CPTnet
27 May 2008
IRAQ REFLECTION: Speak to us Isaiah

by Michele Naar-Obed

In days to come, the mountain where the Temple stands will be the highest one of all…Many nations will come streaming to it…. “Let us go up the hill of the Lord…He will teach us what He wants us to do…” (Isaiah 2:2-3)

Throughout mountain villages in northern Iraq, villagers flee from ongoing bombing and shelling by Turkish forces. Turkey’s battles with the Kurdish Worker Party (PKK) continue to wreak havoc on the villagers caught in the crossfire. They stream south to internally displaced people’s (IDP) camps; when there is a lull in they bombing, they stream back up the mountain to their homes. The assistant mayor of the region has said the villagers have become psychologically crippled.

Following the bombing in the Qandil Mountain region last December, some villagers returned home to discover that 186 baby goats died, and their goats' milk contained poisons. Mam Hasan, from Levce village said that he made his goats graze in the area where Turkish aircraft bombed on 16 December 2007.* Other villagers also linked the decimation of their animal herds to the bombings, but since the KRG (Kurdish Regional Government) lacks the equipment to do proper testing, Kurds cannot prove that the damage to the herds is linked to the bombings. The international community has the proper equipment. Who will have the will to use it?

He will settle disputes among great nations. They will hammer swords into plows and spears into pruning hooks, nations will never again go to war… (Isaiah 2:4)

A nine ton unexploded bomb sits deep in the earth in the Qandil region. How many plows would that make?

From southern Iraq, CPT hears that folks are leaving Sadr City. Some carry their belongings on their back. If they leave, the Mahdi militia threatens to blow up their house. If they stay, they risk dying in the crossfire between the militia and Iraqi and Coalition forces.

Of those who have fled southern Iraq, approximately 200 Arab and Kurdish families are living in an overcrowded and garbage-filled IDP tent camp in Suleimaniya. The IDPs claim they can find no work. Some sell material aid brought by the NGOs; others sell their clothes. Some of the women have become prostitutes and some parents send their children into the city to beg. This site is only one of many IDP camps. It clearly cannot be the “hill of the Lord.”

Wolves and sheep will live together in peace; leopards will lie down with young goat. Calves and lion cubs will feed together, and little children will take care of them…Even a baby will not be harmed if it plays near a poisonous snake. On Zion, God’s holy hill, there will be nothing harmful or evil (Isaiah 11:6-9)

Is this a fairy tale or a vision waiting to be fulfilled? May this vision become reality.


*http://hevallo.blogspot.com/2008/04/turkey-uses-chemical-weapons-against.html