to send your child away from you,” said Maria Coleman, a past president of the American Camp Association. “We help the parents become independent. And especially post-9/11 in today’s society, that’s definitely a heightened need.” Clearly greater than American parents’ fear of terrorist attacks, we hear of Israeli parents and their fear that their children will fall prey to terrorism, but human rights groups like Israeli B’Tselem tell us that Palestinian children are far more likely - by a factor of over eight to one in recent years - to die by violence in the conflict, often by weapons provided to Israel, without significant human rights oversight, by the United States. All lives are precious, especially children’s lives, from whatever community they make their way out into the world. How must the parents of Palestine, the parents of Iraq, the parents of Iran, feel knowing that not only they but their children are at the wrong end of American weapons?

I feel such a concern for my friend and co-worker Joel as he and his fellow CPT team members try to protect endangered Palestinians and their children in the West Bank. The example they set, in their dedication to nonviolence and their refusal to carry weapons, can help all of us gain independence from the cycle of threat and violence which the U.S. has driven in its support for and arming of the Israeli occupation of Palestine.

Kathy Kelly () is a co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence, www.vcnv.org

VCNV Author

Kathy Kelly

Walk Blog: Kathy Kelly, July 14

Kathy Kelly — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 11:12:09 -0500

Project

WITNESS AGAINST WAR 2008: From Chicago to St. Paul

Short Information Teaser

Signs of hope in a collective witness against war

Excerpt

July 14, 2008

On July 12th, supporters of the “Witness Against War” walk from Chicago to St. Paul, MN launched the walk in Chicago’s Federal Building plaza with a program rich in good will and diversity.

Brad Lyttle recalled the courage and determination of peace activists protesting the Viet Nam war during the Democratic National Convention held, in 1968, in Chicago. And, holding aloft a sturdy placard written in Russian, he helped link the walk to the “San Francisco to Moscow Walk,” which crossed the globe campaigning for nuclear disarmament in 1958.

VCNV Author

Kathy Kelly

Body

July 14, 2008

On July 12th, supporters of the “Witness Against War” walk from Chicago to St. Paul, MN launched the walk in Chicago’s Federal Building plaza with a program rich in good will and diversity.

Cynthia Banas sent us clippings from newspapers in upstate New York chronicling a mid-May 2008 project, the New York State Marches for Peace, in which opponents to war set forth from multiple towns for a ten day trek, convening at Fort Drum where to call for an end to wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Voices activists asked Karl Meyer for advice and reflections during the final weeks of preparation for the “Witness Against War” launch. From Nashville Greenlands, Karl Meyer, whose rich history of peace activism includes participation in the “San Francisco to Moscow” walk, Karl sent this article.

Further glimpses of the connections across region, continent, and generations of resistance to war, were seen upon the WALK’s launch in Chicago, engendering energy for the gathering walkers.

In the summer of 2007, in Amman, Jordan, an Iraqi family awaiting resettlement had welcomed various Voices activists into their humble home and helped us understand the extremely harsh circumstances they had faced after being forced to flee from their home in Iraq. We never would have imagined, then, that the family’s oldest son would be sitting in the living room at Voices, a year later, conversing with a member of Iraq Veterans Against War and preparing to walk together in hopes of putting an end to war. We carry signs of hope along with immense responsibility to step forward in a collective witness against war.

WITNESS AGAINST WAR – a walk from Chicago to the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, MN - sponsored by Voices for Creative Nonviolence – July 12-August 31, 2008

Cold Shoulders

Kathy Kelly — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 11:48:31 -0500

Short Information Teaser

In Amman, Jordan, Kathy regularly visited the family of Umm Hamdi

Excerpt

July 5, 2008

Over the past two years, here in Amman, Jordan, I’ve regularly visited the family of Umm Hamdi, an Iraqi woman forced out of her native Iraq four years ago by terrifying death threats after her husband, very likely prey to that same threatened violence, disappeared. Although often met with the proverbial “cold shoulder” when trying to improve conditions for her family, she persists,—in the daytime she does child care for another family and, in the evening, she knits, sews, and makes handicrafts to sell in a local market. Umm Hamdi is tough, strong and fiercely determined to provide for her children. Nevertheless, she’s wretchedly insecure as a single mother and one more refugee among thousands in a country where resources to cope with her anxious needs are very slim. And she is worried for her son who is still in Iraq.

Two nights ago, I turned up to her small bare apartment during an evening when her young daughters were out in the care of a local charity and she was home alone. I saw how worn out she was from working to support them - but more telling on her is the frustration and remorse she feels for Hamdi, her teenage son, who is barred from entering Jordan because he is a young man over 15 years of age, and whether for fear of spillover violence or from a wish to concentrate its taxed charitable resources among women and children, Jordan’s policy strictly bars him entry. In Iraq, Hamdi lives with a family that resents him for his unemployed status, (there are no jobs), and can barely spare the little support they offer him.

Body

July 5, 2008

Umm Hamdi is stricken with remorse over separation from her son. In regular phone calls, he learns that his sisters are going to school, that one has completed a vocational training program, and that when the oldest daughter was recently married the family did everything they could to give her a traditional wedding. The anguish overwhelms her as she recounts their latest conversation: “You do everything for your daughters,” he had shouted, over the phone: “everything for them, but what about me? What about me? I am your son!” She clutches her hands over her eyes. Between sobs, she repeats, “My son, my son.”

