Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Author: Leah Wells

  • Peace Education on Peaceboat

    Published by CommonDreams.org

    Peaceboat, the cruise with a conscience, recently devoted an entire month onboard to exploring the nuances of peace education on a global level. Comprised mainly of Japanese students aged 20-30, with a few staunch elder generational supporters, the workshops and dialogues featured onboard covered the parallel shortcomings in Japanese and American education, as well as the potential for change through a student-lead educational revolution.

    The students revealed the complex impacts of formulaic education on self- esteem, attention span, (mis)behavior and career paths. But they were not just empty complainers: they also gave creative input for restructuring the framework of education so that all learners are nurtured and supported.

    Moreover, they recognized that the entire foundation and purpose of education must undergo a transformation of ecological proportions.

    In The Web of Life, author Fritjof Capra differentiates between a holistic and ecological worldview. Using his example of a bicycle, a holistic view would wee how the parts interact with each other, the bike chain with the pedals, the gears, the treads with the road and perhaps the whole apparatus with the rider.

    An ecological approach would see all of those interactions plus the origins of the bike materials, the fabrication of the machine, the process of assembling it from mining the metal components to the individual welder, as well as the impact on the terrain.

    This bike metaphor can also be a model for viewing the state of education in the world today. Judging by the crisis in the United States, education has unraveled to the point that teachers quit after their second year in the classroom, students despairingly drudge through the school day, many in under resourced districts lacking in both funding and morale. Pressure to perform on high-stakes testing has resulted in a catastrophic decline in true learning, sacrificed at the expense of teaching to the test. Learning for the sake of truth and knowledge is hard find.

    If we view the components of education in disarray in a holistic manner, we may try to adjust this or that part of the system, i.e., more funding here, more support there. We can tweak and adjust the various parts of the educational system, hoping that each improvement will have some impact. The majority of educational problem-solvers are addressing the issue through a holistic perspective.

    But what we really need is an ecological understanding of education.

    This means examining the path that education took on this road toward more accountability and less compassion, and the path ahead for how communities will respond to the diverse needs of students in a time when education seems to be getting short shrift.

    Is school meant to mirror factory life, with children neatly in rows, performing identical tasks at the same rate, reaching the same conclusions and the same ends? Is school meant to prepare students for a life of conformity, where repetitive motions propel them in the direction of advancement? Will standardized tests make students pass the final ‘factory inspection’?

    Or is this factory model outdated?

    Based on student input, the answer seems to be yes. An ecological approach to education means that students are heard, and their suggestions taken seriously. It means that educational change begins from the ground up, in a grassroots student revolution.

    On PeaceBoat, students of all ages participated in an Ideal Schools Workshop, an activity geared toward brainstorming the best conditions for an ideal learning environment. Not surprisingly, their ideas reflect principles of ecology and ecological thinking.

    For example, they want cows, a tree house, an organic garden, big windows, field trips in nature and permission to walk barefoot, just to name a few suggestions. One young woman wanted a pottery class to make plates and bowls for the cafeteria, with the logic that students will care for things they themselves create.

    Yet taking the students’ suggestions further means entirely rethinking the fundamental nature and purpose of education. Rather than producing cookie- cutter patterned students, students want education to acknowledge and support the individual talents and aspirations of each learner.

    An ecological view of education means moving from a compartmentalized to an integrated approach; from a factory to an agrarian framework; from an impersonal to an individual environment; from a fixed to a flexible system; from a pedagogy based on theory to one in step with experience and reality; and from a gray, boxed arena to a colorful, open space where all learners can walk in and know who is valued here.

    Leah C. Wells is a freelance journalist and coordinator of PeaceEd.org, the hub of peace education information in the U.S. For more information, contact Ms. Wells at leah@peaceed.org.

  • Whose Side Are You On?

    Abraham was born in the town of Ur, in what is present-day Iraq. His spiritual lineage includes the triad of Christianity, Judaism and Islam.

    This may not be common knowledge, however, among people who have become fearful of Muslims in the past few decades. They have been used as scapegoats and bad guys in movies, and more recently since the war on terror brought Muslim countries in the fix of its scope. We are led to believe that Muslims are all jihadists running around with bombs in their backpacks, hating the West for its democratic institutions.

    The covert message is that Muslims, with widely stereotyped accents further delineating their difference, are suspect; they are not like us. The deft linguistic move of identifying with a “Judeo-Christian” background alienates what is the third of the Abrahamic traditions, Islam.

    Yet it’s not as simple as saying that if only those identified as “Judeo-Christian” recognized their shared past with Muslims, there would be a magic resolution to the deeply entrenched problems in the Middle East and the United States would not have to fear being attacked again. Language is not the whole problem, but it is evidence for how we posture the problem, and how we define who the enemy is.

    While there are clear cultural, linguistic and religious differences between the Abrahamic faiths, they all have a common history. A verse in the Quran quotes that Muslims believe in the same God as Jews and Christians. How we use language to make distinctions, like identifying a “Judeo-Christian” background, satisfies the objective of making us separate in thought and practice even when we share the same history.

    But objectives don’t define themselves. When an indisputable historical link exists between these three religions, why is all-inclusive terminology not used?

