By Cliff Kindy
Christian Peacemaker Teams

Recently world media carried the story about the U.S. shooting of an Italian kidnap victim and her security guard. At the same time, a Bulgarian soldier died as U.S. forces opened fire from a checkpoint. These stories made the news, but the regular incidents of Iraqis injured in similar circumstances often remain unpublicized.

An Iraqi friend asked me to visit his cousin. Lafta Rahim, 39, who has four children, was at home in his bed. Immediately his smile drew me as we met. Then I noticed contraptions on his body. His upper left arm had an 8-inch rod parallel to the bone, attached with six pins and two clamps. His lower right leg had a similar rod, this one with five pins and five clamps. Bullets had shattered both bones.

Lafta told his story.

Children stand in front of their ruined home in the Iraqi city of Fallujah. (photo: CPT)

This article contains recent photos from inside Fallujah taken by CPT

By Cliff Kindy
Christian Peacemaker Teams
March 16, 2005

Mohammad told the CPTers on their way to Fallujah, “You have a 99% chance that you will be refused entry into Fallujah today.” Five CPTers, two persons from Muslim Peacemaker Team, two local human rights activists, and two Iraqi friends were at a factory outside of Fallujah, ready to enter the city. The prospects of entry were dim, as US soldiers had turned back representatives of the Ministry of Religion earlier that same day.

One Iraqi in the visiting group brought wheelchairs and medical supplies to the hospital and the one clinic still operating in Fallujah. The devastating assault on the city by the US last November had started with an attack on the hospital and its clinics, reportedly because those centers were the sources of reports on civilian casualties in the April 2004 attack on Fallujah, reports that turned public opinion against the attack.

The visitors entered without incident, perhaps because they brought medical supplies. The team pushed five wheelchairs from the city center across the Euphrates River Bridge, where only foot traffic is allowed to pass to the hospital. Next they visited the lone clinic left in the city that has a population of over 200,000 people.

By Cliff Kindy
Christian Peacemaker Teams
February 24, 2004

Said Salah is a farmer with his father and uncles in a rural area outside of Kerbala. During the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 soldiers attacked and bombed this farm. Sixteen family members died in the attack and another nine were injured. The house was demolished and furniture and belongings were destroyed. In addition, the attack killed 75 sheep. Shepherding is one of the ways he makes his living.

Four days after the war he went to Iraqi Human Rights Watch, in Kerbala, to document the tragedy. Media from around the world carried stories of the event. Then Human Rights Watch International visited his farm. Human rights workers found unexploded ordnance on the farm and he was able to report to them that he knew the locations of six mass graves from the 1991 uprising against Saddam Hussein.

By Cliff Kindy
Christian Peacemaker Teams

Ahmed knocked at the door of the CPT apartment, accompanied by his translator. His family had been searching for his brother Mohammad for three months without success. His translator had met CPT at a conference last summer and suggested the family ask CPT for help.

On November 7, 2005, U.S. soldiers knocked at the door of Ahmed’s home. They did not damage any property or take anything from the house. But the soldiers did detain Ahmed and his three brothers and transport them to Scania U.S. Military Base, south of Baghdad. Three of the brothers, Ahmed included, were not charged and were scheduled to be released. Soldiers did levy a tentative charge against the fourth brother, Najim.

By Cliff Kindy
27 January 2005

The thirteen people in the circle were activists, committed to human rights. On this day Peggy Gish invited the circle to examine the topic of trauma as part of the five-day training that CPT Iraq brought to the group in Kerbala.

The nine Iraqis hemmed and hawed after Nadia, the facilitator for the day, held up a red paper heart and asked them to tell a story of trauma and then tear out a piece of the heart to indicate symbolically how each was wounded by the trauma. “The heart isn’t big enough to show all the pain we each have experienced.” “Every Iraqi could tell stories without end.” Finally two of the CPTers told an example of trauma in their lives.

The floodgate opened.