IPT Update: The Monster is Coming (March 31, 2003)

Dear Friends,

Since the last update, several of our people have left Iraq, most of them ordered out of the country by Iraqi officials. Many if them were in Iraq as volunteers for the Chicago based Christian Peacemaker Teams. An Associated Press report of the expulsion and team's eventful journey to Jordan follows.

We have had almost no contact with our team in Baghdad over the last few days. However, an email from Kathy Kelly managed to find its way to our inbox this morning:

"Cathy Breen and I visited Amal at the home of her friends, having heard that her home had been further destroyed by ongoing bombing. She then took us to her house which faces the river, graced by a garden where flowers are blossoming. Picking our way through broken glass at the entrance, we entered what was once one of the most well appointed homes in Baghdad. The rooms are in disarray. Several walls are cracked, the windows are all shattered, and a thick layer of dust and grime covers the exposed furniture, books, carpets and floors.

"'It was my silly feeling,' Amal said matter-of-factly, 'that this will not happen. I did not move anything.' She emphasized several times that neighbors could have removed everything, in the past two days. 'The house is open. The whole area knows about it. But nobody moved anything.' Amal wasn¹t in her home when the windows shattered and the doors were blown out. 'By chance, that night, I forgot my key and for that reason I stayed with my friends.' Ten minutes after we arrived at her home, the US began bombing. 'They are starting it again," sighed Amal. "We should go very quickly.'

"We rejoined Amal¹s friends, two sisters who, like Amal, are elderly, scholarly, staunch, and furious. I first met them in the summer of 2002, when they invited me to tell a gathering of two dozen or so Iraqi friends about my experiences, in April 2001, inside the Jenin Camp, in the West Bank, just after Israeli troops had destroyed hundreds of homes in a civilian neighborhood, using overwhelming military force. Amal and her friends were deeply angered when I showed them enlarged pictures of homes in the Jenin Camp that were reduced to rubble. They said they¹ve always felt intense grief for the Palestinians who¹ve suffered under occupation. It was unthinkable, then, that Amal herself would become homeless and face life under occupation less than a year later.

"'It is so unfair,' said Amal. 'From the simplest people to the highest people, all have suffered.' Later that night, we learned that Voice of America radio had confirmed that an Iraqi military officer approached a US military checkpoint in Iraq appearing to be a cab driver wishing to surrender. The driver detonated a load of explosives inside the cab, killing himself and four US soldiers.

"Amal has paid a high price for guessing wrongly about whether or not the US would wage a massive attack against Iraq. She didn¹t bother to safeguard her impressive collection of valuable artwork, books, and other belongings. She and her friends aren¹t guessing now. They are positive that US warmakers will pay a lethal and grisly price for any attempts to overtake and occupy Iraq. 'We will lose the battle, but the US is not the winner,' she vowed. 'The children talk about the monster coming. We will push back the monster, with our hands.'"

We will continue you send you updates on our teams staus and experience inside Iraq.

All my best, Jeff Guntzel, for Voices in the Wilderness

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Peace Activists Confirm Iraqi Hospital Bombed

Charles J. Hanley, AP Special Correspondent, Associated Press

30 March 2003

AMMAN, Jordan (AP) - Bruised and bleeding, in need of medical care, the Americans stranded in Iraq's western desert approached the mud-brick town and found the hospital destroyed by bombs.

"Why? Why?" a doctor demanded of them. "Why did you Americans bomb our children's hospital?" Scores of Iraqi townspeople crowded around. The American peace activists' account was the first confirmation of a report last week that a hospital in Rutbah was bombed Wednesday, with dead and injured. The travelers said they saw no significant Iraqi military presence near the hospital or elsewhere in Rutbah. The doctor did not discuss casualties, the Americans said.

U.S. Central Command said Sunday it had no knowledge of a hospital bombing in Rutbah. The U.S. military has said it is doing its best to avoid civilian casualties in its campaign to oust Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

For the battered band of peace activists, recounting their nerve-jarring exit from Iraq on Sunday, it was one of the worst moments in 10 days of war. That exit had begun at 9:15 a.m. Saturday, when a dozen foreigners - eight American and one Irish member of the Iraq Peace Team, and three unaffiliated Japanese and South Korean activists - set out from Baghdad on the 300-mile trek to the western border with Jordan, through a nation at war.

Members of the antiwar group have shuttled in and out of the Iraqi capital for months to take part in vigils, small demonstrations and other activities to protest U.S. war plans. Since March 20, they have borne witness and compiled reports on the U.S. bombing of Baghdad.

Some who left Saturday had been ordered out by jittery Iraqi bureaucrats for a minor infraction - taking snapshots in Baghdad without an official escort. Others said they left to get out the story of the Baghdad bombing.

The journey was a straight shot through the gritty western desert, the Badiyat ash-Sham, over a divided superhighway eerily empty of traffic. American special forces and warplanes have been staging raids and air attacks on isolated targets across the west.

"I'd say we passed up to 20 bombed-out, burned-out vehicles along the way," said Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, 22, a student from Devon, Pa. Four were Iraqi tanks and other military vehicles, he said, but the others appeared to be civilian, including a bus and an ambulance.

"We had to detour around a bombed-out bridge, dodge lightpoles down across the road," said Shane Claiborne, 27, a community organizer from Philadelphia.

Three times the group - in a big white GMC Suburban and two yellow taxis - spotted bomb explosions nearby. The last, in early afternoon, occurred near the far-western town of Rutbah. Their Iraqi drivers' nerves were fraying as they sped toward Jordan at 80 mph.

"He kept going faster, faster," Betty Scholten, 69, of Mount Rainier, Md., said of her driver.

Suddenly the lagging taxi, pushing to catch up, blew a tire. It careened, spun out of control and plunged down a ditch, landing on its side. "It was a heavy hit," Claiborne said. All five men inside were hurt. "We pulled each other up through the side doors."

A passing car eventually braked to a halt. The Iraqis inside got out, helped the injured into their vehicle and drove back toward Rutbah and a hospital. Along the way, Claiborne said, he spotted the contrails of a jet streaking toward the car. The Iraqis frantically waved a white sheet out a window, and the plane veered off, he said.

In poor, remote Rutbah, a burned-out oil tanker truck sat in the road, and the customs building and communications center had been wrecked by bombing. When they reached the hospital, they saw it, too, had been bombed, its roof caved in.

Claiborne said an English-speaking Iraqi doctor took them to a small nearby clinic, and 100 or so townspeople then gathered around the building. The men were worried, but the doctor told them, "We'll take care of you. Muslim, Christian, whatever, we are all brothers and sisters,'" Claiborne recalled.

The staff tended to them, stitching up a scalp laceration for group leader Cliff Kindy, 53, of North Manchester, Ind., and doing their best for the worst hurt, Weldon Nisly, 57, of Seattle, who suffered cracked ribs and similar injuries.

The two other carloads, missing the third, eventually doubled back and found the men in Rutbah. All then ventured onward the final 80 miles to the Jordan border, and then Amman, where Nisly was admitted to a hospital early Sunday.

As they left Rutbah, said Wilson-Hartgrove's wife, Leah, 22, the villagers "said to us, 'Please tell them about the hospital.'"

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