    Early in the war on terror post-September 11th, President Bush made an important retraction after calling his plan a “crusade.” He made belated, yet important, outreach to religious leaders in the Muslim community, visiting mosques, shaking hands and proclaiming solidarity. He condemned the hate crimes visited upon non-whites in the United States in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks.

    Clearly, the way we talk about who we identify with distinguished us from others. Primed with national rhetoric of “us versus them”, the subtle transition to “Judeo-Christians” versus Muslims is nearly invisible. Many people make that presumptuous leap without even knowing it. Others are not so inhibited in shifting their perception.

    Lt. Gen. William Boykin has recently come under scrutiny for making what many consider to be inflammatory remarks against Islam. “I knew my God was bigger than his,” said Lt. Gen. William Boykin in reference to a Muslim in Somalia, proclaiming that they hate us because we are a Christian nation.

    However problematic, offensive or inaccurate these comments may be, the deeper problem is that people who control the language of war and politics have the capacity to wield exclusivist terminology, creating artificial boundaries between groups of people, between Jews and Christians, and Muslims.

    So is the idea that there are two groups to be divided, an “us” and a “them,” legitimate?

    Thought comes before form; we use language to think about what we will do. We troubleshoot. We brainstorm. We categorize and sort. Politics may very well be the art of convincing others to look at the world through our categories. Creating predominant thought is a powerful job.

    Having an “us” and “them” ensures that there will be a “winner” and a “loser”. The way we talk about the problem of fighting them, our enemies, not only influences our decisions, it legitimizes and reinforces the notion that we have enemies in the first place. Indisputably, there were people selfish and hateful enough to orchestrate and carry out a morning of terror two years ago on September 11th. But can the problem be viewed only through the lens of “us” versus “them”? Physicists could argue that at the quantum level, there is no distinction between anyone or anything, but at present this idea does not have much of a foothold in geopolitics.

    Still, to this day we have looked at no other options for how the problem might be defined, or redefined, than in terms of “us” versus “them.” The ability to mobilize a negative mass perception of Islam and continue the path of our war on terror rests on the persuasion that Muslims are disqualified from the “Judeo-Christian” tradition.

    *Leah Wells is a consultant to the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. She may be reached at leah@peaceed.org

  • Aceh: In the Shadow of Iraq

    Did anyone notice the uncanny similarities between the recent U.S.-led war in Iraq and Indonesia in its crackdown of Aceh?

    Last week, the peace agreement between the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) and Indonesian government collapsed and Indonesia’s President Megawati Sukarnoputri imposed a state of martial law in the remote province, ordering tens of thousands of troops to militarily crush the guerrilla force.

    Indonesia’s foreign minister Hassan Wirayuda, seems to see the connection between Aceh and Iraq, quoted by the BBC as saying “Honestly, what we are doing or will do in Aceh is much less than the American power that was deployed in Iraq.”

    A spokesman for Mr. Wirayuda said that “Iraq may cause some pause in criticism against us among governments who readily used force.”

    The United States seems not to be making the connection between its actions and the military prerogatives of other countries. U.S. State Department spokesperson Richard Boucher indicated that both sides of the conflict in Indonesia had not explored every peaceful alternative at the Tokyo negotiations, seemingly oblivious to the U.S. policy of “do as I say, not as I do.”

    Prior to the war in Iraq, the international community overwhelmingly supported dialogue and international weapons inspectors through the United Nations to root out any weapons of mass destruction that Iraq might have been hiding. The United States preferred military action to negotiations, and against the better judgment of the United Nations and most allies, proceeded with the invasion.

    In Aceh, too, negotiations and dialogue had been underway through the Henry Dunant Center (HDC) which had brokered a peace deal that included a monitoring agency comprised of representatives from the Indonesian government, the Free Aceh Movement and the HDC. The United States and Japan had provided ample financial backing to the monitoring agency, called the Joint Security Committee, and have been invested in finding a non-military solution to the problem in Aceh.

    Indonesia has complete support from every country in the world for its sovereignty over Aceh. No secession is seriously at hand and the world was actively engaged in disarming the rebels and negotiating a solution. The

    Indonesian government and military, following in the footsteps of the United States, steamrolled through international pleading, trashed the peace talks and launched a military crack down of Aceh.

    Besides arresting the negotiators, the military campaign started with a dramatic photo opportunity as the Indonesian military parachuted hundreds of soldiers into the Banda Aceh airport, a location they already controlled. Why didn’t they just disembark out of a landed plane. This stunt rivals the grandiose rescue of Jessica Lynch in Iraq.

    However, staged photo-ops are only one way to manipulate a “free media”. Fifty Indonesian journalists have been embedded in the Indonesian military (TNI), a cadre of individuals whose newspapers largely support the Indonesian military action in Aceh. It appears that in Aceh, as in Iraq, mainstream media has surrendered its perspective and impartiality by becoming the public relations arm of bloodthirsty governments.

    Like the USA, Indonesia also uses the label of terrorism to validate its war on Aceh. A senior advisor of President Sukarnoputri said that separatist movements, like the GAM, could now be considered terrorist groups. I wonder how she would label the the United States revolutionary patriots?

    A major component of the U.S.-led war on Iraq was control of Iraq’s oil.

    The war in Aceh also has similar subtexts. The gas-rich area of northwestern Sumatra houses a huge Exxon-Mobil gas field which is at the heart of the controversy. Acehnese universally claim that revenues from natural resources found in Aceh are distributed unequally to the benefit of the Indonesian government.

