A Bridge to Peace in Iraq

Aansluitend op de getuigenis hiervoor, wil ik jullie het interview niet onthouden met een lid van het Iraq Peace Team van Voices in the Wilderness, net terug uit Bagdad.

QUESTION: You returned this weekend from an almost month long stay in Iraq with a Voices in the Wilderness Peace Team. What was an ordinary guy like you doing in a place like that? What compelled you to go?
I'd long been aware of the effect that the U.S.-led U.N. sanctions have had on the Iraqi population for almost a year before I actually reached the level of frustration necessary to impel me into researching the situation, so that I would have the necessary facts to counter my friends' arguments whenever I broached the subject. I took Scott Ritter and Ramsey Clark's books out of the library and that was the beginning. Sitting there, absorbing the stunning information that came pouring out at me in an almost volcanic negation of all I had believed to be true about Iraq and our government's relationship to them going back to the 70's, I felt terribly alone, as though isolated in my grief at the magnitude of our nation's sins. Probably the single piece of information that has sustained me through those moments of hopelessness before such enormities is this figure: 5000 children a month are dying as a direct result of our foreign policy. That, right there, is enough to motivate me to go anywhere I might be in some way be instrumental in stopping this genocide.
QUESTION: Why did you hook up with Voices in the Wilderness? What are they about?
Voices in the Wilderness is the Chicago-based group that has been working to end the sanctions since 1996. I saw founder Kathy Kelly speak in Albany over a year ago and she made me want to go to Iraq-that night! Unfortunately, like any intoxication of the moment, this passionate response had evaporated by morning. What followed was a year of sending monetary contributions to Voices, as the vague fantasy grew that I myself might one day wind up in Iraq started growing. When a good friend informed me that Voices was planning some long-term delegations to Iraq, even as the war clouds gathered, I figured it was now or never.
QUESTION: You must have had some fears before you left: we were talking about bombing and, in fact, your trip was an illegal action? How'd you handle that?
Yeah, I had lots of fears, all the legitimate fears that any fairly intelligent person would have about going to a country that was on the verge of being invaded. Becoming a hostage? Getting shot by some gung ho young marine? Being bombed, becoming imprisoned or fined by my own government? Could I become another victim of the depleted uranium our country used during the Gulf War; DU dust and its decomposition into the soil and water of Southern Iraq are responsible for the incredible rise in cancer and genetic mutations in the country since 1990.
But then you put all those fears in one hand, and those 5000 innocent kids in the other hand, and the fears start looking a lot like selfishness
QUESTION: Where did you stay? Who were the other Americans who were there with you? What did you do while you were there? What kind of freedom of movement or access did you have?
We stayed in a hotel, the "Al-Farnar", which must have been fairly comfy 12 years ago, before sanctions. Our group had a pretty varied itinerary which included interviews with a DU/cancer researcher, an oncologist at a children's cancer clinic, an a former ambassador to the U.N., open-air markets, art galleries and museums, mosques and shrines, Referendum voting stations in Babylon. The members of our Iraq Peace Team were from all parts of the U.S., Canada, Great Britain, and Ireland. We were originally pretty unrestricted in our movements, although we were aware that at all times we were being monitored. You have to remember that this is a country that could not properly ascertain who all these supposed peace activists might actually be. One member of our party made the foolish mistake of going to a park near the Tigris River with binoculars and a map of Baghdad. He quite innocently wanted to check out the local bird population. Needless to say, within 15 minutes he was sitting in a police station trying to explain himself. It all turned out all right, but the incident only illustrated the precarious nature of our stay in Iraq, and it was decided that we should move about in relatively large groups to make the monitoring process a little easier for the police.
QUESTION: How did the Iraqi people you encountered react to Americans in Baghdad?
We always carried something we called the "magic sheet". This was an 8 and a half by 11 sheet of paper with an explanation in English and in Arabic of our mission. That, and the Iraqis' natural hospitality and friendliness, made us welcome with anyone we met. But even without the magic sheet, we encountered nothing but warmth and interest, smiles and best wishes for what they considered our bravery in coming to Iraq.
QUESTION: Does this attitude towards Americans as people translate into the Iraqi people's attitude towards our foreign policy? How does our foreign policy play on the streets of Baghdad?
