By Peggy Gish
August 28, 2004

After navigating two checkpoint searches and three concrete walls, My CPT teammate and I entered a U.S. Military Base on the edge of Baghdad, a fortified island of U.S. soldiers.

“Where’ya from?” was the most common question we heard. One soldier came up to us with a big grin saying, “Hey, real Americans here!” Feeling cut off from their families and “real” lives, they welcome some diversion or reminders of family and home. We saw soldiers joking around with Iraqi workers and treating Iraqis politely who come to talk to get information or register a complaint.

After discussing our concerns about a particular Iraqi detainee, the commander of the base told how the military is trying to work with the local leaders to establish security and how they have helped the people of that region. “We have spent $16 million in the last six months, fixing the water, power, sewage, cleaning a garbage dump, providing seeds, and employed 2,000 Iraqis,” his assistant told us. “When school starts, we are going to provide all the children backpacks,”

These soldiers expressed a belief that the U.S. had much to teach Iraqis about democracy. As the commander went on to describe the increased violent attacks against his men, and the problems they have working with Iraqi people, he revealed many of his stereotypes of different groups of Iraqi people and lack of understanding of the anger Iraqis are expressing.

I guess that both the U.S. military officers and our peace team each walked away from that meeting, seeing the other as lacking some reality about the situation in Iraq. They may have thought that we were unrealistic about the need for military solutions to the lack of security and a bit crazy for traveling around in Iraq. We saw them as being isolated and not understanding what most Iraqis are wanting for their society.

We have heard from Iraqis that the bits of improvements U.S. has provided in almost a year and half of occupation, mostly with money from Iraqi oil sales, are still like a drop in the bucket of need. Those who have had their houses bombed, raided and ransacked, or have been imprisoned by U.S. forces, have a hard time appreciating the positive things U.S. soldiers have done. Often giving improvements and services to local communities is contingent on their providing security for the U.S. military. Many view receiving help from the U.S. Military or cooperating with the U.S. appointed interim government as buying into the long-range goals of the U.S. here.

We met some great guys at the base, but many buy into what the U.S. administration tells them about the Iraqi people needing help to build democracy, or that anyone who resists occupying powers, hates freedom. Their job is to defend a system of occupation that does not build relationships, with the local people, based on equality of power, but is geared toward achieving the U.S. economic and political goals. We saw a circular relationship with the military approach and continued violence in Iraq.

Christian Peacemaker Teams is an ecumenical violence-reduction program with roots in the historic peace churches. Teams of trained peace workers live in areas of lethal conflict around the world. CPT has been present in Iraq since October, 2002. To learn more about CPT, please visit www.cpt.org.
Photos of our projects may be viewed at www.cpt.org/gallery