    To complicate matters, the Exxon-Mobil plant is guarded by the Indonesian military which, according to human rights groups, receives upwards of $100,000 per month for security services from the corporation. In a dual role, the TNI forces is massacring civilians while protecting the interests of multi-national enterprise.

    The TNI is using U.S.-made military equipment in Aceh that it acquired prior to the U.S. Congressional ban on military sales, according to Human Rights Watch. While currently not supplying the Indonesian military with weapons, last year the House and Senate Appropriations Committees voted to restart the International Military Education and Training for Indonesia akin to the training that Latin American soldiers receive at the School of the Americas at Ft. Benning, GA.

    The Indonesian troops have drawn lessons from the US military doctrine of “overwhelming force” General Endriartono Sutarto told his troops to fight the rebels “until your last drop of blood,” telling them that “you are trained to kill, so wipe them out.”

    What concerns many humanitarian groups in Aceh and the international community is that civilians, and human rights workers, are already being killed in this renewed war. An estimated 10,000 innocent people have been killed in the 26-year-old fight for independence, and according to recent UNICEF figures, 23,000 children have been displaced. Plans for massive civilian relocation camps trouble many people concerned with human rights violations in the region.

    With disturbing parallels from the U.S.-led invasion Iraq, the Indonesian invasion last week could signal a dangerous trend in international affairs. Has diplomacy become a disingenuous euphemism for placating other countries’ hopes for peaceful resolution of disputes and flouting the rule of international law until the military is good and ready to attack?

    How many other countries will resort to force rather than dialogue?
    * Leah C. Wells worked in Aceh in 2002 on a peace curriculum called Program Pendidikan Damai, and has visited Iraq three times since 2001.

  • In Iraq, Water and Oil Do Mix

    World Water Woes

    Conspicuously missing from the ubiquitous Iraq war critique was the subtle agenda of water rights in the parched Middle East region. Of all the reasons for invading Iraq, securing water rights was never mentioned because it implicates too many countries with volatile connections to Iraq, like Syria, Jordan, Turkey and Israel. Protest signs read, “No Blood For Oil,” as American corporations salivated in line for the opportunity to win contracts to rebuild the ravaged infrastructure. Why did no antiwar protesters carry signs saying, “No War for Water”? They should have.

    The current litany of reasons for invading or threatening to invade countries pertains to terrorism, nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, and undemocratic, fundamentalist regimes. These reasons are particularized and specific, and keep the world guessing where the United States will launch its next attack. With an explicit agenda for controlling water in the Middle East, however, the roadmap for regime change and regional control would become transparent and predictable.

    A land of displaced people and destroyed ecosystems, the once thriving marshland area of southern Iraq was home to hundreds of thousands of marsh Arabs who had sustained a 5,000 year-old culture until the ancient life-giving waters were drained and dammed by the recently-toppled Saddam Hussein government as well as by other riparian states. Truly Saddam created a catastrophic situation by redirecting the water and razing marsh Arab villages. Yet aside from the apparent ecological and humanitarian crisis pertaining to the area, why is the project of rehydrating the marshlands so urgently important for American interests?

    A World Bank webcast in May 2001 quotes Jean-Louis Sarbib, Vice President of the World Bank’s Middle East and North Africa Region, as saying that the CIA had identified water as one of the key issues of the 21st century. Water is a pressing issue in the Middle East which, like the sparse underground aquifers, stays beneath the surface. With 45 million people in the Middle East not having access to drinking water and 80 million not having access to sanitation, Sarbib’s commentary is an understatement.

    Jeffrey Rothfeder, author of explained in an article to the Boston Globe in January 2002 that “a freshwater crisis has already begun that threatens to leave much of the world dry in the next twenty years. One-third of the world’s population is starved for water. In Israel, extraction has surpassed replacement by 2.5 billion meters in the last 25 years. There are 250 million new cases of water-related diseases annually, chiefly cholera and dysentery, and ten million deaths. What’s more, vital regions are destabilized as contending countries dispute who controls limited water resources.”

    Rothfeder, quoting another World Bank official, former Vice President Ismail Serageldin, reminded readers that “the next world war will be over water.”

    Undercurrent of Water Politics

    The dialogue about access to clean water is commonplace in peace talks throughout the Middle East, but Western diplomats rarely broach the topic. An anonymous U.S. State Department official quoted in National Geographic said, “people outside the region tend not to hear about the issue (of water). It just doesn’t make the news.” By design, not by accident, this issue is obscured from Western eyes because the propaganda machinery from Washington, DC has not allowed it. Although water is at the top of the list in negotiations between Syria, Turkey, Jordan, Israel, Palestine and Iraq,

    Only the region’s countries, the riparian states of Syria, Turkey and Iraq themselves have directly conferred on the issue of sharing the water of the Tigris and Euphrates. The United States cannot dictate water usage as a formal part of its foreign policy, or even legitimate the crisis surrounding clean water, in part because of its wholly unsustainable practices, and in part because a straightforward concession on the issue of dwindling water supplies would mean an complete overhaul of global diplomatic relations with a new emphasis on aquatic vulnerability.

