by Dana Visalli
Christian Peacemaker Teams
dana@methow.com

The leading Shia cleric in Baghdad, Sayyid Ali Mussawi Al Waadh, said in a recent interview, “The Iraqi people have suffered enough.” And so they have. The air in Baghdad smells and tastes like burning tires. Much of landscape looks like it was set in place by a fleet of dump trucks. Sewage oozes out of cracks in the street while buildings crumble and electrical supply sputters and runs dry. The 200 billion dollars spent by the West to bomb and pummel Iraq during the two Gulf Wars hasn’t improved the lives of the Iraqi people one iota. Twelve years of sanctions not only ensured that Saddam Hussein would not buy new and improved weapons, but also that the garbage trucks wouldn’t run, drinking water wouldn’t be chlorinated, the sick wouldn’t get medicine and children wouldn’t get textbooks or even pencils (pencils were on the sanctions list until 1998 because the U.S. feared the graphite in them could be used for arms manufacture). In this context it is all the more remarkable, in the midst of this decay and disintegration, that individuals and organizations are rising Phoenix-like.

Alexander Christof was sitting pretty in Germany in 1995, an increasingly wealthy architect drawing plans for increasingly wealthy clients. But he was increasingly discontent with his life, gorged as it was on possessions, power and prestige but devoid of the satisfaction of serving the real needs of the human community. The emotional aridity of his life finally compelled him to make changes. He divested himself of his business, took stock of the skills he had to could respond in some way to the abiding needs of the human family, and together with his wife started Architects for People in Need, or APN. In 2001 APN came to Iraq, to try to offer to the Iraq people the basic amenities of life that their own government and the governments of the world had denied to them.

By the time I visited Alexander in February of this year in Baghdad, APN had a staff of over 50 highly skilled Iraqi professionals working on water purification in rural areas, remedial education for older, unschooled children, and basic health and emergency care in the countryside.

Alexander points out that the most basic requirements of life were disrupted by the Gulf Wars and the sanctions-water, sewage, food and health care. Water purification plants were destroyed by allied bombing in the first Gulf War, and reconstruction was made impossible because repair parts were on the sanctions list, as was chlorine. In the largest govenorate in Iraq, 28 out of 30 purification plants are out of service. People in rural areas along the Tigris and Euphrates commonly drink out of the river, even though the water is polluted and saline.

I asked Alexander what motivated him to take on such a daunting task, working under hazardous circumstances (one APN staff person has been killed in the post-war violence sweeping Iraq) to attempt to alleviate some of the suffering of the people of Iraq. He responded that seeing the benefits of APNs work-completing a new classroom and seeing a youngster who had previously been an illiterate shoeshine boy write his name on the board, or building a rural water plant and seeing people get clean water out of their taps for the first time-induced a feeling of joy that he had never experienced when working for wealthy clientele. He thought a moment and then said, “I never want to see another client as long as I live. Now we see the good results of our labors, and it makes us happy.”

Alexander is convinced that the motive for invading Iraq was to create a permanent military presence in the Gulf region. “Those who control the flow of oil control the economy of the world.” Indeed, the New York Times reported at the end of February that the U.S. is building four large military bases in Iraq, suitable for long-term use. I asked Alex if he had any sense that the U.S. was attempting to foster democracy in Iraq. His answer was, “No. This would be a delicate and long-term proposition, and there is no evidence that any such process has been initiated. Maybe it’s too early; maybe it’s too late.”

It may be too late-or is it too early?-for us all unless more people learn to make the kind of choices Alexander made for his life: to take risks, to question authority, to take a stand for love, to become architects of peace rather than accomplices to war. I would encourage people to think ecologically, act lovingly, and ensure that the resources flowing from their lives (including taxes) go only to life-affirming endeavors.

“This is what you should do,” advised Walt Whitman 150 years ago. “Love the earth and the sun the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning god, have patience and indulgence toward people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown, or to anyone or number of people… reexamine all you have been told at school or church, or in any book, dismiss what insults your soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem.”

Attachment: young child from village of Abu Siffa; her father was “detained” by US forces on December 16th and has not been heard from since.

For more information on Architects for People in Need see www.apn-ev.org