By Kathy Kelly

A Quaker once asked George Fox, “When will we know when it’s time to put down the sword?” “Friend,” he answered, “Thou wilt know when thou canst no longer pick it up.”

In the past year, we’ve witnessed rising clamor, worldwide, to pick up newer, better and more terrible swift swords. This week, thousands of separate stories tell the horror of displacement, wreckage and privation endured by Kosovans and Serbs during 7 weeks of bombardment and siege. The world seems at least to listen.

For nearly nine years, Iraqi Americans have listened to the same nightmare fears, hearing the anguish of their loved ones and close friends who suffer through sanctions and bombing in Iraq, all in the face of worldwide, staggering apathy. We travel to Iraq with a pittance of medical relief, earnestly wanting to offer some kind of hope, but mainly able only to whisper, “We’re sorry. We’re so very sorry,” as we sit, helpless, at bedsides of agonized children.

Even these words caught in my throat in April of ‘99 at the Dijla Secondary school for girls. “They are really angry,” the headmistress apologized, eyebrows raised. Leila, age 16, rose soon after we entered the class. A voice that should have been bursting with life and excitement, at her age, was high-pitched, fraught, anxious. “You come and you say ‘You will do. You will do,’ but nothing changes! All what we see is paper, promises. I am 16. Can you tell me what is the difference between me and someone who is 16 in your country?”
And next to her, Fatima, recounts horrific memories of the Gulf War, then describes a more recent visit to relatives in a village north of Iraq during the Desert Fox bombing. “Why?!” she asks. “Tell us. What have we done? Can you imagine if Iraq did this to another country?!” And then Nasra, “My father directs the electric company here. But I study by kerosene lamp at home. And this is to name only one human right. Most tragic, we watch our children die. We are helpless!” Who are the criminals?

And just what does it mean to study by kerosene lamp? Just before our April ‘99 delegation left Iraq, a hotel worker, Mehdeh, gripped Jeff Guntzel’s arm. Mehedeh, in his early twenties, seldom seeks anything for himself. He normally has a quiet and dignified manner. “Please, Mister Jeff,” he pleaded, “Last night our family was together in one room, in the dark, there was no electricity. And we lit the kerosene lamp. Someone got up to use the bathroom and the lamp turned over. My sister, she is twenty, she is going to be married in two months, but now 3/4 of her body is covered with burns, and her eyes….To pay for the surgeon, we need 60 dollars more. Please, Mr. Jeff, can you help us?”

In past trips, we’ve insisted that reporters must visit hospitals to witness the abject suffering. Now it’s different. One needn’t even leave the hotel lobby. The poison of these sanctions touches almost every home. And still, it seems that no amount of pain and sorrow will cancel or interrupt the phenomenal hospitality extended toward us.

Indelibly marked in my memory is a February ‘98 visit to Fallujah, just outside of Baghdad. We traveled there, during the height of a US bombing threat, to visit the site where in ‘91 a Royal Air Force bomb, aimed at a bridge, missed and hit the crowded market. The explosion killed 150 people and wounded many more. Accompanied by a Reuters film crew, we wanted to interview Fallujah’s residents while the whole country awaited renewed attacks.

Soon a throng of people surrounded us. Angry shouting began. “You Americans and Europeans!” an older man shouted. “I’ll take you to my home and show you water you wouldn’t give your animals to drink! This is what kills us, kills our children, and now you want to bomb us too.” Suddenly he stopped. Looking at me closely, he said, “Madame, you’re tired. Come, you take something to eat with me.”

Each member of twenty-five VitW delegations, upon return from Iraq, has marveled at the gracious hospitality Iraqis extend toward us. Yet I’d be remiss not to include another story from my last visit to Fallujah. In April, we returned to the same market place and were met with uncanny similarities. Again the raucous crowd, eager for leaflets, and not at all shy about shouting their opinions of the US. I noticed one boy, who seemed about ten years of age, staring at us very intently. I asked our friend Ahmed, whose translation is invaluable, to ask what the child was thinking about. The boy replied, “I am a scholar of the faith.” “But, Ahmed,” I persisted, “ask him what he’s thinking about right now? He looks so serious.” The child nodded almost imperceptibly, closed his eyes for a moment, then fixed us with a steady gaze and said, “I am thinking about growing up to be a pilot so that I can bomb the United States.” We smiled forlornly.

And then Ahmed whispered, “Look there.” Looking up, I saw an old man who had listened to this exchange shake his head. His huge eyes brimmed with tears and he turned away.

Weep we must, but here, where we live so well, we must resist our common enemy of despair. No Iraqi child can afford our pessimism or cynicism. Resolved to end the cruel and dangerous warfare against Iraq, let’s refute the notion that sanctions are necessary to combat the Iraqi regime and thereby enhance everyone else’s safety. In fact, the economic sanctions have strengthened Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. If the present centralized authoritarian government is replaced by a power vacuum, violent power grabs and uprisings could erupt, coupled with extreme vulnerability to invasions by neighboring states. Beleaguered Iraqis assuredly don’t want to face added woes of civil war or invasion.

Some who favor economic sanctions against Iraq suggest that these measures will force Iraqi people to insist on a regime change. That seems naive and unrealistic to me. If we truly want to help another country move toward positive social change, we should strengthen their educational institutions, assist them to develop effective social services, and improve their means to communicate both within their society and beyond.

Economic sanctions have wrecked these very resources at every level. Schools and Universities can barely function. The majority of Iraqis, desperately seeking to meet their most basic human needs, have little energy or time for any other endeavors. They search for ways to put food on the table, cope with health problems, and handle emergencies. As for communication, ask any Iraqi student how it feels to be cut off from the revolutions happening as most societies adjust to cyberspace. “We are trapped,” said one extremely bright graduate student in Baghdad, speaking of their enforced ignorance regarding the internet. “We’re in a dungeon.”

I think often of Albert Camus’s essay, Neither Victims nor Executioners, in which he urges people never to be accomplices to murder. Maintenance of economic sanctions against Iraq requires us to inflict child sacrifice, to aid and abet the most egregious instance of child abuse in our world today. “And what have we done?” asked the young women I met several weeks ago, at the Dijla school. And who are the criminals?