    Published after the 9-11 terrorist attacks but prior to the recent war on Iraq, Peaceful Uses of International Rivers: The Euphrates and Tigris Dispute written by water rights expert Hilal Elver outlines the hydrohistory of the Fertile Crescent as well as the present challenges to settling the disputes between countries vying for water access in the 21st century. She notes that the “last trilateral meeting of the Turkish, Syrian and Iraqi technical committee was concluded in Damascus in 1996” with Iraq still under the United Nations-imposed sanctions regime which severely hindered international diplomatic relations. With the United States effectively in control of Iraqi politics and lobbying for the removal of the sanctions, presumably negotiations between the three nations will resume with respect to shared water issues.

    According to Thomas Naff, a professor of Middle East History at Pennsylvania State University, the Tigris and Euphrates rivers which provide Iraq with nearly 100% of its water “depend essentially on agreements with Turkey” where both rivers originate. Turkey disagrees over quotas to meet Syria and Iraq’s minimum requirements for what would be the natural flow of the water and what would provide their people with adequate access to those resources, claiming that Syria and Iraq take more than their allotted amount of water from the rivers as compared to how much each country contributes to the rivers’ flows.

    Thus Turkey began constructing a major series of dams to control the waters of the Tigris and Euphrates and flex their regional muscle. The Southeast Anatolia Project consists of 15 dams, 14 hydroelectric stations and 19 irrigation projects. Maybe to prove its capacity for controlling Syria’s and Iraq’s access to the life-sustaining waters of the two rivers or maybe just to fill the largest of the Project’s dams, Turkey cut off the water flow for 29 days in 1990. The point of potable prowess was well taken, and Iraq and Syria effectively tabled their mutual disagreements and colluded in 1998 to resist the construction of the Southeast Anatolia Project in Turkey. In the close quarters of Middle East politics, shared water resources often make for temperamental bedfellows.

    Closely tied to the disputes surrounding Iraq and Syria’s water supply is the proximity to Israel. Syria faces water difficulties on its southwestern border as well in the water-rich area of the Golan Heights, occupied by Israel since 1967. The Golan Heights has important water resources that, according to Professor Emeritus Dan Zaslavsky at Bar-Ilan University, if handed back over to Syria would mean that Israel loses nearly one-third of its fresh water.

    On May 7, 2003 Secretary of State Colin Powell met with Bouthaina Shabaan of Syria to reaffirm the United States’ commitment to returning the Golan Heights, occupied by Israel since 1967, as a key step in the peace process between Syria and Israel.

    Should the U.S. broker a peace plan that guaranteed the Golan to Syria, Israel would have to find a replacement source for its lost resources. Stephen Pelletiere, a former CIA analyst, wrote in the New York Times that Turkey had envisioned building a Peace Pipeline carrying water that would extend to the southern Gulf States, and as he sees it, “by extension to Israel.” He continued by saying that “no progress has been made on this, largely because of Iraqi intransigence. With Iraq in American hands, of course, all that could change.”

    The assumptions about pan-Arab unity seem to dissolve when talking about the scarce commodity of water, especially when the two of the countries commanding control over the resources are also recipients of large amounts of financial and military aid from the United States: Turkey and Israel. This cosmetic overture to feign regional fairness and non-partiality toward Israel in returning the Golan Heights to Syria does not mask the fact that the United States has strategic goals to control water and oil supplies in the Middle East. The continued destruction of Palestinian homes and agribusiness by Israeli settlers is second only to continued U.S. aggression toward Iraqis via sanctions and wars, inciting and exacerbating global disgust at perceived American imperialism and anti-Arab, anti-Islamic policies. These sentiments contribute to the ongoing worldwide terrorist threats, which in turn propels the United States foreign policy to search and destroy any would-be terrorists and lending encouragement for further invasions in “uncooperative” countries like those listed as the Axis of Evil.

    The Dammed Water Problem

    While the regional water issues have been obscured, to some extent the poor condition of water in Iraq is no new news.

    Professor Thomas Nagy of George Washington University unloaded a massive compilation of U.S. Government documents from 1990-1991 that showed in no uncertain terms the malevolent intent to target sites of vital civilian importance in the first Gulf War. In an expose entitled “The Secret Behind the Sanctions” Nagy cites macabre foreknowledge of the effects of bombing water purification and sewage treatment facilities which provide clean water to the Iraqi people. Moreover, these documents detail how the economic sanctions, imposed when Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990, would crescendo the effects of the bombings by banning items like water chlorinators and spare parts to rebuild the obliterated infrastructure, claiming that they could serve “dual use” purposes in making weapons of mass destruction.

    The result has been pandemic waterborne illnesses that have targeted the most vulnerable people in Iraqi society the children. The United Nations estimates that 5,000 children under age 5 have died every month as a result of preventable illnesses such as cholera and dysentery. Because electrical facilities were also targeted in the first Gulf War, vaccinations needing refrigeration (which requires electricity or functioning generators) spoiled, and several generations of children in Iraq have not been inoculated for illnesses which had been completely controlled under the socialist, secular Iraqi government which once provided its citizens with comprehensive, free medical care.