Her son is one of many thousands in Iraq who are out of luck, out of work, undereducated, and lonely for parents and siblings lucky enough to escape to neighboring countries.

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) says that poverty is driving Iraq’s boys and young men, out of desperation, into the militias. A 2007 IOM report noted that “militant fighters sometimes buy the loyalty of displaced persons by providing them some of the things they need, such as food and shelter. More and more children are joining these armed groups, the militias and the insurgents,” said IOM officer Dana Graber Ladeck. “Sometimes they do it for money and sometimes for revenge, but we’re finding more and more child soldiers, so to speak.” (January 30, Voice of America interview)

Some youngsters agree to carry guns and to man checkpoints for the strongest and most heavily armed militia in their country, the U.S. military. Reporting for Reuters, Adrian Croft recently wrote about a “ragtag band of men toting AK-47s at a checkpoint in Baghdad’s Sadr City,” some of 500 youngsters the US had recruited as part of a new plan to “strengthen the Iraqi army’s hold” in the backyard of U.S. rival Moqtada Sadr. (Jordan Times, June 27). New recruits risk their lives to earn $300 a month, guarding these checkpoints. It’s undoubtedly one of the best jobs in town. Will this option, will one like it, attract Umm Hamdi’s son?

Other Iraqi youngsters have been swept up by the U.S. military and sent to prisons, without charge, as a measure to prevent them from joining an Iraqi militia. On May 19, 2008, Fox News reported that the U.S. military is holding about 500 juveniles suspected of being “unlawful enemy combatants” in detention centers in Iraq. In August of 2007, in anticipation of the “troop surge,” CNN reported that the US had imprisoned, without charge, 800 Iraqi youngsters (or “security risks”) between the ages of 11 and 17, in a “prison school,” to prevent them from lending their bodies to militias as decoys or snipers. The CNN reporter said that, within the school, textbooks and classrooms were another “weapon” against terror. Commanding officer Lt. Glenn expressed his goal: “We ensure that when they are released that they don’t – they pick up a book instead of an AK-47 or laying an IED. And that’s what this really gets back to.” And when it gets back to young men like Hamdi, the message is perfectly clear: the U.S. will supply plenty of guns and explosives as long as the attacks are done in the name of protecting U.S. “security.”

Umm Hamdi doesn’t want her son to pick up a gun or lay an explosive device, for Iraq or for anyone. She would rather see him pick up a book. She cries herself to sleep at night wishing she could just see him. But she can’t bring her daughters back to the maelstrom of violence her native country has become with the U.S. invasion. And with Jordan straining to contain the refugees it has absorbed, she can’t bring her son out of Iraq.

Would it reassure her to think that Hamdi might find more secure shelter and achieve some educational goals if U.S. military jailers could imprison him for a year or so? Would it help if I told her that millions of impoverished parents in the U.S. worry that their sons might land in jail, and that many see the military as a better option?

I talked with her for a while longer. Her daughters returned from the event the charity had hosted for them, their faces sparkling with glitter and their arms colorful with painted designs. Umm Hamdi wiped away tears from a suddenly, forcedly, cheerful expression. She fetched a small ball of yarn - royal blue - and started rapid work to knit me a sweater, a parting gift I will take with me when I leave here. “It’s cold in Chicago, very cold!” she said, laying down the needles and yarn. She grabbed her shoulders to help me understand that she didn’t want me to have cold shoulders. “No, we don’t want you to be cold.”

Kathy Kelly () co-coordinates Voices for Creative Nonviolence

VCNV Author

Kathy Kelly

Istiklal

Jeff Leys — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 11:54:24 -0500

Short Information Teaser

Kathy Kelly writes from Amman, Jordan about Independence Day

Excerpt

July 3, 2008

The city of Amman, Jordan, is awash with numerous colorful signs that proclaim independence, “Istiklal.” The word is found on posters and placards in store windows. It names a major thoroughfare, a hospital, and a shopping center. Appreciation for independence is palpable, and this could be said for numerous cities and towns throughout the region, including Iraq, where past struggles for independence are commemorated by naming buildings and streets “Istiklal.” It reflects the love of independence and the longing for it.

But independence is elusive in a region suffering multiple wars and occupations. Particularly in Iraq, it’s hard to imagine an independent society growing up amid the violent wreckage of economic sanctions, U.S. bombardment and staggering corruption.

Body

July 3, 2008

A struggle to seek independence from war and violence, in Iraq, using nonviolent means, may seem even less viable, but that’s the mission of a sturdy network, called “La Onf,” (the Arabic translation for the word nonviolence). The group now has chapters at work in all but two of Iraq’s thirteen governorates. Each chapter chooses its own focus, and then explores how they might develop nonviolent problem solving. Last month, I had a chance to be part of a meeting between workers in the Amman office of the organization and representatives of Peaceful Tomorrows, a network of family members of 9/11 victims, determined by their horror and loss to pursue alternatives everywhere to the violence that claimed the lives of their loved ones. At the end of our meetings, the La Onf organization celebrated a modest yet solid accomplishment: one of the chapters, working in the south of Iraq, convinced governing authorities in the Muthanna province to issue a law banning the import and sale of war toys and fireworks throughout the governorate.

