a letter sent to me by a friend. "Here is the first e-mail sent by my friend, Mary Burton Riseley, who has gone to Iraq as part of Voices in the Wilderness, as part of a strategy to try to stop the impending war. She describes traveling from Jordan to Iraq in a van, and what she has seen and heard in Baghdad.
>>IRAQ DISPATCH #1 Getting to Baghdad<<
The official border and checkpoints between Jordan and Iraq were moved 80km inside Iraq after the Persian Gulf War, but the terrain changes at the old line. The part of Jordan we see from the road is a rolling plain,littered with black and grey volcanic rocks, which the Bedouin have stacked up in places and moved aside to make paths for their sheep and goats. At the old border sign Iraq right away becomes browner and flatter. There is hardly any vegetation, only a bit of grass and a few forbs in the low places. We can't believe the size of the herds. The Bedouin shepherds, often older children, must have to walk miles everyday guiding their flocks to small greenery snacks. Many of their rectangular tents have big trucks for hauling parked next to them, the two job family, Bedouin-style.
There are seven of us arriving together - a Franciscan father who just emerged from a six month sentence for civil disobedience at the School of the Americas in George, a long-time peace activist woman who lives most of the year in Yosemite keeping a backcountry cabin going with her husband, a cheerful retired teacher nun from Milwaukee, an Ohio politician who is a Veteran for Peace, an elderly Lutheran housewife from Illinois, a young labor organizer also from Wisconsin and yours truly.
We are exhausted from the plane trip, but have had a day in Amman to recover a little. We are transported in two GMC Suburbans, with friendly Iraqi rivers, one of whom speaks excellent English. He tells us that before the Persian Gulf War that Iraqi dinar was worth $3.30. Now the exchange is 2200 dinars to the dollar. Many, many Iraqis have to have two or more jobs to support their families. He is a civil engineer who served his required military time rebuilding bridges and building bombed in 1991, but then could not earn enough working for a private firm, so took up chauffeuring instead. He regrets not being able to pay back to society its investment in his education, and says that many people in Iraq are similarly overqualified for their jobs. I had read in my guidebook that Iraq has more PhD's per capita than any other country in the world.
We sped along, on the Jordan side a two-lane road with many tanker trucks returning empty from Amman since Jordan gets virtually free oil from Iraq. On the Iraq side, these trucks have their own highway, and ours was two or sometimes three lanes with little traffic. The drive is 975 kilometers, 10 to 13 hours, depending on the hassle at the border. We had lots of time to ask our driver questions, trying to stay away from topics which might get him into trouble. We were not sure whether the van was wired, but had to act as if it were.
Each Iraqi adult is issued a food ration every month of rice, wheat, flour, sugar, cooking oil, tea, soap. No extra food is given for children. The government has for two months now issued a double ration in preparation for war - to keep morale up and to empty storehouses that might be bombed. Whereas the government once provided free medical care for everyone, now there are only reduced price clinics for women and children. And these clinics have few supplies and little up-to-date equipment because of the sanctions. Our driver tells us that whereas when he was in school teachers were motivated and well-paid, now teachers can barely survive on their salaries and often have two jobs. He feels sad that his four children are not getting nearly as good an education as he did.
Voices in the Wilderness, hereafter Voices, presents each Iraq Peace Team (IPT) member with a stack of what it calls "magic sheets," a short, 5-paragraph mission statement of solidarity with the Iraqi people which is English on one side and Arabic on the other. We use it whenever we want to communicate who we are, to have people know we are here to help and in almost every case its effect is miraculous. Even at the gas stations and restaurants where we stopped to refuel and relieve ourselves in Jordan, people perked up, thanked us, offered free coffee or tea.
At the checkpoints, the same, but it still took us an hour at the Jordanian side and the same on the Iraqi. Since we did not have a letter to support our bringing in medicines, we were fortunate that the magic sheet greased our way with the Iraqis. People in Baghdad later tell us that the Jordanians are tightening the border fearing a massive influx of refugees, if war starts.
For hundreds of miles, we see only a dirt plain, but as we approach the Euphrates there are first neglected remains of past irrigation efforts, abandoned in the poverty after the war.