    It is safe to address topics like waterways contaminated by sewage in Iraq because most of the dialogue on impure water centers on the immorality of targeting civilian infrastructure. It is dangerous to talk about the scarcity of water in the region because less dialogue covers the most pressing issue: regional instability intensifying as a result of growing population rates and diminishing water supplies. The United States is testing the waters of hydropolitics by starting to acknowledge the shortage of water in the marshlands of Iraq. Missing from the critique of U.S. foreign policy in the region is a dialogue on regional and global sustainability, to the advantage of American interests.

    In justifying the recent invasion, we heard history about Saddam gassing his own people, the Kurds, developing and hiding weapons of mass destruction, displacing the marsh Arabs and ruining their land, and leading a torturous repressive regime that deprived Iraqi people from democracy and self-governance and led them to the deplorable conditions they now live in.

    The U.S. Department of State lists an interview with Azzam Alwash, an Iraqi-born engineer and environmental activist, who explained that the Iraqi government diverted water by building canals and dams for many reasons. One was to catch soldiers fleeing the Iran-Iraq war in the late 1980’s, and another was to punish the Shi’a people who, doing as the United States had told them to do at the end of the first Gulf War, led an uprising against the central Iraqi government and were abandoned by the U.S. military and forcefully put down by Saddam’s military.

    Alwash describes three different systems that Saddam’s regime used for redirecting the water away from the marshlands, claiming that even in the early 1990’s when dams in Turkey and Syria were built to harness hydroelectric energy and retain water for their countries’ usage, the marshlands of Iraq were vibrant and thriving. He maintains that it was exclusively the malicious ehydration campaign led by Saddam which ruined the marshlands and displaced or killed between 100,000 and 500,000 Marsh Arabs, draining 60% of the marshes between 1990-1994.

    Interestingly enough, draining the marshlands between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers what the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) calls “one of the world’s greatest environmental disasters” was done under the auspices of the sanctions and the watchful eye of the southern No-Fly-Zone, patrolled by Great Britain, the United States and, for some time, France. The No-Fly-Zones were established in 1992 to protect the Kurdish people in the north and the Shi’a people in the south from Saddam’s regime. These minority groups have received targeted repression and mistreatment, and the No-Fly-Zones were supposed to inhibit Saddam’s power to further oppress them.

    “We watched it happen,” said Baroness Emma Nicholson of Winterbourne at a forum on the marshlands at the Brookings Institution on May 7. “We had the power, the knowledge and the responsibility and we did nothing.” Undoubtedly, the long arms of Baghdad were able to reach to the southern marshlands despite the sanctions and the No-Fly-Zones, and wreak havoc on the indigenous people as well as the landscape.

    For the past twelve years while Iraqis were unable to import pencils because they contained graphite, blood bags because they contained anti-coagulants and cleaning supplies, because the Sanctions Committee 661 asserted that some parts could be used in making weapons of mass destruction, the government of Iraq was able to bring in materials and massive equipment to construct dams which rerouted the marshland waters and wrought misery on the Madan.

    Inundated by Foreign Interests

    One of the many claims of barbarism on the part of Saddam Hussein and his Ba’athist regime is displacing hundreds of thousands of Madan, or Marsh Arabs, and draining the legendary swamps where millennia-old culture had been practiced and preserved. In post-war Iraq, the United States has assumed the responsibility of restoring these marshlands. The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has been a vocal proponent of bringing water to the arid landscape, addressing the humanitarian needs of the remaining Marsh Arabs, and fixing the ecological crisis which, according to the UNEP, has vanished about 90% of the 20,000 square kilometers of Iraq’s marshlands.

    While addressing the marshland concerns attempts to smooth over twelve-year-old political rifts between the American administrators now governing Iraq and the displaced Madan people, it seems somewhat odd that such a relatively isolated minority of the Iraqi population would receive such attention and consideration so immediately after the war, especially since the Madan are Shi’a, a population that has largely rejected the occupying American forces and has rejoiced at the return of Islamic leaders from exile to Iraq.

    And yet, American interests are moving forward swiftly.

    Bechtel, an American firm with a controversial history of water privatization, who won the largest contract from USAID to rebuild Iraq’s infrastructure, is set to be a major player in the process with a contract worth $680 million. Bechtel’s history speaks for itself.

    Blue Gold, a book exposing global control of water by private corporations, listed Bechtel in the second tier of ten powerful companies who profit from water privatization. According to Corpwatch, two years ago current USAID administrator Andrew Natsios was working for Bechtel as the chairman of the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority, a massive transportation project in Boston whose cost has inflated exponentially in the billions of dollars. While providing political disclaimers on its website as a result of investigative reporting centering on the close relationship between government and private business, Bechtel certainly will benefit from its positioning as the sole contractor for municipal water and sanitation services as well as irrigation systems in Iraq.

    Vandana Shiva also implicates Bechtel in attempting to control not only the process of rebuilding Iraq’s infrastructure, but also control over the Tigris and Euphrates rivers themselves. Bechtel has been embroiled in a lawsuit with Bolivia for their plan to privatize the water there, which would drastically rise the cost of clean water for the poorest people in the country. To control the water in the Middle East, Bechtel and its fiscal sponsors, the United States government, would have to pursue both Syria and Turkey, either militarily or diplomatically. Syria has already felt pressure from the United States over issues of harboring Iraqi exiles on the U.S.’s “most wanted” list, as well as over issues of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction.