Proponents of the ruling believe young Iraqis have seen enough guns. But more than this; the La Onf workers believe their children are themselves seen by too many American soldiers for it to be safe for them to have toy guns - children have been shot often enough, in Iraq, for looking too dangerous to soldiers - and the La Onf workers can tell you the stories of festive family gatherings turned to scenes of bloody havoc when U.S. military personnel have mistaken celebratory fireworks for threatening attacks. The real guns, the real explosives, of the invaders - our guns and explosives – have proven to Iraqis that war is no game.

“We are too often self-censoring,” says my friend Ciaron O’Reilly, reflecting on our responsibility to ban weapons. “We think we can’t do much, so we do nothing at all.” Ciaron was speaking at a May 13th , 2008 celebration following the acquittal of 9 Irish activists who entered a Raytheon weapon manufacturing plant in Derry, Ireland, and damaged the corporation’s computers. Ciaron and four companions had set a precedent for this kind of action when, in 2003, shortly before the then-imminent US attack against Iraq, they entered a hangar in Shannon airport and, using mallets, did 2.5 million dollars worth of damage to a US Navy warplane. A Dublin jury, in 2006, acquitted him and his fellow “Pitstop Ploughshares” because, as they noted, they were taking steps to prevent a crime and save lives.

Like the Pitstop Ploughshares, The Raytheon defendants, in Derry, insisted, throughout their trial, that they had acted to prevent the commission of war crimes. They knew that the Israeli Defense Forces had used Raytheon’s bunker buster bomb to attack civilians living in the village of Qana, Lebanon, during the summer of 2006.

As part of preparation for their trial, they traveled to Lebanon and met with the families whose loved ones were killed by Raytheon’s bunker buster.

In a statement following the trial, they dedicated their victory to the Shaloub and Hasheem families of Qana, who lost 28 of their closest relatives on the 30th of July, 2006, all sheltering in a building they knew normal bombardment wouldn’t bring down.

It happened that I and several Voices members were in Qana two weeks after the attack, once a ceasefire had, with agonizing delay, been signed. We had heard of the massacre in Qana, and we felt it was essential to document. And so we went, and we sat with those Shaloub and Hasheem families during their funeral commemorations for their lost children. From my notes for that day:

Umm Zaynab asked a child to bring the stack of newspapers and magazines. “Here,” she said, carefully sorting through the pile, “This is Zaynab.” Zaynab is a little girl. Photo after photo shows Zaynab held aloft, lifeless, by a strong, helmeted relief worker who is seen shouting to heaven his shock and terrible awe.

Next to her, in the shelter, was her friend, Zahara. The girls show few outward signs of injury or mutilation: the force of the explosion seems to have destroyed their internal organs, with little outward trauma, as they slept in each other’s arms. They never woke up.

Next she placed in our hands a framed picture of Zaynab, a curly headed little girl with huge dark eyes posing seriously for the camera. One can only imagine what her smile would look like. “Who are the terrorists?” whispered Umm Zayneb to me, showing me the photographs of her daughter. Her eyes held mine as she answered her own question. I heard her say, “Bush,” before Farah translated, “She is saying that Zayneb and the children aren’t the terrorists. She says the real terrorists are the ones who kill children.”

The Derry defendants, along with the jury which acquitted them, seem to have agreed, as one reports:

“The jury has accepted that we were reasonable in our belief that the Israel Defense Forces were guilty of war crimes in Lebanon in the summer of 2006; that the Raytheon company, including its facility in Derry, was aiding and abetting the commission of these crimes; and that the action we took was intended to have, and did have, the effect of hampering or delaying the commission of war crimes. We have been vindicated.…We believe that one day the world will look back on the arms trade as we look back today on the slave trade, and wonder how it came about that such evil could abound in respectable society. If we have advanced, by a mere moment, the day when the arms trade is put beyond the law, what we have done will have been worthwhile.” (www.indymedia.ie)

The arms trade is, as the slave trade was, a crime against independence: the weapons are used to coerce, to enslave, to terrorize. Terror and death, death of innocents, death of children, are the obvious staple of both trades for this very reason. And Americans pride themselves as defenders of freedom, and opponents of slavery.

On July 4th, in cities and towns across the U.S., people will gather to watch fireworks and remember “The rockets’ red glare” and celebrate Independence Day with pantomime explosions, and the deafening, mounting concussions of the like that in Amman and in Iraq and, in a myriad places around our globe, people need no help remembering. And a friend reminds me that 150 years ago, 150 years exactly to the day come this coming September 11th, President Lincoln publicly asked, “What constitutes the bulwark of our own liberty and independence?”

and answered:

“… It is not our frowning battlements, our bristling sea coasts, the guns of our war steamers, or the strength of our gallant and disciplined army. These are not our reliance against a resumption of tyranny in our fair land: all of them may be turned against our liberties, without making us stronger or weaker for the struggle. Our reliance is in the love of liberty which God has planted in our bosoms: our defense is in the preservation of the spirit which prizes liberty as the heritage of all men, in all lands, every where. Destroy this spirit, and you have planted the seeds of despotism around your own doors.”

