Chicago Sun-Times
April 27, 2003 Sunday
SECTION: NEWS SPECIAL EDITION; Pg. 5
BYLINE: Dave Newbart

Kathy Kelly has seen the horror of war firsthand: dozens of charred Iraqi remains in burned-out cars, and bodies piled in the streets. But her demeanor is not that of someone who just got back from a war front. She is as focused and determined as the day she left Chicago for Iraq.

Two days after returning from a three-month stay in Baghdad, the well-known peace activist offers a visitor tea, potato chips, junk food and fruit laid out on the kitchen table in her Uptown home.

For Kelly, who has been eating peanut butter and melba toast for weeks, it’s a feast. But she only lost five pounds during that time and did not suffer any serious injuries or illnesses, despite frequent visits to overcrowded hospitals and areas that had been bombed.

The same cannot be said for the Iraqi people she said Saturday during an interview in her three-bedroom apartment–which is also the headquarters for the organization she founded, Voices in the Wilderness. Even though the main fighting in Iraq is over, innocent Iraqis are still suffering, she said.

“As far as I’m concerned, people who die three weeks from now because of contaminated water, that’s a death because of war.”

Kelly, who was nominated in 2000 for the Nobel Peace Prize, declined to say whether she thought estimates that between 2,000 and 2,500 civilians had been killed in the war were accurate. A full accounting by the United Nations is necessary, she said.

Kelly said even Iraqis who welcomed Saddam Hussein’s ouster were disillusioned by the U.S. decision to protect the Oil Ministry while allowing the plundering of hospitals, museums and government buildings. “It’s like the light had gone out in people’s eyes,” she said.

Kelly spent much of the war in the Al Fanar Hotel, near a government palace repeatedly targeted for bombing. She said the hotel swayed constantly.

Kelly only feared for her life once: when she took a cab with a journalist to see a bombed market. She realized their vehicle, the only one on the road, might be mistaken by U.S. forces as carrying Republican Guard members because sandstorms and oil fires had reduced visibility.

While some of the dead she saw in the streets might have been Iraqi military she considered many to be victims, as well, because most were forced at gunpoint to fight for Saddam’s government.

Kelly, 50, has no plans to slow down. She has planned trips to Madison, Wis., California and Ireland to advocate for the Iraqis, and many media interviews planned.

She says her group’s efforts over the years helped create a concern for the welfare of the general public in Iraq that hadn’t existed during the first Gulf War or in the decade afterward.

“We put the focus on the ordinary people,” she said.