    It is not stretch of the imagination that a company like Bechtel with a history of privatization would have its sights set on water in the Middle East, starting with their lucrative deal in Iraq. However, the United States is not positioned to enter a new phase of global geopolitics where water, a limited vital resource that every human needs, is the hottest commodity and where American corporations like Bechtel have not already capitalized on the opportunity to obtain exclusive vending rights.

    Devoting attention to restoring the marshes clearly serves U.S. businesses and corporations who have control over which areas of the marshes get restored, and which ones get tapped for their rich oil resources. Control of the marshlands by the U.S.-led interim government and by the American corporations who have won reconstruction contracts is crucial in deciding where new oil speculation will take place. If only a percentage 25% according to experts on a Brookings Institution panel on marshland reconstruction can be restored, then it would behoove those working on issues of oil and water not to rehydrate areas where such oil speculation will likely take place.

    Water is vital to the production of oil as well; one barrel of water is required to produce one barrel of oil. Bechtel and Halliburton, who received a U.S. Army contract to rebuild the damaged oil industry which will likely reach $600 million, are the two most strategically-positioned corporations to control both the water and oil industries in Iraq.

    Yet this ruse of generous reconstruction and concern seems both an unlikely and peculiar response after a less-than-philanthropic U.S.-led invasion of the sovereign nation of Iraq. Supporters and opponents of the war alike could hardly miss its transparency. Whether the reasoning was because of oil, liberating the Iraqi people, ferreting out weapons of mass destruction or exerting regional influence, few pretenses were made to distance the war profiteers from the battlefield in the war’s wake.

    The actions of agencies like USAID, which has pledged more than a billion dollars to facilitate rebuilding infrastructure in Iraq which the U.S. military and policymakers had a large hand in destroying, are far from altruistic. The problem of the Marsh Arabs was not invented overnight at the end of the recent war, but rather has developed in plain view of the whole world via satellite images and documented in-country reports of displacement and abuse. Moreover, the marshlands are not Iraq’s sole antiquity. Museums, regions and sites of archaeological importance were destroyed, bombed and looted not only during this last war, but also continuously since the first Gulf War. Will we be paying to rebuild those as well?

    According to Peter Galbraith, a professor at the Naval War College, three weeks of ransacking post-war Baghdad left nearly every ministry in shambles, including the Irrigation Ministry, except for the Oil Ministry that was guarded by U.S. troops. The people of Iraq are becoming rapidly disenchanted with a prolonged U.S. presence in their country as their former disempowerment under Saddam is translated into present disempowerment under the Americans.

    According to those working closely with the project to rehydrate the arshlands, in the newly “liberated” Iraq the silenced voices of the oppressed peoples can now be heard and addressed, the stories of destruction can be told and the much-needed healing of humans and terrain can take place. Whether this will actually happen is another story. At the Brookings Institution forum on the marshlands, no native Iraqis were represented, and the larger question arising in the post-war reconstruction of Iraq is what tangible legitimacy is given to voicing the will of the people by putting representative Iraqis in power.

    Water, Water Everywhere and Not a Drop to Drink

    Perhaps the issue of water is left unspoken on the global level because the transnational corporations supported by powerful Western governments ontribute largely to water pollution and privatization and do not want to draw attention to this fact lest they be forced to clean up their acts and sacrifice profits. Certainly higher standards and levels of accountability would be imposed on industries relying on expendable water resources if the true shortage of water were openly acknowledged.

    Perhaps it is because the leaders, politicians and diplomats who negotiate issues like this do not want to cause mass hysteria in the region, or in the United States or Western world, by directly addressing the problem of diminishing water supplies. Instead they prefer to keep it their little secret, hidden from public view and accountability, prolonging the inevitable panic and hording that will ensue when people’s needs will outweigh the planet’s capacity for providing potable water.

    Perhaps water issues in Iraq and in the Middle East in general do not make the news so as not to legitimize the environmental movement’s claims that water is a precious and ever-diminishing resource that requires drastic reprioritizing on a personal, national and global level. Sustainable practices of water conservation are given cursory attention worldwide and are not yet being implemented on a credible, meaningful scale.

    Population growth expectations for the Middle East provide a staggering predicament. According to Michael Klare, author of Resource Wars, the regional population was near 500 million in 1998, and that figure is expected to double by the year 2050. There will be no peace in the Middle East without addressing issues of sustainability and access to water. The microcosm of war in the Middle East is a staggering prediction of a potential widespread global crisis if countries do not learn to conserve and cooperate.

    Or perhaps it is because resources are not allocated fairly in the region, and acknowledging massive humanitarian crises means that the whistle-blowers are accountable to fixing the problem. Israelis and Palestinians already compete for limited water resources, with Palestine getting short shrift and less water. As noted in Resource Wars, Jewish settlers already get five to eight times more water per capita than Palestinians.

    Addressing problems of war, famine, the environment, human rights, democracy and sustainability has traditionally been compartmentalized work with little overlap and interdependent relevance. The situation of the marsh Arabs integrates the urgency of ending wars, providing for humanitarian crises and looking ahead into the future at the necessity of sharing natural resources equitably. In the near future, wars may be fought not over intangible ideologies like communism, terrorism or religion, but rather fought overtly about access to clean water. It will soon be much more difficult for governments to euphemize about their intent to wage war.

