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CounterPunch
March 20,
2003
Glimpses of
Life in Baghdad
Nomadic Solidarity
by SHANE CLAIBORNE
This is a historic moment. I have never felt so
much hope and so much uncertainty. We stand on the eve of perhaps
one of the most horrifying violent acts ever committed in human
history (US war plans call for the "Shock and Awe"
launching of 3000 cruise missiles for Baghdad in the first 48
hours, and Pentagon officials have said civilian casualties are
inevitable, comparing it to Hiroshima). And yet I wish you could
see what I see on the streets of Baghdad. There are banners crying
out against the war hanging from the buildings and bridges. There
are marriages and babies being born. Two nights ago we attended
an Iraq folk festival! Tonight we will go to a huge soccer game
(and perhaps have an Iraq Peace Team vs. journalists vs. neighbors
game!) Hundreds of people have gathered here in Baghdad as a
global presence of peace. I have personally met people from all
over the world--Spain, Brazil, France, Canada, Australia, Belgium,
Ireland, England, all over the US, Korea, Japan, China, Philippines,
Algeria, all over.
Hundreds. And dozens more are trying
to get in every day, including two of our dear friends from Eastern
University. As you can imagine, the people remaining here are
not just your everyday goofballs. But what's crazy is they are
not simply radical protestors. There are veterans, students,
grandparents, Orthodox priests, Parliamentarians, Franciscan
monks, evangelical Christian missionaries, lawyers, authors,
professors, doctors, revolutionaries and moderates together proclaiming
that another world is possible. It is clear that the global groaning
for peace has reached a new scale. This global community, Dr.King's
beloved dream, which the European press has begun calling the
Other Superpower, is literally standing in the way of a war on
global democracy. The Iraqi government has had (well-founded)
reservations about letting hundreds of foreigners flood their
streets during a war (many of us being from the aggressor nation,
imagine the US letting in Iraqis if we were being attacked),
but they have been courageous to let so many of us in accompany
their people during this terrifying time. Hopefully this will
set a precedent for the future as the movement's momentum builds.
What if anytime human rights are violated in our world ? as in
the past by the Iraqi government and in the present by the US
government--there is an international presence (both in Spirit
and in physicality) of solidarity with those being marginalized
or attacked throughout the world (isn't that what the Church
is?). Perhaps this is the new face of global missions within
the Church, in an age of omnipresent war.
Our movement must become mobile, fluid,
nomadic. Our movement must MOVE. And it must also have permanence
in the credibility of our lives, not only in crisis but in our
daily rhythms. We must not be reactionary, but proactive, working
peacefully against tyranny and war, inequality and marginality.
Just as the body's cells confine bacteria, we must confine and
smother tyranny, greed, and militarism. These are indeed diseases
haunting our world. They are unnatural, and foreign to what we
have been created for ? to love and to be loved. They can only
be smothered by love not by force. Our alternative must be more
attractive, and perhaps more effective than the counterfeit freedom
and imposed peace of Pax Americana.
A few glimpses of life in Baghdad
*We went out to a street called "Booksellers
Row" where Iraqi intellectuals and scholars, desperately
trying to survive, have brought their books onto the sidewalk
to sell as desperate attempt to survive amidst US sanctions and
impending war. It was a tremendous privilege to meet them, learn
from them, mourn with them. If you enjoy reading at all, you
can imagine how discouraging it was to see this Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky,
Marcuse prostituted on the streets of Baghdad. Most books you
could buy for a dollar. I couldn't decide what to do ? hating
to buy someone's treasures, but hating even more to see such
desperate poverty I went to buy one. As I got out my money, I
was swarmed by beggars. How could I buy a book?
*The Iraqi economy has been devastated
by the last 12 years of economic sanctions and US military aggression.
Prior to 1991, Iraq was not a "third world" country;
it was a developed country. In 1991, the Iraqi dollar (a 250
dinar bill) was worth about $75. Now that same bill is worth
less than 10 cents. You can fill your car with gasoline for less
than one US dollar (for 25 gallons). But how many Iraqis can
afford a car?!
I just heard the most startling statement
by Air Force Brigadier General William Looney, head of the US
Central Commands Airborne Expeditionary Force: "They know
we own their country. We own their air space We dictate the way
they live and talk. And that's what's great about America right
now. It's a good thing especially when there's a lot of oil out
there we need."
I got to go to the hospital today. A
banner hung from the entrance: "To bomb this facility is
a war crime." The nurse told us there are nine new children
the others all died. None of these children will live. Because
of the US sponsored sanctions they cannot have basic medications.
5000 children die each month here from the sanctions, and have
been for 12 years. What are they dying of? Nearly all of them
are dying of cancer from exposure to depleted uranium that was
dropped on them in the Gulf War. Today the statistics became
a face. We laughed and we wept. We blew up the medical gloves
and made balloon animals. We juggled, and colored. One 13 year-old
child named Yassir drew us a picture--it was a snake with huge
fangs eating something that looked like an egg. When we asked
what he had drawn he said, "The snake is the United States
and the egg is our world."