Succinctly, I heard over and over "we don't blame you, we blame your government for what's happening". With all that we've put them thru, I wonder if we Americans could be as generous had another country so systematically and completely demolished our standard of living, and in the process killed a million and a half of our people. By the way, there was never any doubt about the "why" of our government's foreign policy. "It's the oil they want, we understand that much," was an oft repeated phrase
QUESTION: How would you say, then, that the often heralded "dancing in the streets" on the heels of an American invasion will play out?
Let's be clear about this: no one there, to say nothing of the rest of the world, minus the Israeli government and Tony Blair, wants this conflict. They are all too aware of every potentially horrendous scenario should the U.S. attack them-the invasion or stepped up bombing in the Kurdish north by Turkey, the consolidation of central Iraq with Jordan, the incursion of Iran into the Shi'ia south, the untold hundreds of thousands who will die, the lack of water and food, endless civil wars, more DU blasted into their environment to say nothing of the horrible new weapons that the U.S. and the U.K. are testing and may very well use on the Iraqis: microwave rays that raise the skin temperature to 130 degrees and another ray that "temporarily" blinds......Every conceivable scenario is being played out in their imaginations and none of it is very pretty. Picture yourself bracing for an attack by the world's only superpower, and nowhere to run, no one to turn to for protection! Thinking about your wife, your brother in the army, your kids. No, no Iraqi is looking forward to this other than the criminal element, who will always make a profit on the misfortunes of others
QUESTION: In your "Declaration", your stated reasons for going to Baghdad, which, I understand, you shared ahead with Clinton, Schumer, McNulty as well as the US State Department, you indicated a series of intentions:
To contribute to the criminally small trickle of medical supplies that reach Iraq. To write, photograph, interview, and otherwise witness for the Iraqi people. To work toward making the situation known to the American public, where the American mass media has done its utmost to bolster the insane militarism that is being passed as a cogent and workable foreign policy. To publish articles and interviews amassed during my stay in Iraq. To speak on as many college campuses as possible, where young people need to be told what kind of world they are going to inherit when their government refuses to sign the Kyoto Accords, refuses to join the International Criminal Court, tosses out treaties as soon as it no longer suits their purposes, destroys the environment while sating their appetite for oil wealth in the Arctic, and assures them that the astronomical cost of The Star Wars System will be offset by the security it provides them, even as a man with a nuclear weapon in his suitcase calmly walks across the Canadian border and gets on a train bound for New York. To non-violently protest the usurpation by this government of the democratic principles that were once the birthright of the American people, and now will have to be reasserted, re-won from those who are giving the citizens of this country a black eye around the world. A year after 9/11, international sympathy for that catastrophe has virtually disappeared. The rest of the world is not afraid of Saddam Hussein; they're worried about what the Americans are going to do, what part of the world they're going to destabilize next, what closed door deal will next result in thousands having their lives further degraded, what ruthless dictator installed by the CIA will next merit this administration's appellation of "champion of freedom and democratic principles".
In terms of witnessing to the effects on a people of more than a decade of economic sanctions as well as the effects of a war designed to destroy the very infrastructure of a "modern state", what do you want to tell us? What should Americans and our government representatives know? That the destruction of the very means of survival, water, food, and air, is inhuman, illegal, and should be thought of as un-American.
QUESTION: You also talk about your action as a non-violent witness against those "provocative and belligerent" US policies towards the Middle East. How do you define those policies? What's driving them? What do we need to say to each other and our representatives to uncloak them? To counter them?