Of course our weapons destroy this spirit. If we think about it, if we think of how they are used time and time again, we realize that’s simply what they’re for. Imagine if, on this Independence Day, we could celebrate the spirit of independence, that love of liberty which becomes its opposite if we only love our own: we must celebrate and yearn for everyone’s independence: We must call for it: call for Istiklal. We may do so quietly, privately to ourselves if among those who would not understand, or publicly and insistently if we wish, in doing so, to stand for independence and our own right not to kill.

In independence’ name we must ask, when is that day “the world will look back on the arms trade as we look back today on the slave trade,” the day when the arms trade is put beyond the law. When is the day when we and the leaders who act in our name will allow Istiklal and independence in every other language of this world to flourish? When is the day when “they shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks, and nation shall not rise up against nation, neither shall they study war any more?”

This July 4th ,we must all ask: when, at long last, is Independence Day?

VCNV Author

Kathy Kelly

Commemorating the White Rose: Resisting the Iraq War

Jeff Leys — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 17:51:49 -0600

Short Information Teaser

Discussion of the White Rose and an action at Rahm Emanuel's Office

Excerpt

February 24, 2008

We Will Not Be Silent (photo: Suzanne Sheridan): Chris Spicer, a Jesuit, and Abby Strozinski, student at Loyola University Chicago, in Representative Emanuel’s office.65 years ago, on February 22, 1943, the Nazi regime executed three German students because of their active resistance to the regime’s murderous global and domestic agenda. Known as the White Rose, nearly all participants were students. 29 members were indicted for promoting opposition to the holocaust and to World War II.

Here in Chicago, several dozen people gathered in early February to watch “Sophie Scholl: The Final Days,” a film about the White Rose movement which focuses upon the experience of Sophie, and to think about our responsibilities, today, to confront Congressional Representatives and Senators in the U.S. who fund and prolong the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Seventeen people agreed to commemorate the 29 indicted White Rose activists by delivering white roses to people working in Representative Rahm Emanuel’s office. Rahm Emanuel is Chair of the House Democratic Caucus and consistently votes to fund the war in Iraq. We hoped that staffers would receive the roses and also engage with us in a conversation about Representative Emanuel’s position regarding the war in Iraq.Commemorating the White Rose (photo: Laurie Hasbrook): We remember the 29 individuals indicted by the German government for participation in the White Rose resistance effort during World War II. Five were executed and most of the rest sentenced to lengthen prison terms.

Body

February 24, 2008

Moments after we entered Emanuel’s office, a storefront on Chicago’s north side, a polite receptionist stepped out of the staffers’ workspace and greeted us while we crowded into the small reception area. Jacob Olzen, a Loyola University graduate student, explained our purpose and handed her a letter to deliver to Representative Emanuel. She received the letter, but assured us that we wouldn’t be able to give our roses to her colleagues working in cubicles nearby. A thin four foot door separates the reception area from the staffers’ workspace.

The Chief of Staff joined the receptionist for a few minutes, shortly after we arrived. She assured us that Emanuel braves criticism from other Congressional Representatives, in Washington D.C., for having mounted pictures in his office of all the people who’ve died in Iraq, all the photos being of U.S. soldiers. We held up pictures of Iraqis and reminded her that Iraqis also suffer and die. Then she told us she couldn’t talk to us, nor could any of her staff.

The receptionist said that all of the staff were busy, and that they must make themselves available to people who come into the office from “off the street.”

We pointed out that we’d just come in from “off the street.”

The staffers and their supervisors respected our right to be there. They shunned us, but didn’t arrest us.

Anyone working behind the partition might easily have seen or heard us, and I’m guessing that when we left, about two hours later, the workers were curious about the group of people who spoke earnestly about the connection they felt with the White Rose. We left behind dozens of white roses, laid upon enlarged photo portraits of ordinary Iraqis, and also forming a bouquet over a poster bearing the names of 142 military service members from Illinois killed in Iraq. Another poster bore the names of the White Rose members indicted for their active resistance to war and the holocaust.

Did Emanuel’s staff sweep up the roses, pictures and lists, without another word, and dispense of them in a waste basket? I don’t know, but I don’t think memories are dispensed with so easily.

What might anyone listening have heard, last Friday morning, in Rep. Emanuel’s office?

Chris Spicer, a Jesuit studying at Loyola University, read a prayer which he had carefully written, in Arabic. Abby Strozinksi, also a Loyola student, held aloft a poster she’d made the previous night. On it she’d drawn a long-stemmed rose and written words from the fourth White Rose leaflet: “We will not be silent. We are your bad conscience. The White Rose will not leave you in peace.” Justin McMahon, who, like Abby, majors in peace and justice studies, noted that the White Rose members risked their lives to end the war. “Shouldn’t we take risks, now?” asked Justin. “Sophie Scholl’s voice is echoed through our voice; it’s a message that’s not welcomed, not a priority for many people. But we have a connection to people who’ve died.”

Erin Cox read aloud our letter to Rahm Emanuel. We asked him to vote against any additional funding for the war in and occupation of Iraq, to oppose any further military action against Iraq, and to support complete withdrawal of all U.S. military forces from Iraq.

Several people spoke about the “burden of knowing,” –after studying the consequences of the war, listening to eyewitness testimony, researching the bloated military budget, and learning more about people who bear the consequences, how could we remain silent?

