In Amman with the Human Shields
sm | 31.03.2003 08:47
In Amman with the Human Shields
By Shane Mulligan
Azzan, the call to prayer, rings through the air in Amman each day around 4:30 am. The call would wake a light sleeper in the Saraya Hotel, but in the month I was there it only ever told me it was time to get to bed. By 6 am, the honking of horns outside Raghadan bus station is constant, and slightly comical. A newcomer to the Middle East soon gets used to drivers honking to let you know where they are, and ignoring the idea of lanes. As sunlight fills the valley below the ruins of Philadelphia, and warms the stones of Amman’s famous Roman Theatre, an acrid exhaust spews from the buses, drifts through the Iraqi restaurants that ring the station, and settles in the lungs of passerby.
With some 25 peace activists, I flew to Amman from London on February 17, where we met a dozen more from around the world, almost all heading to Iraq as ‘human shields’. Before we left we heard that the convoy, with its Big Red Buses, had finally arrived in Baghdad to a hero’s welcome. Most of our group would follow in a few days. Sharon and I were to set up an office to facilitate getting visas, inform incoming shields, and communicate with our support networks and the press. We got to know Amman, heard ‘welcome to Jordan’ a hundred times, enjoyed the smiles and ‘salaam alaikum’ as our neighbours got used to seeing us.
Amman is a long way from Cambridge, where I had been trying to write up a Ph.D. on ‘legitimacy’ in international relations. But along with winter’s short days, the impending war made concentration difficult. I first heard the call to shield in a December 27 article by Ken O’Keefe, and it seemed to offer a chance to really stand against Bush and Blair’s push to war. The idea of thousands of peace volunteers migrating to Iraq struck me, and many people, as brilliantly simple, and potentially highly effective.
When the buses left London on January 25, I sought a term away for ‘volunteer work’. I spent the first half of February with Uzma and others, setting up flights to Amman. Even in the quiet of Rickmansworth our mission went through many ups and downs, both technical and emotional: computers crashed, telephones rang constantly, Blair and Bush threatened, opposition to war grew. We were elated when the papers reported that France and Germany might send peacekeepers. We called them ‘human shields in blue helmets’. These shields never arrived. Neither did our hoped-for thousands. Though by some estimates there are 2000 foreign peace activists in Iraq right now, only 100 or so are calling themselves human shields.
These shields, many of whom are my friends, are currently staying at major infrastructural sites in Baghdad, and thus likely on the front lines of any major assault on Baghdad. The sites where the shields reside – water and electrical facilities, food storage sites, an oil refinery – are all UN-recognized sites of humanitarian importance, but this did not prevent their being targeted and destroyed in 1991, bringing tremendous suffering to the Iraqi people. If the shields’ mission is successful, their presence ‘on site’ will prevent the targeting of these facilities this time, and will thus ensure the people of Baghdad do not lose these vital facilities again. Had the shields deployed to Basra, maybe that city would still have its water and electricity, and maybe a humanitarian crisis there would be less of a certainty.
Hundreds passed through Al-Saraya, the ‘human shields meeting point’, in the month I was there. Some were going into Iraq, some coming out, but rarely was there calm, as the anxiety of war and the urgency of our action grew. Amid the chaos Fayez and his staff were tireless. They installed a new internet café, and kept us going with a steady breakfast of boiled eggs, hummous, cream cheese, jam and pita. I was about to ‘go in’ the 25th of February, but word from Baghdad was that many were coming out. Our hosts had clarified the terms of deployment, thereby defining what ‘a human shield’ in Iraq would be. These terms did not suit everyone, myself included, but many shields did stay, and many have since joined them.
Nonetheless, as the Bush regime was declaring ‘the time for diplomacy’ was over, the flow of shields was slowing to a trickle, and the streets of Amman were growing restive. The mood at Al-Saraya became somber. When the television broadcast the first movement of the Baghdad campaign, an intense 8-minute bombardment, I felt a mix of disgust and personal grief – not quite the presumed ‘shock and awe’. We were very relieved to get an email the next day saying ‘everyone’s OK’. Each day we wait anxiously for another, and try to decipher what ‘OK’ means now.
With the ‘coalition’ attack begun, the border virtually closed, and my own energies drained, I accepted the advice of family and friends to come home, to rest and recoup before moving on. It was terribly hard to leave Amman and Fayez, and to give up that futile proximity to Baghdad. Cambridge is quiet, familiar, filled with friends and good food and my books. But I don’t much want to talk, or eat, or read. And while it may soon be time to move forward, as yet I have little idea where to go.
I’ve never been to Baghdad, never met the children, professors, lovers and taxi drivers that other shields have told me about. But my friends – Donna, Uzma, Phil, Antoinette, and many more – remain there, visiting hospitals, keeping an eye on each other, watching from the rooftops of Al-Duara and the Palestine Hotel as this misdirected fury rains over Iraq. My view of this war is now limited to what I can see on television. But what I feel, as explosions rip through Baghdad, is an entire spectrum of love and fear and pain and hope. My body is home, sure, but an important part of me is there with the shields and the Iraqi people, wondering if the next blast will be the one that tears us all to pieces.