That people don't wake up in the morning with the brilliant and original idea that this would be a good day to make a terrorist assault on America. When people decide that they've been disempowered, insulted, their governments bought off, their future limited or truncated, their human rights trampled on and sneered at, and their present become tenuous at best, they turn to terrorism. Do you know what it must take for someone to strap a bomb to themselves and do the thoroughly reprehensible thing of blowing themselves up in a supermarket? While I was in Iraq, it was pointed out to me on a couple of instances that many of these potential terrorists will be coming from among members of the so-called "Pepsi" generation: the ones who have a little affluence, the ones who are educated and have the leisure and the wealth and the intelligence to concoct the devilish schemes that result in the deaths of massive numbers of innocent people, out of a sense of frustration at the inequities they see around them, and their own corrupt and intransigent governments, which we have been propping up. It is not the downtrodden who hatch these grandiose schemes such as the WTT tragedy; the hopeless are limited to what they can strap on their bodies or carry in their hands. Our government and our citizens need to somehow grasp that violence as a state policy will have but one result, more violence, and that Iraq and Palestine are just the contemporary outposts of the cataclysms that await the world if we continue to pursue a program of trusting in our money and our guns to get what we want.
QUESTION: Finally, has your trip to Iraq put any edge on your understanding of what those "democratic", "sustaining principles " are which, as you say in your declaration, should define us in the world and which you state are "the envy of people" under totalitarian regimes? Is there, to your mind" an alternative to democracy "imposed at the end of a gun" which will ensure our security and moral leadership in the world?
Apparently, Mr. Rumsfeld who is charged with our defense has a sign on his desk that reads: "aggressive fighting for the right is the noblest sport the world affords". What would the sign on your desk read?
We seem to believe in the childish notion that we can impose democracy. Rather than pursuing the project of the moment, whether it's making a grab for a sovereign nation's natural resources, allowing the Israeli government to brutalize the Palestinians while arming them with a nuclear arsenal to an extent they could never need, frightening the American people so as to justify our 300 billion dollar war budget while arming the whole Middle East and destabilizing every government we seek an alliance with by inflaming its citizenry to revolt and acts of violence in retribution for that very alliance.....rather than all that, we should be using our great wealth as a tool for implementing a carefully considered, long range plan for solidifying our international relationships, and demonstrating the economic benefits of those relationships to nations bent on courses of self-interest and violence. We should be working to set an example of what sustainable, environmentally-friendly commercial and industrial development might entail, and to setting ourselves the noble goal of empowering developing nations to feed their populations. We should be in the forefront of the campaign to make clean water available to everyone on the planet, rather than conniving how we can use inevitable shortages to turn a profit. We need to decide, finally, what kind of people we are, what kind of image we want to portray, and just what is and isn't our role in the global picture. For the last 50 years, we have been a nation busy putting out fires, even as we've been, particularly in the Middle East, handing out the matches.
In answer to the question "What would the sign on my desk read?" I'd, off the top of my head, answer: "Play nice and share your toys".
QUESTION: Leave us with a few verbal "snapshots" from your Iraqi sojourn that you feel might tell all.
A few snapshots?
Nazar, an artist: "Joe, they've put us in a box. It's like we're watching the rest of
the world as a movie that we're not in. Just give us 5 years, just 5 years of
peace, and we'd bloom like a flower."
Ghazwan, anti-sanctions activist: "Last night my wife wakes up in the middle of
the night, she says, 'what will we do, what will we do?' I said 'we'll sit right
here in our house and wait for the bombs to fall, and pray.' Now I ask you, is
that any way to live?"
Dr. Alim Yacoub, medical professor: "DU is a weapon of mass destruction. We
call it 'the Iraqi Curse'. It is your novel job to communicate this message to the
rest of the world.'"
Mohammed Ghani, sculptor: "If you drink from the waters of the Tigris, you
will surely come back to Baghdad." Me: "If I drink from the Tigris,
Mohammed, I'll probably get sick!"
Diar, waiter (referring to the 1991 bombing of Baghdad): "My aunt was taking a
shower, I was preparing for exams, we heard loud thunder, all of us got
panicked, my aunt cried, 'They're bombing, they're bombing!' We put the light
out and stay (sic) awake till morning. We can't sleep."
Dr. Makki, oncologist: "They say they are coming here to liberate us, for
humanity purpose (sic). This is not humanity purpose! In '91, they bomb the
hospital, 31 died. More than 24 bombings near my house, for 4 months, the
children are crying....."
Mithal, doorman: "You know what 'Mithal' means in Arabic? Means 'example'.
So, I am pretty good example of Mithal, what you think, Joe?"
Jon Rice, peace activist: "You know, I've had a good life. I'm 55 years old now,
and I think that if I had to die while I was over here (in Baghdad), it wouldn't be
such a bad thing. To die fighting for peace."

arch/ive/ief (2000 - 2005)

A Bridge to Peace in Iraq

by Ramsi Kysia Sunday, Nov. 10, 2002 at 6:41 PM

Interview with Joe Quandt, returning from Baghdad.

by Dirk Adriaensens Sunday, Nov. 10, 2002 at 10:44 PM