CPTnet
May 13, 2004
IRAQ/AMMAN UPDATE: April 25-May 2, 2004
Sunday, April 25
In the morning, Le Anne Clausen spoke at length with a Sudanese man staying
in the same hotel as the team who was trying to find work in Amman. He had
deserted the Sudanese army because he didn't agree with what they were
doing, and talked about the impact of violent conflict in his country.
[See forthcoming reflection, "Forget Not Sudan."]
Clausen and Matthew Chandler toured the Roman Amphitheater and a museum of
Arab folk culture in Amman. On their way there, they rode with a
Palestinian taxi driver whose family was expelled from Haifa to Jordan in
the 1948 war. He asked Clausen which country she preferred: Iraq,
Palestine, or Jordan. Clausen replied that she had only been in Jordan a
few times, so she loved Palestine and Iraq first. The driver said he liked
his neighborhood in Amman, but he would always miss Haifa.
Clausen later talked to a friend at the hotel who was distressed by the high
civilian death toll in Fallujah and buildup around Najaf. They discussed
how war dehumanizes soldiers, noting the similarities with the war in Viet
Nam. The friend admired Jordan's former king for often going personally to
resolve disputes in the region before many lives were lost. "We have to do
something to stop all this killing," he said. He also noted that it is
pride that drives leaders to order their soldiers to continue fighting when
more lives would be saved if the leaders admitted they were wrong or might
lose.
While stopping at a coffee shop, a waiter told Sheila Provencher he was from
Hebron in Palestine. He gave Bush a thumbs-down. When he read a flier
about CPT's work in Iraq that Provencher gave him, he said he was very
interested and told the other restaurant staff that the team worked for
human rights.
Provencher later attended Mass at a church in Amman. On her way there, the
cab driver spoke of his parents, Palestinian and Jordanian, and his three
children. He expressed his dismay at the recent agreements between
President Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon concerning Israeli
settlers remaining in the West Bank and refugees having to accept that they
could not return to their homes.
The priest at the Mass, who happened to be from Provencher's home community,
had taught at the Jesuit-founded Baghdad College from 1960 until the Jesuits
were expelled under the old regime. The priest had returned a few times in
the past year, he said, "but it's a mess. People are just trying to stay
alive." The Jesuits hope to regain ownership of the school and resume
teaching. The English-language Mass was filled with young Filipino and
Indian women, who all wore their brightly colored traditional dress and each
group participated in mass according to their home traditions.
Monday, April 26
A Catholic priest e-mailed the team from Baghdad, saying "There is no
security for anybody. Many Christians are targets of kidnapping, more now
than at any time. Some say the police are involved, nobody can know the
truth. We are now paralyzed, everyone watches through his keyhole. We
read, watch and listen, but who can analyze? So we wait now and pray."
Chandler, Provencher, Stewart Vriesinga and Greg Rollins met with a
political affairs officer for the UN Assistance Mission to Iraq (UNAMI) to
discuss detainee issues. The team members discussed their work over the
past year, citing several examples of human rights violations. The officer
seemed very interested but not surprised. He himself had run into
difficulty with the U.S. detainee system last August when trying to locate a
detained Iraqi friend. He expressed much interest in CPT's work in Iraq and
said he intends to stay in communication with the team.
A friend who arranges taxis at the hotel where the team was staying told
Provencher that the roads into Baghdad from Amman were safe once again.
Wednesday, April 28
Team members brainstormed ideas for working in Iraq under the new
circumstances.
Vriesinga spoke by phone with a friend in Baghdad who said he was willing to
drive and translate for the team if they returned. Vriesinga also spoke
with one of the team's translators who said it was okay now for team members
to return, but they should stay in Baghdad for the present. He was also
ready to resume translating for the team. A week earlier, the translator
had gone to the offices of the top Shi'a and Sunni clerics in Baghdad.
Neither cleric was in at the time, but guards at both shrines thought that
the team should not return just then.
According to news reports, seventy-one Iraqis had been killed in gun battles
near Najaf. Rumors were also circulating that the U.S. military had given
Shi'a opposition cleric Muqtada al-Sadr thirty-six hours before they invaded
the holy city. The friend who arranges taxis said that the road to Amman
had once again become very dangerous and that CPT should not travel by road
back to Baghdad.
Chandler spoke by phone with a neighbor in Baghdad who said he missed the
team and hoped they would return soon.
Thursday, April 29
Clausen attended a meeting of international organizations who have been
working in Iraq. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights was present and
had heard of CPT's work with detainees. He asked to receive future reports
from the team.
On the way to a social gathering of international humanitarian workers,
Vriesinga and Clausen chatted with their taxi driver, who had emigrated to
the U.S. and had been a successful businessman for nearly twenty years in
Minnesota. However, he said, after September 11th, 2001, the harassment he
and his family experienced as Arabs, especially by police and airport
security officers in the United States, became so intolerable that he and
his family returned to Jordan. When they arrived at their destination, he
refused payment for the ride and said he would read the CPT website and tell
his family about the team.
Friday, April 30
The team decided to cancel the regular CPT delegation to Iraq scheduled for
late May and early June. They realized it would be extremely difficult to
predict conditions in the country leading up to the scheduled transition of
power and the departure of the Coalition Provisional Authority. The next
scheduled delegation is in September.
Saturday, May 1
Chandler and Vriesinga met with Ginette DuPaul from the International
Foundation for Election Systems (IFES). She was looking for Iraqis who are
working on democracy education in Iraq or who are good candidates to go
through training on how to hold elections and how to train others to conduct
elections. The CPTers gave her contacts from several of the Iraqi human
rights organizations and political parties the team has met.
Sunday, May 2
Vriesinga spoke with a team translator by phone who said that many friends
and partner organizations of the team were looking forward to CPT's return.
Various people the translator spoke with said conditions were still worse
than before but there was a growing amount of work for the team to do.
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