by Tom Fox
Christian Peacemaker Teams

“Iraqis always seem to have lots of guns in their houses.” A U.S. Army colonel was making reference to how prevalent gun ownership is in Iraq. We were meeting with him in his office in the Green Zone. Draped across his high back chair was an ornate leather holster with his service revolver.

by Tom Fox
Christian Peacemaker Teams

17 May 2005. In Baghdad today, four clerics (three Sunni and one Shi’a) were assassinated. The bodies of two other Sunni clerics who had been abducted last week were found. A suicide car bomber detonated his vehicle in the Abu Cher market killing nine Iraqi National Guard troops and injuring twenty-eight civilians. Two engineering students were killed when a bomb (or rocket) struck their classroom at a local school. The dean of a high school in the Shaab neighborhood was assassinated. One judge, two officials from the Ministry of Defense and one official investigating corruption in the previous Interim Government were assassinated. In all, thirty-one dead, forty-two injured and seventeen abducted. Rumors abound in Baghdad about who is responsible for all the attacks but no one has claimed responsibility. And yet compared to some days in recent weeks here in Baghdad the number of dead and injured was fewer in number. So comparatively speaking it was a fairly quite day here in Baghdad. Children walked to their schools and people went to work. Shops opened for business and the seemingly endless parade of military, police and private security vehicles went about their business.

Wednesday 11 May

Multiple car bombs killed 71 people throughout Iraq.

Doug Pritchard departed Iraq and arrived safely in Amman, Jordan despite a several hour wait at Baghdad International Airport.

Joe Carr and Sheila Provencher visited Women’s Will, an Iraqi Women’s organization that advocates for women’s issues in Iraq. The founder stated her passion to unite Iraqi and American mothers in a common nonviolent struggle against the occupation and war. “It will be better for Iraqis and better for the American soldiers if [the soldiers] go home,” she said.

Smoke from a car bomb (Photo: Joe Carr)

By Sheila Provencher
Christian Peacemaker Teams

The air was heavy today. Cloudy, oppressive, humid in a way that Baghdad almost never is. I feel the heaviness added to the weight of the recent explosions across the country. Yesterday, Wednesday, 71 people dead in car bombs in at least three cities.

By Sheila Provencher
Christian Peacemaker Teams

Lately I feel so tired. There’s always a part of me that wants to just sleep; sleep and make all of THIS - the war, my government’s policies and actions, the counter-violence of the insurgency, all the greed and sin in the world - just go away for awhile. I can identify with the apathy of citizens who give in to violence: yes, just make the evil go away, press the button, fire the missile, send the young ones off to war. Take any way out.