Sunday, 20 April
CPTers Elizabeth Pyles and Chihchun Yuan traveled to Halabja to visit a local women’s center and community radio station for women and youth.

Naar-Obed spoke with the KRG liaison to the U.N. and learned that Turkey is still shelling along the Turkish/Iraqi border but villagers remain there. Villagers are affected economically and psychologically by the ongoing shelling but the recent bombings have not injured anyone. Iranian attacks against PEJAK (sister organization to PKK, an Iranian Kurdish resistance group) have displaced villagers and destroyed land and livestock. The representative supported CPT visiting villagers to do follow up stories and develop relationships so that, in the event accompaniment becomes necessary in the future, some trust will already be established.

“We are surrounded by hostile neighbors.” “ They want to destroy everything that we build.” These are two sentiments we frequently hear expressed in the Kurdish Region of northern Iraq.

This weekend, the Team went to Azadi Park, a spot of beauty in the heart of the city, all the more remarkable because it has been reclaimed (can land/space be resurrected? Redeemed, certainly) by the Kurds. It was previously a Ba'athist-only holding adjacent to one of Saddam Hussein's prisons where Kurds were routinely tortured. The prison is now a museum.

Join CPT's first delegation to the Kurdish north of Iraq. Hear first-hand stories of a people subjected to decades of violence and oppression by the Western-backed regime of Saddam Hussein, international economic sanctions, and the U.S.-led invasion, occupation and betrayal.

I rest my hand to where my heart is and then raise it to the sky, saying, "Choni? Bashi? ( How are you? Good?)" With this gesture, I send my best and warm regards to you, my dear friends. This greeting is what the team in Northern Iraq-Kurdistan has been receiving everyday from the Kurdish people.

The team arrived together in Sulimaniya on 9 April, entering the KRG (Kurdish Regional Government) area with little difficulty. We have obtained our thirty-day visas (a big deal) and are in the process of collecting information to support of our renewed NGO application.

Last month, Peggy Gish and Michele Naar-Obed of the Christian Peacemaker Team in Iraq had three reports/reflections posted on the "God's Politics" blog page run by Beliefnet and Sojourners. Gish's piece is titled "Iraqi Kurdistan: 'I Cry All Day Long,'" and Naar-Obed's pieces are "A View from Inside Kurdistan," and "Bloodshed in Northern Iraq."

Links to all three pieces are available at http://cpt.org/work/iraq.

21 January-3 February 2008
The team spent much time dealing with problems securing visas and NGO (Non-governmental organization) status in the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) area of Iraq. Each time they went to the Asaish (security police) to pick up the promised signed papers, officials gave excuses as to why the papers were not ready. On 23 January an Asaish official told the team that he could not give them visa extensions to stay and work. He said the papers were in the hands of people “higher up,” i.e. “the Americans.” A top Asaish official did authorize residency officials to grant CPTers a one-month visa extension to secure NGO status.

On 29 January, a Residency official gave each team member one-month visa cards. He said, however, that he could not issue entry visa papers for the team’s support person, Doug Pritchard, to come in February. The following day, the same official told the team that someone higher up ordered him to take away their visa cards and tell team members they must buy plane tickets and leave in a week’s time. He said he was very sorry. “We know you are good people. The Kurdish people have nothing against you.” Many Kurdish officials made statements that identified “Americans,” as the source of these orders, yet none would identify the U.S. agency with which the Americans were affiliated. When team members asked an Asaish official who might be able to facilitate CPT’s getting NGO status, he responded, “You can’t get that high.”

PRAYERS FOR PEACEMAKERS, Wed., Feb. 6, 2008

 

Pray for the Christian Peacemaker Team in the Kurdish area of northernIraq. They are seeking longer-term visas from Kurdish and U.S. officials in order to continue their peacemaking work.

On Wednesday, 26 January, three CPTers joined five independent journalists in a two-hour trip to Halabja. At 10:00 a.m., a young journalist, Nasir, would stand trial. He had been charged with libeling the Peshmerga (Kurdish military) when he wrote that all Peshmerga were corrupt. After the charges were filed, men dressed in Asaish security uniforms abducted him, beat him and ordered him to never write about the Peshmerga again. CPT attended the trial to show that an international public was concerned about this issue.