Before leaving, we agreed to briefly state our names and say something about what groups we represented. We came from Voices; from colleges; from the Catholic Worker movement; from labor unions; from faith based communities; from the neighborhood and elsewhere. Spontaneously, the youngest members of our group identified themselves as citizens of the world, a part of humanity, members of the global neighborhood and at one with global brotherhood and sisterhood.

Then we read this quote from the White Rose’s first leaflet:

“Nothing is so unworthy of a civilized nation as allowing itself to be governed without opposition by an irresponsible clique that has yielded to base instinct. It is certain that today every honest German is ashamed of his government. Who among us has any conception of the dimensions of shame that will befall us and our children when one day the veil has fallen from our eyes and the most horrible of crimes – crimes that infinitely outdistance every human measure – reach the light of day?

If the German people are already so corrupted and spiritually crushed that they do not raise a hand, frivolously trusting in a questionable faith in lawful order of history; if they surrender man’s highest principle, that which raises him above all other god’s creatures, his free will; if they abandon the will to take decisive action and turn the wheel of history and thus subject it to their own rational decision; if they are so devoid of all individuality, have already gone so far along the road downward turning into a spiritless and cowardly mass – then, yes, they deserve their downfall.”

PHOTOS OF WHITE ROSE ACTION

White Rose Action Leaflet (photo: Laurie Hasbrook)

Conversing with Emanuel’s Staff (photo: S. Sheridan)

Remembering Iraqi Citizens (photo: S. Sheridan): We ask: “Does Representative Emanuel have photos of Iraqis harmed by the war lining the hall outside his office?”

Le Anne Clausen (photo: Laurie Hasbrook): Le Anne Clausen, seminarian at Chicago Theological Seminary, joins us in remembering the White Rose. Le Anne lived in Iraq with Christian Peacemaker Teams. She will soon begin a jail sentence for nonviolent resistance at the School of the Americas.

Remember the Dead (photo: S. Sheridan): We recall those whose lives have been lost and disrupted: Iraqi citizens, U.S. soldiers, members of the White Rose resistance movement.

Remembrance: Dan Gerber of Christian Peacemaker Teams. Let the challenge of the White Rose move us to resistance to the Iraq war.

Justin McMahon Reading White Rose Leaflet

Remembrance and Action (photo: S. Sheridan): Chris Spicer, Abby Strozinksy, Tyler Chen and David Hovde (Tyler and David are members of Reba Community in Evanston, IL).

Concluding Gathering (photo: S. Sheridan)

Recommitting to Resistance: We Will Not Be Silent (photo: S. Sheridan)

From the Outside Looking In: Resisting War - Remembering Iraq (photo: Laurie Hasbrook)

VCNV Author

Kathy Kelly

Traveling Light

Kathy Kelly — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 11:39:12 -0600

Short Information Teaser

Kathy Kelly writes from Jordan

Excerpt

December 6, 2007

Traveling with as light a load as possible is something I long for during long stretches away from home. I routinely discard paperwork and periodicals, “recycle” gifts and give away clothing. But, here in Amman, Jordan, when a ten year-old Iraqi girl named Nauras gave me a camera, I quickly put it in the envelope where I keep my money, confident it would survive my next purge.

The camera consists of two pieces of drawing paper, cleverly folded so that the parts slide past each other, opening up a tiny square “shutter.” I think of Nauras peering through the shutter and pretending to snap my picture, then gleefully posing for imaginary snapshots as I take my turn as photographer. I remember her fetching her only other toy, a bedraggled baby doll with long white hair and eyes of aqua blue, and placing it in my arms.

Body

December 6, 2007

Photo by Emily Crawford

Fortunately, Nauras is playful and inventive; for the time being, she seems somewhat oblivious to the desperate insecurity she and her family face. But Nauras, though she seems to register it but little, is no stranger to tragedy. Growing up she daily saw her father’s fingerless right hand, a brutal message from Saddam Hussein’s government which left Nauras’ mother the family’s sole breadwinner, and for which, following the U.S. invasion, Nauras’ parents had hoped to obtain overseas medical care, traveling here to Jordan seeking a German visa. But a series of catastrophes have ensured that, barring a miracle, they will never complete this journey.

First their travel money, kept in their Amman apartment, was stolen in a burglary. Then they discovered their desperate need of it, as word arrived from Baghdad that their oldest daughter, staying behind like Naurus with relatives there, was to be abducted and slain by a group of the kidnappers so horribly active then and now in the city, if they didn’t quickly produce as ransom the money they had just lost. When Nauras’ father rushed back to Baghdad to rescue his daughter and his other children, he never arrived. His family has heard nothing; he has disappeared. An uncle brought two of Nauras’ sisters here to Jordan, and then Nauras and a third. She hasn’t seen her father, or her only brother whom she left behind in Baghdad, since she was seven, a third of her life ago.

Since 2004, Nauras’s mother has tried to manage in Jordan, living in a humble dwelling with no furniture apart from a few cushions that line the walls and four beds shared by her and her four daughters. Her only son, age 18, is still in Baghdad, living with relatives. She hasn’t seen him for three years. He called the night before I visited her, distressed because he has no money and no job and no one to whom he can turn. Jordanian authorities won’t allow him to cross the border and join his family.

