Anna Riatti, Baghdad coordinator of the Italian NGO "Bridges to Baghdad," is passionate and usually cheerful about her work. But her voice drops when she talks about George Bush's threatened war, "It will be a disaster. I don't want to think about it. The Iraqis are still here, they are still alive - they are incredible. After 10 years of war, after 12 years of embargo, you are surprised how they are still managing. They are really fantastic, and they are so kind, so kind. [but] after the bombing, what can they do? The UN will leave, the NGOs will leave. Afterwards there will be civil war. I cannot imagine it. I don't want to think about it."

How do you face the mass destruction of human beings? As peaceworkers living in an Iraq under sanctions and
the threat of war, it's a question we all struggle with. Fabio Alberti, president of Bridges to Baghdad answers it simply enough by pointing out that, "it's not enough to help people without targeting the causes of their suffering, and it's not enough to do political work without having a concrete element to help people."

Bridges is in many ways a model for our work as peacemakers. In Italy, they organize demonstrations and direct actions, bring fact-finding delegations to Iraq, and advocate for political change. In Iraq, they provide humanitarian assistance to those in need. 

Alongside Voices in the Wilderness UK, Bridges helped bust sanctions by illegally importing half a ton of
Iraqi dates into Britain last Christmas. Alongside other Italian activists, they helped bring 1.5 million people into the streets of Italy in a massive anti-war protest earlier this month.

In Iraq, Bridges to Baghdad has provided over $2.5 million in medicine and medical equipment over the last 10 years. They opened the Sindibad children's diarrhea clinic in the Southern city of Basra. Chronic diarrhea, due to contaminated drinking water, is the leading cause of death among Iraqi children. The clinic has treated over 50,000 children since it was established in 1998. Bridges has rehabilitated 2 water treatment plants that were destroyed by the U.S. in the Gulf War, and helped provide light maintenance to 15 others, in and around Basra. As a result, almost 80,000 people now have safe drinking water.  

Next to massively increased childhood mortality, the disruption of the educational system in Iraq is one of
the most terrible consequences of sanctions. The future of any country is in its education. Of all the sectors of Iraqi society, education is the worst hit, and the one that has not yet even begun to recover.  

Education is cash intensive, and under the Oil-for-Food program - no cash is allowed into Iraq. 
You can't import a school. You can't import teachers or teacher training. Schools are so overcrowded that they've been forced to operate 2, and sometimes 3, separate shifts a day. Teacher salaries are roughly $5 a month. And even though it only costs $15,000 to rehabilitate a school in Iraq, thousands remain in such disrepair that UNICEF maintains that "[t]he state of many of the schools in Iraq is not just a disincentive to education but also a public health hazard for children." (Situation of Children in Iraq, UNICEF 2002)

Bridges to Baghdad is at the front of the fight against the de-education of Iraqi society. They are rehabilitating schools, starting summer school and after-school programs, providing textbooks, helping train teachers, and - at the college level – promoting cooperation between Italian and Iraqi Universities in Medicine, Engineering, Architecture and Archeology. 

I asked Fabio about the coming war, and he stared at me, silent, for several moments before answering. "I
can't think about it," he said. "I can't imagine it. What I see here is that every single family depends on a basket of food distributed by the government, imported under Oil-for-Food. If this chain is interrupted, there will be a lot of deaths. The starvation will be great. If war lasts - we are really scared that it will not be a short war, there is a danger it will be a long, civil war - civilians will be hit, not only by indirect consequences, but by direct consequences. 

"We cannot play with the lives of people, especially we cannot with the lives of innocent people. This country has already lost hundreds of thousands of people. We are the most powerful people in the world - white, Western people. We are trying to manage the world as our property. We are consuming 80% of the resources of the world, and that, finally, brings us here - to this situation in Iraq. Our security depends on finding a new way to manage our lives - not on war. There is a diplomatic way to solve the crisis – we have to try everything we can. 
 
"I feel like my soul is in danger. I'm afraid for my soul. Violence calls new violence and it may never end. It will come to our homes. And I feel scared for my Iraqi sons. Our activities have saved the lives of hundreds of children and I know their faces, their names. People think about places like Afghanistan, like Iraq, as something abstract. For me it's difficult not to see Zeina, to see Mohammed, when I think of Iraq. They are not abstract. They are very real."

Bridges to Baghdad is a model of how to struggle against war, and Anna and Fabio are some of my heroes.
Facing the mass destruction of human life in Iraq,  I wonder if George Bush knows that the human beings his
war will consume are as real as he is? I wonder whether we - as a race, as the human race - will ever find the strength to once and for all overcome the hatreds and greed that drive war. Most of all, I wonder if George Bush has ever felt his soul in danger, and if he has then how dare he destroy these people? 

If we would build a bridge to Baghdad that will never be destroyed, perhaps the place to start is in those
souls of all who dream of war.

-----
Ramzi Kysia is an Arab-American peace activist, working with the Education for Peace in Iraq Center
(www.epic-usa.org). From August-October 2002, he was co-coordinator of the Voices in the Wilderness'
(www.vitw.org) Iraq Peace Team (www.iraqpeaceteam.org), a group of American peaceworkers pledged to stay in Iraq before, during, and after any future U.S. attack. The Iraq Peace Team can be reached at info@vitw.org