Closer to the river are the extant ones, mostly date orchards - Iraq used to supply 80% of the world's dates and has over 40 varieties for sale here, still. The sky is blue, the horizon flat and brown, and suddenly there is green, green, green, and soil that looks black; we truly are in the Fertile Crescent. After a somewhat more populated expanse, we approach Baghdad, a city of 4.5 million along the Tigris River. There are suburbs just like U.S.cities, except here all the houses are earth-colored and somewhat crumbly, many unfinished, with no lawns or greenery except in fields, or inside the walls of a few large estates we pass. It is Thursday night, the best day for weddings and we see three wedding buses and car entourages as we come in to the city. In Iraq, the weekend is Thursday and Friday, so this night is the busiest of all, and in the city the traffic is horrendous. (sidenote: Friday is the Muslim holy day, like Sunday for Christians; though here in senegal the weekend is still sat/sun) There are virtually no stop lights (this is true in Jordan, as well) so we might enter an intersection where 4 or 5 streets come together, with two-way traffic on each and it is an amazing game of chicken for our highly skilled and brave driver to get across. Scary for us passengers.
Saddam Hussein is present in photos and sculptures everywhere, this presence a visual metaphor of this highly controlled society where we later hear every seventh house has a government informer. He sits and stands and strides, in photos and paintings which are big and little, holding a rifle, sitting at a desk, smiling, waving, frowning, glaring.
Our hotel is along the river, right across a side street from the huge Palestine Hotel and the Baghdad Sheraton, with its exterior glass elevators. Some IPT members who are already here greet us. There is a party for some people leaving the next day, with sweets and a delicious hot drink made out of roasted and ground baby lemons with sugar. We are told again and again, "do not drink the water, do not brush your teeth with the water, do not let shower water into your mouth." This is because of the sanctions: before the Gulf War, Iraq had clean water everywhere.
Today, we have an orientation with Cathy Breen, Benedictine nun and friend of Wayne and Lynnette Brown of Silver City. We learn from her that Denis Halliday, career diplomat and former head of the United Nations sanctions who resigned in protest of their cruelty and ineffectiveness in dislodging Saddam Hussein, has been here last week.
At a press conference covered by world press (except that of the United States), he said he felt that the only thing that would prevent war in Iraq would be if the American people rise up and collectively, massively, say no.
I am convinced he is right, and I urge everyone of you who reads this - yes newspaper editors and reporters, too, to do everything you can to make that happen. Go to New York on February 15th, or do something else that will for sure get press, to express your opposition to this war.
Today is Friday, and we have a chance to go to the booksellers' market or suq. We load into two taxis and head out. Because it is a holiday, the streets are quieter. The books are laid out on the ground or on tables, sold by people who are so desperate for dinar that they part with their own personal libraries. It is a sad place, but busy, with many Iraqis browsing. They stare at us, because there are essentially no tourists here. We pass out many magic sheets, and have conversations with people who mostly are resigned to war, but who thank us for trying to stop it and for standing with them in solidarity. In one onversation we hear that there are small cadres of soldiers already stationed throughout the city, and more coming all the time.
Children tag behind us asking for money. We buy tangerines and offer them food instead. These are a handsome people and the children we see here friendly and bright-eyed. I grieve to think what may happen to them if my country starts to bomb.
I am excited because Betty Jo, who has been here for two weeks, is starting up an arts and crafts program at one of he hospitals and welcomes me to participate. Together we shop for colored pencils, markers, watercolors, scissors and the closest thing we can find to construction paper. This is what I have wanted to do - work with children in a setting where the language barrier would not be relevant. I'll write again tomorrow. Women in Pink, Medea Benjamin of Global Exchange's group are here and giving a press conference in a few minutes.
Love to everyone, and, please do everything you can to stop this war,
mary burton/Mom
Barrie Thorne
Professor of Sociology and Women's Studies
University of California, Berkeley
Myra Marx FerreeDepartment of Sociology
University of Wisconsin
1180 Observatory Drive
Madison WI 53706 USA
phone: 608-263-5204 fax: 608-265-5389
(home: 17 Sauk Creek Circle, Madison WI 53717
608-824-9705)
email: [email protected]
Lynda Kellam2201 Mitchell Avenue
Greensboro, NC 27405
USA
336/ 621-4307
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