Here in Jordan, a judge recently decreed that Nauras’s mother is now divorced, since she hasn’t seen her husband for three years and doesn’t know if he is alive or dead. Her new legal status as a single mother may entitle her to some assistance, but so far the support that charities can provide has dramatically lessened. More cutbacks are predicted at the beginning of next year, and prices for food and fuel are rising steadily.

Already in debt to someone who is charging 15% interest, she wondered how she could manage to procure a heater and fuel for the cold months ahead. She showed me the inside of her empty refrigerator, shut off to save costly power and infested with large bugs. The smell of sewage fills the second of their two rented rooms as paint peels from the drab and dismally bare walls.

When I said goodbye to Nauras’s mother, I urged her to try to stay strong. With her face turned from little Nauras, her eyes filled with tears. She must somehow hide her misery and fear from Nauras, who still delights in make believe snapshots of friendly faces.

Nauras’s camera is a keeper. It will join three other items so important to me I try to carry them with me wherever I go. The first is a picture of an old Russian man, beggared and homeless, stooped in a street in Moscow, covered with a layer of frost. It reminds me of the awful misery even the preparation for war brings – in this case to the poor that the U.S. and Soviet Union failed to support in favor of a mad and wasteful race to best each other at acquiring the means for global destruction. The second item is a photo, quite famous, of a starving child standing in desert sands, alongside an expectant vulture.

The third item is a printed speech by Muriel Lester, delivered at one of the many nonviolence trainings she pioneered in her decades of tireless activism at the start of the twentieth century. Though I’m keeping these items to travel with, along with Nauras’ camera, I’d nevertheless like to “re-gift” Ms. Lester’s words to you here; a paper gift like Nauras’, but maybe one which offers an imaginary picture of ourselves “traveling light:”

“Remember that the possession of a healthy, free and unoppressed mind can be ours if we are willing to observe the necessary discipline… The golden rule to keep unswervingly, unflinchingly, is to never grow slack. Whatever the form of discipline you adopt as your own, let it be as beautifully balanced, as poised, as the supple body of a ballerina…

To disarm — not only our bodies by refusing to kill, or make killing instruments in munitions factories — but also to disarm our minds of anger, pride, envy, hate and malice…

Sometime in the cold light before dawn, in an unexpected moment of solitude, we suddenly find ourselves facing stark reality — our future, the world’s future, war, pain, hunger.

We feel almost intimidated as we consider the condition of men and things. ‘One half the world is sick, fat with excess. The other half, like that poor beggar past us even now, who thanked us for a crust with tears.’ The issue becomes clear and urgent:

Are we going to spend our lives struggling and fighting for a place in the fat half? Or shall we tilt against the old spectres of war and inequality, unmasking them, stripping them of their glamour, revealing them as old fashioned imposters and tyrants we can no longer tolerate in a world that might be full of common sense, plenty and goodwill?”

Just up the street from where I’m staying in Amman, Jordan, several dozen Iraqis traveled from all parts of their country to participate in a week of nonviolence training carried out in the spirit of Muriel Lester. The sessions were organized by an Iraqi human rights group, Al Massalla in collaboration with Un Ponte Per, an Italian Non Governmental Organization based in Amman. The group concluded the first part of their training with a resolve to organize, in 2008, a weeklong action next year throughout Iraq, a public demonstration of nonviolent determination in a country where political action can be horribly dangerous. They laughed and applauded as they exchanged certificates for the training and then posed for photos, already a remarkably courageous act for what are planning soon to do, and for where they’re planning to do it. Over the next several days, representatives from this, the third gathering in their untiring campaign, will strategize with representatives of similar networks developing all around the region.

Do they with their certificates have as little chance of producing a happy picture in Iraq as Nauras with her paper camera? This is a harsh, harsh world to journey in – and if we travel at all we’re going to have to travel light. We can each choose small things to strengthen us in the journey – here in Jordan endangered Naurus is surviving on imagination, a small item which nevertheless gives her a better world to look at than the one she’s stranded in. And for their journey my friends from the training have chosen hope, and their determination born of hope, to be themselves a “make-believe picture” of the justice and kindness which, if and only if we join them, may yet come to be the world we walk through.

Kathy Kelly, , co-coordinates Voices for Creative Nonviolence, www.vcnv.org

VCNV Author

Kathy Kelly

We Shouldn’t Be Causing This

voices — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 15:03:48 -0500

Short Information Teaser

Amman, Jordan: British teenager, Sonia, recently spent four days interviewing Iraqi youth

Excerpt

Amman, Jordan
August 22, 2007

Here in Amman, Jordan, a British teenager, Sonia, age 12, recently spent four days interviewing and befriending Iraqi youngsters close to her in age. She wanted to learn, firsthand, about the experiences of Iraqi youngsters who have fled war and violence in their home country.

A versatile and talented child, Sonia loves to play the trumpet and perform classical Indian dances, the latter being somewhat unusual for a Muslim girl. When she was eight years old, shortly before the U.S. and the U.K. attacked Iraq, she wrote a poem urging respect for the rights of Iraqi children whose lives and hopes would be destroyed by war. The poem reached many people, intensifying efforts of peace activists to stop the war before it started. Sonia continued her efforts on behalf of Iraqi children, even founding an organization called “Children Against War.”