Nearly every day we are invited to a
worship services by Iraqi Christians, Catholic, Protestant, evangelical
they feed me so much hope. One pastor has dual citizenship (in
Iraq and Egypt), and he said he could take his family and go
safely into Egypt, but that would betray the Gospel. He is committed
to his congregation to stay with them through this scary time.
What must it feel like to be bombed by fellow Christians who
claim to have God's blessing?
*We heard the news that now 100 US cities
have passed resolutions opposing a US led attack on Iraq that
lacks official UN support. As NYC passed their resolution, one
councilmember said: "Is 30 million still a 'focus group'?"
*One of my IPT members has hundreds of
heart-shaped letters written by kids in the US, which are now
being delivered to children in Iraq. One of them reads: "Not
all Americans are bad. Please accept my apologies for what my
leaders are doing."
*I would rather not die, but when I do
die I would like my death to have integrity. And if I die here
I will be in good company when we get to the Gate. Moreover,
if I die that means all the children around me have likely been
killed too--the shoeshine boys in the alley, the children in
the orphanage around the corner and I figure they've got VIP
passes into heaven I'll just say, "I'm with them."
*Yesterday we had a picnic at one of
the water treatment facilities (which provides water access to
Baghdad, but is likely to be bombed in an attack). We invited
the workers and other friends in the neighborhood to join us
for lunch. I taught one of the kids to juggle and he taught me
to sing, "We Shall Overcome" in Arabic.
A Theological
Reflection "Remembering Rizpah"
The other day I went to a Christian worship
service led by Iraqi women (yes a Christian service led by women
in Iraq!). These women led about 100 of us in singing "What
a Friend We Have In Jesus" in Arabic (only about 3 of us
spoke English). Then they preached from the Scriptures about
heroic women in the Bible. They led us in prayer as they prayed
for peace, and for their children not to die in war again. They
prayed for God to heal our world and for the Church to be one
Body. And they wept, and wept. I remembered Rizpah.
Before coming to Baghdad, many of us
studied, over and over, the hidden story of a heroic woman named
Rizpah (2 Samuel 21). Now it has completely new meaning as I
live amongst the women of Iraq who have seen their loved ones
killed in war, and face the reality of yet another attack. Rizpah
lived in a time like ours. Kings were making treaties and breaking
them (v.2). The land was stained with the blood of war. In order
to try to "make amends" and heal the famine that cursed
them, David makes a deal with the Gibeonites. The currency he
uses are human lives, as with our present war--100,000 body bags
just arrived in Baghdad. He hands human being over to be massacred
of course, they are not his own children, but children of the
poor. He takes the sons of a concubine named Rizpah, and the
children are "killed and exposed before the Lord."
Not only were they killed, but they were left on the hill without
proper burial, left to be devoured by wild animals. And yet,
despite David's best efforts, it is interesting that God does
not heal the land yet.
With the reckless love only a grieving
mother has, Rizpah takes sackcloth and spreads it out on a rock
beside the bodies. She sets up camp. The text says she stays
from the "beginning of the harvest till the rains poured",
implying she was there for the season. Day after day, week after
week, she protects the bodies from the animals. And word of her
encampment spreads across the land making it all the way to King
David. When he hears of her courage, he remembers Saul, and his
friend Jonathan. An incredible thing happens next: he is moved
to gather up the bones of all the dead. Human suffering has the
power to move even Kings to FEEL again. Rizpah pricks the humanity
of a King who had become so dehumanized he could exchange children
like currency and kill them without remorse. Then, as Desmond
Tutu says, "The oppressed are freed from being oppressed
and the oppressors are freed from being oppressors." And
this is when God heals the land (v.14). I pray that if lives
are lost on this hill in Baghdad, mothers would set up camp beside
the bodies of their dead, and wail so loudly that word of the
travesty spreads throughout the earth. Maybe people from around
the world will hear, and come out with them on the rock beside
the bodies. And we will groan together so loudly that even the
Kings will hear. Perhaps the Kings will be moved to be human
again and then God will heal our land.
Shane Claiborne
is in Iraq with the Iraq Peace Team.
Yesterday's
Features
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream (Interview)
Jason Leopold
Rumsfeld and Bush Sr. Opposed 1989 UN Investigation of Saddam
for Human Rights Violations
Josh Ruebner
An
Open Letter to My Former Dean, Paul Wolfowitz (and Other "Court"
Jews)
Mitchel Cohen
The
Gulf War 12 Years Later: Why Class Matters
Carlos Fuentes
The Insulting Insinuations of the Bush Regime
Fareed Marjaee
The Road to Jerusalem Goes Through Baghdad
Rick Giombetti
The Savagely Soft Underbelly
of the Anti-War Movement: Misquided Faith in the UN
Rich Procter
Rove Memo: How to Launch a War
Ritt Goldstein
Oil
War: the Smoking Guns
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Give
War a Chance: the Anti-Peace Anthem
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