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LOUISVILLE'S OWN HEART & VOICE IN IRAQ: DOUG JOHNSON |
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LOUISVILLE'S OWN HEART & VOICE IN IRAQ: DOUG JOHNSON |
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HISTORY, CULTURE & POLITICAL LINKS
Links & other Witness diaries
Report of the May 2002 Peace Team UK
Down Under Peace delegation 2002
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Monday, February 24, 2003---Day
4 After flying to Basra from Baghdad, we loaded into vans and headed to Safwan, a town on the Iraq/Kuwait border. The road to Safwan is a journey through time. Ancient and modern life coexist here in the barren desert, where naked gray earth is all you see and where herds of sheep walk within view of oil refineries. The region is not arable, life here seems impossible, yet Iraqis are both stubborn and tenacious, and when they cannot tame the earth they become one with it. Survival is in their blood. Modern civilization sprouted from their forefathers' ingenuity after all. Earthen huts and houses seem to rise from the clay in the most unlikely of places. Lone travelers can be seen wandering to God knows where, while cars, horses, and donkeys carry tomatoes and fruit to roadside markets. Despite two US sponsored wars and 12 years of US sanctions that have made land development nearly impossible, Iraqis do what they have always done; they improvise. Irrigation from the Tigris river, channeled through a man-made "Third River," provides water for makeshift greenhouses ("fields" of tomatoes are covered with clear plastic), and some water is diverted to reservoirs for home consumption. Most construction is done from clay taken from the region and fired at a local kiln, and reeds from the rivers and marshlands are also used. Even the scrap metal, some of it DU contaminated, is salvaged. As we approached the DMZ I noticed two things - high towers in the distance with flames and dark smoke billowing waste material from the oil refineries into the clouds, and occasional patches of acacia trees. The towers, of course, are perfectly erect, while the trees, without exception, all lean towards the southeast to accommodate the relentless wind. I like to think these trees are bowing towards their own Mecca. The green leaves of the acacias are dusty and weathered from onslaught of sand and pollution, yet the trees remain uniformly defiant. They remind me of Iraqis. Upon arriving at the DMZ and filing out of our vans, we were greeted by unarmed Iraqi guards on "our" side, and UN monitors, carefully watching us from a distance of 50 yards, on the "other." The Iraqi side consists of a rickety metal gate, raised and lowered by rope, alongside a tiny brick hut and outhouse. A half-dozen Iraqi guards (kids, really) are on duty here at any given time. (This is the army that poses such a threat to the US?) At the Kuwaiti checkpoint is constructed a huge berm to apparently help divide two territories that would otherwise be indistinguishable. To me it looks more like a dam or levy, apparently built to stop the flow of 'something' - in this case people and supplies to help people in need. It's built to stop the flow of humanity. A mangy and underfed mother dog and her pups, undeterred by international law, crossed the imaginary line (two yellow markers are set up on opposite sides of the road) to wander near us. When we called out to them they wagged their tails, but they wouldn't come closer. Given a week they would be cuddling up to us in our tent. We rolled out two banners, one saying "Take a Risk; Sit Down for Peace," and the other saying "Courage for Peace, Not for War." We tied the first one to our tent, in clear view of the UN troops, and the second we took with us to the very edge - the yellow line. We sat in the road. We sat for peace. At that very moment it started to sprinkle, and then rain, a very rare occurrence here. The UN guards stood at attention, watching, while a guard in a tower scrutinized us with binoculars. Finally, a UN official drove out to our position to tell those of us taking pictures (myself included) that picture taking was not allowed in the DMZ and that if we continued our cameras would be confiscated. We all ignored him and continued clicking away. Finally we unveiled a dozen poster-sized photographs of Iraqi men, women, and children, and we walked around the border holding them in view of the UN checkpoint. We then tied the pictures to the rickety gate to help demonstrate who, exactly, has suffered from US imperialism, and who will be annihilated by a US attack. The rain has stopped. I'm in the tent, I'm cold, and I'm wearing a sweater that Charlie loaned me. We began a four day fast this morning.
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Ramzi Kysia---Caught in the DMZ
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Tuesday,
February 25, 2003---Day 5
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DU Depleted Uranium
Information about Gulf War Syndrome: Gulf War Veteran Resource Pages NYT archive on Gulf War Illness
In Islam (Ramadan) & comparisons with other traditions |
We left our encampment early in order to drop off several from our group who are returning to the states, and on the way we visited a storage yard for vehicles destroyed by DU (depleted uranium) shells in 1991. These vehicles (cars, trucks, armored tanks) are grotesquely burned and mangled, often beyond recognition. Although most tanks retain some semblance of their shape, gaping holes in their armor show where the DU shells penetrated like butter and exploded them from the inside out. The Iraqi tank operators, I'm told, seemed befuddled by their massacre, as tanks were exploding with no enemy in sight - due to US laser-guided weaponry. The Gulf War wasn't a war, really; it was a slaughter. I've also read that the US dropped more than 300 tons of DU on the Safwan region, causing cancer rates to increase 6-fold and congenital birth defects to rise dramatically. The US soldiers who breathed or ingested the dust from exploded DU, either through the desert wind or by handling the metal from destroyed armament, are now suffering from "Gulf War Syndrome." (At least one-fourth of all US troops cycled through Kuwait in 1991 have applied for disability.)
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Orthodox Lenten Fasting & St John Chrysostom on fasting
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Last night I visited the home of Amal and her
husband. They have three children: Abeera (10), Omar (6), and Ali -
nicknamed "Amesh" (4), all of them very cute and well behaved.
Amal is a painter and she proudly displays her many works on her living
room walls. She paints mostly with oils, and her subjects are mostly
city locales that emphasize Arab culture. I bought one of her
paintings for $25.00, plus two that Omar and Abeera painted earlier in the
day for $2.50 each. |