By Shane Mulligan
Azzan, the call to prayer, rings through the air in Amman each day around 4:30 am. The call would wake a light sleeper in the Saraya Hotel, but in the month I was there it only ever told me it was time to get to bed. By 6 am, the honking of horns outside Raghadan bus station is constant, and slightly comical. A newcomer to the Middle East soon gets used to drivers honking to let you know where they are, and ignoring the idea of lanes. As sunlight fills the valley below the ruins of Philadelphia, and warms the stones of Amman’s famous Roman Theatre, an acrid exhaust spews from the buses, drifts through the Iraqi restaurants that ring the station, and settles in the lungs of passerby.
With some 25 peace activists, I flew to Amman from London on February 17, where we met a dozen more from around the world, almost all heading to Iraq as ‘human shields’. Before we left we heard that the convoy, with its Big Red Buses, had finally arrived in Baghdad to a hero’s welcome. Most of our group would follow in a few days. Sharon and I were to set up an office to facilitate getting visas, inform incoming shields, and communicate with our support networks and the press. We got to know Amman, heard ‘welcome to Jordan’ a hundred times, enjoyed the smiles and ‘salaam alaikum’ as our neighbours got used to seeing us.
Amman is a long way from Cambridge, where I had been trying to write up a Ph.D. on ‘legitimacy’ in international relations. But along with winter’s short days, the impending war made concentration difficult. I first heard the call to shield in a December 27 article by Ken O’Keefe, and it seemed to offer a chance to really stand against Bush and Blair’s push to war. The idea of thousands of peace volunteers migrating to Iraq struck me, and many people, as brilliantly simple, and potentially highly effective.
When the buses left London on January 25, I sought a term away for ‘volunteer work’. I spent the first half of February with Uzma and others, setting up flights to Amman. Even in the quiet of Rickmansworth our mission went through many ups and downs, both technical and emotional: computers crashed, telephones rang constantly, Blair and Bush threatened, opposition to war grew. We were elated when the papers reported that France and Germany might send peacekeepers. We called them ‘human shields in blue helmets’. These shields never arrived. Neither did our hoped-for thousands. Though by some estimates there are 2000 foreign peace activists in Iraq right now, only 100 or so are calling themselves human shields.
These shields, many of whom are my friends, are currently staying at major infrastructural sites in Baghdad, and thus likely on the front lines of any major assault on Baghdad. The sites where the shields reside – water and electrical facilities, food storage sites, an oil refinery – are all UN-recognized sites of humanitarian importance, but this did not prevent their being targeted and destroyed in 1991, bringing tremendous suffering to the Iraqi people. If the shields’ mission is successful, their presence ‘on site’ will prevent the targeting of these facilities this time, and will thus ensure the people of Baghdad do not lose these vital facilities again. Had the shields deployed to Basra, maybe that city would still have its water and electricity, and maybe a humanitarian crisis there would be less of a certainty.
Hundreds passed through Al-Saraya, the ‘human shields meeting point’, in the month I was there. Some were going into Iraq, some coming out, but rarely was there calm, as the anxiety of war and the urgency of our action grew. Amid the chaos Fayez and his staff were tireless. They installed a new internet café, and kept us going with a steady breakfast of boiled eggs, hummous, cream cheese, jam and pita. I was about to ‘go in’ the 25th of February, but word from Baghdad was that many were coming out. Our hosts had clarified the terms of deployment, thereby defining what ‘a human shield’ in Iraq would be. These terms did not suit everyone, myself included, but many shields did stay, and many have since joined them.
Nonetheless, as the Bush regime was declaring ‘the time for diplomacy’ was over, the flow of shields was slowing to a trickle, and the streets of Amman were growing restive. The mood at Al-Saraya became somber. When the television broadcast the first movement of the Baghdad campaign, an intense 8-minute bombardment, I felt a mix of disgust and personal grief – not quite the presumed ‘shock and awe’. We were very relieved to get an email the next day saying ‘everyone’s OK’. Each day we wait anxiously for another, and try to decipher what ‘OK’ means now.
With the ‘coalition’ attack begun, the border virtually closed, and my own energies drained, I accepted the advice of family and friends to come home, to rest and recoup before moving on. It was terribly hard to leave Amman and Fayez, and to give up that futile proximity to Baghdad. Cambridge is quiet, familiar, filled with friends and good food and my books. But I don’t much want to talk, or eat, or read. And while it may soon be time to move forward, as yet I have little idea where to go.
I’ve never been to Baghdad, never met the children, professors, lovers and taxi drivers that other shields have told me about. But my friends – Donna, Uzma, Phil, Antoinette, and many more – remain there, visiting hospitals, keeping an eye on each other, watching from the rooftops of Al-Duara and the Palestine Hotel as this misdirected fury rains over Iraq. My view of this war is now limited to what I can see on television. But what I feel, as explosions rip through Baghdad, is an entire spectrum of love and fear and pain and hope. My body is home, sure, but an important part of me is there with the shields and the Iraqi people, wondering if the next blast will be the one that tears us all to pieces.
sm
e-mail:
shane@humanshields.org