    The policy of rehydrating the marshlands of Iraq is significant in that it marks American interests’ recognition of water scarcity in the Middle East. It also means that following the blue lines on the map charts a precarious course toward war or peace, depending on the management of water resources.
    * Leah C. Wells serves as the Peace Education Coordinator for the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org). She has visited Iraq three times with Nobel Peace Prize-nominated organization Voices in the Wilderness (htpp://www.vitw.org).

  • Regrouping After the War: NAPF Peace Education Coordinator Leah Wells Addresses the Campus Antiwar Network

    Last night I spoke with Kathy Kelly, who just returned from Iraq the day before as a steady member of the Iraq Peace Team, about her experiences there over the past few months, and where she sees the movement headed here in the United States. She and I spoke about an article she wrote for the Electronic Iraq website, an heartwrecking story about a mutual good friend of ours in Iraq. Kathy decided to leave Iraq after her conversation with our friend and driver, Sattar, who is quite possibly the kindest person I have ever met. Reading her account of his ordealduring the U.S.-led invasion (http://electroniciraq.net/news/692.shtml) made me shudder to think what my friend had endured over the past month.

    Squeamish by nature, Sattar had spent weeks working in one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in a hospital, volunteering for overworked, overstretched doctors, nurses and hospital staff. He did everything from moving patients to inserting IV needles.

    Another member of the Iraq Peace Team, Cathy Breen mentioned that it will probably be easier to transport Americans across the Iraqi border now. He said, “You’re right. This is your country now.”

    Currently in Iraq, the American military, the American government and American corporate interests all control nearly every facet of life forthe Iraqis. Americans have almost single-handedly destroyed the country, and now want to profit from rebuilding it. UNICEF takes grant money from USAID, and the contractors must go through the U.S. government for permission to rebuild, renovate or rehabilitate any sector of Iraqi society. In essence, we control everything.

    And what is the peace movement to do? Before and during the war, bright ideas were a dime a dozen for stopping the invasion. Everyone had a spin on what would work best. And now, we are left at an uncomfortable juncture. We did not stop the war, and we have to figure out what to do now.

    It seems that American interests from the military to the government to the corporations to even the peace movement have emerging ways of telling Iraqis how things should be in their country now.

    What if we paused a moment, took a deep breath, and gave the Iraqis some space to allow them themselves to discern what would be best for them. We should give ordinary Iraqis some time to take stock of their lives and make decisions of their own before deciding that we, too, even the well-intentioned peace movement, have control over the direction oftheir lives. We should also encourage the United Nations and its international bodies to play an appropriate role in the reconstruction of Iraq as well as in global disarmament and peacekeeping.

    Rather than focusing on the external, on what is going on in Iraq, we should be focusing internally on what is going on socially and politically in our own cities and states. As citizens of the United States, what do we have the most authority over? Our country and our lives.

    Recently I spent some time at the Earthsong community near Na’alehu, Hawaii. I had gone there to finish writing and organizing a book on peace education that I began working on in mid-2001. The entire Earthsong community is sustainable. The women staying there urinate in the yard and use compost toilets for solid waste. All buildings are powered by solar energy, and the copious garden space provides lush abundance of fruits, vegetables and grains. It was quite a rude awakening for me; I initially whined for the nearest Hilton. I am not accustomed to this lifestyle and found it rather disorienting.

    Staying at Earthsong ended up being the most valuable lesson in peace education for me. I got my own radical, revolutionary course in peace education and ustainability in confronting the crucial inner peacework that makes the outer peacework possible. Since the war started, I havefelt ornery, angry, useless, agitated, sullen and just about every emotion in the range between frustration and rage. In a word, I have been unbalanced.

    Perhaps this is a familiar experience? Has anyone ditched family or friends in the past two months in order to do “the work” for preventing, opposing or ending the war? Has anyone been rundown, sick or suffered poor nutrition? Has anyone been in at least one major fight? Anyone missed sleep?

    What if we realized that our inner lives all the aforementioned questions actually mirrored all the mess, craziness and dysfunction ofthe external world, i.e. everything we’re working against. What if allthat we oppose and disavow actually exists right inside of us, and in order to effectively confront the greater evils of the world, we have to begin in our own space and consciousness?

    Rather than saying, “George W. Bush is hateful, ignorant and greedy,” we could turn the statement around and examine where each of us individually is hateful, ignorant and greedy.We need to acknowledge and honor our own lives and processes, being fully congruent in our thoughts and actions. Integrity means that we don’t put on the charade of being a happy, cheerful peacemaker out in the world and then return home grumbly and gnarly spreading peace in the world and hate in our homes.

    We should be mindful of the power of our thoughts, words and actions. We need to be aware of ourselves and of the need to keep balance and not let ignorance govern our behavior. And we should be especially concerned about our greediness, our over-consumptive lives and mindless wasteful practices. How can we begin to model what we would like to see happen in the world on a wider scale if we are not putting the “reduce, reuse, recycle” principle into practice. Living sustainably, calling for peace and justice in our own homes and neighborhoods is making the first step. Founder of the Catholic Worker communities, Dorothy Day once said that those who have more thanthey need are stealing from the poor.