Body

Amman, Jordan
August 22, 2007

In the spring of 2007, she asked her mother if she could raise money through music and dance performances, to pay for a trip to Amman, so that she could film Iraqi children speaking for themselves. After talking it over with other peace activists, her mother agreed to accompany Sonia, and so, last week, they arrived here for a four day trip.

We began our visits at the home of two teenage girls who speak English fluently. They have been living in Amman, Jordan for seven years, having left Iraq when Saddam Hussein’s regime was in charge. Their father still is not allowed to work in Jordan, and so the family has almost no income. Sonia later told me that the easygoing manner of her first interviewees helped her get over feeling nervous about filming people.

Next, Sonia met 16 year old Abeer, who spoke enough English to communicate with Sonia about common interests. They listed favorite singers and film stars: Shakira, Hilary Duff, Beyonce, and Brad Pitt. Abeer showed Sonia dance steps she has been learning, and the two of them danced a bit to music played on a mobile phone. Abeer then began to show Sonia pictures downloaded onto the mobile, photos of her cousins in Baghdad and of Baghdad monuments.

At one point, Abeer raised her eyebrows and announced “This is an explosion,” and clicked onto a horrifying photo of wreckage following a car bombing she had witnessed. “I was sitting in an office,” said Abeer, “waiting for my mother. And I was holding a baby, another mother’s baby. I was playing with this baby, and then the bomb exploded and the baby was gone! I don’t know what happened, just that next I saw the baby on the floor and she was crying for her mother.” Abeer’s terrified panic was followed by sheer relief, once she realized the baby was alive.

At another home, Sonia and her mother were laughing with four Iraqi teenagers over who supported Manchester’s soccer team and who was for Liverpool’s. The conversation abruptly changed as younger sisters translated for their 19 year old brother who recalled that when he was 16 he was kidnapped, in Iraq. . His family worked for several days, collecting $15,000 to secure his release. He explained that throughout his ordeal, his captors chained one of his ankles and suspended him upside down from the ceiling.

Sonia’s watchful mother exchanged glances with me. Was this too much for young Sonia to absorb?

That night, Sonia awoke from a dream crying out, “I shouldn’t be filming this. I shouldn’t be filming this.”

Her mother worries about protecting her child from being overwhelmed by the accounts she has heard. Yet Sonia’s mother also feels remorse for all of the youngsters whom Sonia interviewed. “What protection is there,” she asked, “for the children to whom this has happened?”

Many people believe that protection lies primarily in being able to use threat and force against enemies. Yet Sonia and the Iraqi teenagers whom she interviewed showed the potential to build security by forming friendships and expressing mutual empathy.

Gifts were spontaneously offered. Abeer took a ring from her finger and slid it onto Sonia’s finger. Another young girl removed her prayer scarf and gave it to Sonia, asking that they remember each other when they pray. Families served whatever they could, ranging from a full meal to a shared glass of water.

During Sonia’s visit, I read an August 17th Jordan Times article about a strange set of “gifts” which the U.S. will deliver to this region, ostensibly to ensure greater security. Summarizing the multibillion dollar military aid agreement, the AFP article reported that “Washington will boost its military aid to Israel, providing $30 billion in assistance over a decade…The US military bonanza includes a $20 billion weapons package for Saudi Arabia, a $13 billion package for Egypt, and reportedly arms deals worth at least $20 billion for other Gulf allies.”

It’s difficult to comprehend how peace and security in the region can be achieved by fueling a new arms race and destructive wars to come. The billions of dollars spent on U.S. war in Iraq have led to countless tragedies, a mere handful of which were related to Sonia during her brief trip.

Please “stay tuned” for Sonia’s film. The exchanges she recorded represent a trustworthy form of person-to-person “diplomacy.”

I can’t know what nightmare fears awakened her when she cried out, “I shouldn’t be filming this.” I hope she’ll be soothed by appreciation for her initiative. I think she’ll help many adults cry out, “We shouldn’t be causing this.”

Kathy Kelly () is a co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence

VCNV Author

Kathy Kelly

Get To Work!

voices — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 06:01:48 -0500

Short Information Teaser

Kathy Kelly writes from Amman, Jordan of the responsibility for displaced Iraqis

Excerpt

Amman, Jordan
August 13, 2007

“GET A JOB!” These three words are very familiar to activists bearing signs calling for an end to war, whether standing on street corners, walking along highways, holding vigils, or nonviolently occupying the offices of elected representatives. Listen to the activists, and you’ll often hear, “We’re doing our job. We’re trying.”

I’m convinced that our work must always have one foot placed in nonviolent resistance to the forces that design and wage wars, with the other foot standing among people who bear the physical and mental affliction caused by these forces. Today, I’m thinking especially about two young women who found themselves in nightmare circumstances because, in their view, they simply wanted to have a job.

Body

Amman, Jordan
August 13, 2007

When American troops invaded Iraq in 2003, Noor (not her name), was living with her aunt in a small town near Baghdad. The aunt received a minimal “retirement” salary from the former Iraqi government. As a young teenager, Noor had left her family to assist the aunt and to enter college there. She felt deep and strong attachments to people in her town, and she loved her aunt intensely. After graduating, still living with her aunt, Noor didn’t want to become a burden to her parents who were already being supported by her brothers. She wanted to earn money and a measure of independence. When a neighbor suggested she come with him to the place where he worked, she was surprised by how easily she had become employed, working to inspect the handbags and purses of people entering the workplace of a large American contractor. Initially, when troops began occupying her town, residents could walk the streets without much anxiety. Working for an American company didn’t seem to carry grave danger.

