By Cliff Kindy, Christian Peacemaker Teams
November 28, 2004
Read Cliff’s blog from Iraq.

Dear Friends, Family, and All Good People,

It is a bright, sunny day in Iraq. I can see my breath on the rooftop and it is 62 degrees in the office. Three mortars and what looks to be a car bomb have hit the Green Zone already this morning before 9am. The interim Iraqi Government building is a target, judging from rooftop observation.

Shortly after arriving in Iraq, I finished reading Robert Cole’s The Moral Life of Children. On page 93 he quotes from George Orwell’s The Road to Wigan Pier: ‘.many of the qualities we admire in human beings can only function in opposition to some kind of disaster, pain, or difficulty.’ Cole goes on to argue about the word “only,” based on his own observations of children in very tragic circumstances.

Christian Peacemaker Teams

Sunday November 21, 2004

An acquaintance of the team called and shared his experience of the raid on Abu Hanifa mosque in Adumiya district by U.S. and Iraqi troops on Friday, November 19. He had been detained and subjected to questioning. During the questioning an Iraqi police officer burned his hand with a cigarette. A U. S. soldier standing nearby just laughed. Our acquaintance noted, “We resist the occupation with political means, not with violence.”

By Sheila Provencher, Christian Peacemaker Teams
November 29, 2004

Iraq feels like a prison. Our neighborhood is surrounded by the dangerous places our friends tell us to avoid. People in neighborhoods like Haifa Street are surrounded by daily gun battles between insurgents (foreign and Iraqi) and soldiers (U.S. and Iraqi). Baghdad itself is surrounded by roads known for everything from kidnapping to explosions.

People in the U.S. enclave otherwise known as the “Green Zone” are in prison too. They surround themselves with blast walls, checkpoints, and razor wire, cutting themselves off from harm. But they also cut themselves off from ordinary Iraqis – the very faces and voices they claim to liberate. “You live outside the wire?” one soldier asked me. “Wow. I can’t imagine that.”

by Donna Mulhearn, Dec 2, 2004
(Donna was in Iraq prior to, during and after the US invasion of Iraq. She is from Australia and recently returned to Baghdad. Donna’s prior writings from Iraq.)

It all happened so fast as we turned the corner.

The US humvee seemed to come out of nowhere. It drew close to the car, aimed its machine gun at us and forced the car off the road.

A checkpoint heavy with Iraqi soldiers was right in front. We had no choice but to slow to a halt. As we did the soldiers, their faces covered with black balaclavas, surrounded the car and pointed their guns at us.

Johan (photo by Cathy Breen)

By Kathy Kelly

Shortly before sunrise, this morning, a small band of us gathered at a busy Chicago intersection and unfurled vinyl banners bearing enlarged pictures of Iraqi children. One banner called for an end to US warfare in Iraq. On my banner was Johan, smiling wanly, a 14-year-old child who weighed 75 pounds shortly before she died of cancer in the oncology ward of a Baghdad hospital on September 21, 2003. As our banners flapped in the wind, I tried to compose a letter in my head to her teenage brother, Laith, who recently wrote to tell me how much he misses her.

Had Johan lived in a country that wasn’t reeling from 13 years of economic sanctions, she might have survived childhood leukemia. She is one of hundreds of thousands of children who died while economic sanctions and war shattered Iraq’s health care delivery system.