Two months later, that had already ended. The company told her and her neighbor to take at least three weeks off due to increasing violence, at the end of which, Noor returned to work while the neighbor who got her the job declined to. She had a fifteen-minute taxi ride to work. One morning, after waking at 6, preparing breakfast for her aunt, saying her morning prayers, and going out to the spot where she would catch her morning taxi, she was approached on the street and shot twice in the face with a gun. It was the last thing she will ever see: she awoke in a hospital with no left eye and no vision in her right.

Even after she left her aunt’s home to avert more revenge attacks, her aunt would be threatened by men who came to ask where Noor was, was she still alive. The aunt had had to pack up all her belongings and flee the neighborhood where she’d lived so many years. Noor feels great sadness, remembering this suffering, on her account, of her aunt, who has since died. Now, in Amman, Noor is herself a displaced person, a refugee, still determined to find as much independence as possible. But in the many hours that she spends alone, she struggles with her memories.

Nadra (not her name) had graduated from college like Noor, in the years before the U.S. invasion, and had intended, like Noor, to use her skills to better herself and her family. When the war came, her fluency in English got her work as a translator for the U.S. military. She was aware of the dangers, but took her chances and continued on the job through a year of worsening circumstances. One day after work, her customary driver called her with the message that his car was broken. So, instead, she flagged a cab and headed towards home. Suddenly, the car stopped and two men entered the back seat. It became a nightmare of torture. They kidnapped her, beat, burned and raped her. Later that night, the men released her, shoving her out of a car onto a deserted road. Nadra quickly left Baghdad for the home of relatives, but the nightmare continued there: their son, perhaps on her account, was kidnapped and killed. Sent to yet another family of relatives, the same awful thing occurred: the abduction and killing of their son. After that, Nadra’s extended family worked together to send her into exile, here in Amman.

She has been here eight months. She would like to find work, but lacking permanent residency status here, she would risk arrest and deportation if caught working. It’s very difficult for her to meet monthly expenses. What’s more, she spends too much time alone and often feels severe anxiety. “I’m exhausted by my memories,” says Nadra, eyes downcast. “But, I can’t forget.”

Already completely dependent on charity in a foreign country, these young Iraqi women refugees wonder if there can be a future for them in the United States, on whose account they have suffered so badly.

At least 750,000 Iraqis have fled to Jordan, but many thousands still have not been officially registered with the United Nations High Commission for Refugees. The August 9th issue of Jordan’s weekly newspaper, The Star, reports that among the 57,000 Iraqis who have been registered since the beginning of the year, “12,000 have been victims of torture and need psychological and medical care.”

Will Noor and Nadra be lost in the crowd? Some think that, as former U.S.-paid translators and security workers, they may have a chance for rescue if Congress, the Department of State, the Department of Homeland Security and other agencies deem them harmless enough to become naturalized Americans. But having paid such a dreadful price for those jobs, it is cruel to suggest that they enjoy some sort of advantage over the hundreds of thousands of others who also fled Iraq since the war began.

At one point the Danish government sent a rescue team to Iraq to bring all Iraqis they could find who’d worked for them to safety and resettlement in Denmark. Noor and Nadra can’t help but wonder whether and when the United States will come for them, waiting, day after day, for some word from the U.S. Embassy here in Amman.

But now is not the time for resettlement of Iraqis in America. The watchword here is Arab terrorism, and Noor and Nadra, once hired so quickly by Americans in need of Iraqi workers, are subject to long background and security checks in a process that could last for months or years.

We Americans already enjoy the tremendous advantage Noor and Nadra seek — we can speak freely, with no real threat to our personal safety. It is now time for us to speak for displaced Iraqis and admit to our responsibility for their plight. We caused this war. Simply by paying our taxes, by not resisting, by not using our tremendous resources to make our democratic country behave democratically, we caused it. We can blame Noor’s and Nadra’s attackers - but can anyone think of a war that didn’t create spiraling revenge and retaliation? Some argue we’re not 100% responsible for this aftermath. Is it 90%? Are we 80%? 70%? What percent of Noor’s blindness, of Nadra’s status as the mark of death on any family who houses her - what percent of that can we be comfortable with?

We must end this war. We can’t just blame it on Bush, as though he will somehow turn around and suddenly become a responsible leader. We must hold accountable those who bear responsibility in the Senate and the House of Representatives and insist that they stop funding the war and instead fund and facilitate relocation and a decent life and livelihood for those displaced by our war.

In the last account, Noor and Nadra were punished for trying to get to work.

“GET A JOB?!” If ever you hear this taunt, signal agreement. Yes, it’s time we got to work. And we have to get to work every day.

Kathy Kelly () co-coordinates Voices for Creative Nonviolence which is organizing “The Occupation Project.” a campaign of nonviolent resistance to U.S. funding for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. For more information about support for Iraqis who have fled to Jordan, see Electroniciraq.net Direct Aid Initiative

VCNV Author

Kathy Kelly