    Yet, as I recall my experience in Hawaii, I heard many people who are living in beautiful conditions say that they could never return back tothe mainland after experiencing the liberation of living sustainably. While it’s important for them to live their truth, it makes me concerned for the areas where more people need to hear the message of peace through self-inquiry, mutual causality rather than blame and sustainable living practices.

    In general, there’s an overabundance of activists and “progressives” living in well-informed, cushioned, safe communities, especially in urban hubs. A whole country of consumption, of Wal-Marts and Rite-Aids, of CostCo’s and Big Lots, needs to be exposed to the reality that not onlyoil is a precious resource, but arable land, access to clean water and fresh air are as well. More people with experience in sustainable living need to fan out and bring these once-lost-now-regained practices to places where people are living most unsustainably. People in Colorado, in Southern California, in the Bible Belt, the Deep South and especially Texas need to hear about compost, about community garden space and about practices that make individuals and the planet healthier.

    A redefining moment for the peace movement

    As a group, the antiwar mobilization did not stop the invasion of Iraq,but we certainly made it much more costly on a political level, both nationally and internationally. Our challenge now is to transform the momentum from opposing this war to addressing concerns in our country, drawing attention to our ailing domestic economy, to the obliterated education budgets in so many states, and to the welfare of our citizens young, old, differently-abled and veterans.

    We need to be looking at the roots of what made this war possible.We need to examine why the military is such an attractive option for young people, a stable, well-funded and respectable institution that provides an alternative to the fact that upon graduation, many students have no viable skills or direction in an ever-shrinking job market. Because there is no living wage in our country, we need to be fully cooperating with the labor movement to ensure that jobs pay well enough and utilize students’ skills and talents that they are not subsumed into the ranks of the military simply to pay for school or have some boundaries which should have been set and supported by their home communities.We need to examine why education is bearing the brunt of budget cuts. A systematically undereducated country is a malleable, gullible country. An ignorant population is easily swayed by propaganda and fear, troublingly influenced not by books and words but by images and sounds. Having given up much of our critical thinking responsibility to powerful elected or appointed decision-makers or their corporate media mouthpieces, many American citizens cannot tell truth from fiction and are paralyzed in the chasm between.

    We need to examine why we do not have people in office who represent people like us, people who have our interests at heart. By and large, we do not have people in office who represent us because by and large, we are not running for office! One-third of the elections in our country go uncontested every year, a free and natural platform in our democratic process that we do not take advantage of. To some extent, people who want to create change that will bring about balance and peace to the world must learn to play the political game and learn how, in our own integrity, we can play to win. A few months ago, I was moved by a speech by Boondocks cartoonist Aaron McGruder who told the UC Santa Barbara audience that we need to run candidates for office who will win. We laud candidates like Kucinich, Wellstone and Ted Kennedy but are reluctant to run for public office and attempt to make an impact like they have.

    (Michael Moore ran for the School Board during his Senior year of high school, got elected and eventually played a role in the Principal’s early resignation.)

    The Weapons Industry: Getting to the roots of the problem

    The technology used to wage the war, from start to finish, were researched, developed and built here in the United States. Our number one moneymaking export is weapons. The United States supplies nearly three-fourths of the weapons used in conflicts going on worldwide. The industry which produces weapons of mass destruction has its home in the United States.

    The nuclear weapons industry is maintained and overseen by the University of California Regents who have had exclusive contracts with the United States Department of Energy for the past fifty years. The UC Nuclear Free campaign, a project of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, seeks to shed light on the UC’s complicity in the research, development, manufacturing and testing of nuclear weapons since their inception. It is immoral and inappropriate that universities who are charged with intellectual growth are also the sole responsible parties for producing weapons of mass destruction.

    Yet these are not faceless entities. There are real people, real graduate students and real professors, real administrators with real families who are just doing their jobs, the same as the employees at Boeing, Raytheon, McDonnell-Douglas and TRW. They are corporations who employ people not in a void but rather in a context, in their contexts as a professor needing tenure, as a graduate student needing funding, as a secretary needing stability and health insurance which exist for their livelihood.

    We cannot begin to transform, or even shut down, the weapons manufacturing industries without directly impacting people who work there and who do not set the policies.

    It’s conventional to hammer on the top of the power triangle, exposing the CEO’s, the shady business practices and the sweetheart deals for their blatant war profiteering. CorpWatch is a crucial instrument in this endeavor.

    It’s radical to get to the base of the power triangle, the workers in their average lives, and start organizing and influencing the employees!

    Oil and Power

    One of the primary reasons among many that this invasion took place, to no one’s surprise, is oil. Evidenced by the contracts secured by Halliburton and Bechtel, the government and corporate insiders positioned themselves to make a killing, so to speak, on their oil-based opportunities.In revising our critique of the motivations of the Bush administration, we should also take a look at how we depend on their nouveau conquistador policies. How many of us drove here to this gathering? Flew here? Carpooled? Rode bicycles? Used biodiesel? Used public transportation? We should be especially observant of our own hypocrisyand our dependence on petroleum products, not only on fuel but on plastics as well.

    Natural resources like oil are at the heart of global conflicts. Water and coastline space are already limited resources as the ocean levels rise and access to clean water is more scarce. These issues certainly will float to the surface in the next few years.

    The war was not only about oil, though. Regional control and domination served as powerful motivators for this conflict as well, and the increasing connections between Iraq and the struggle for a free Palestine cannot be overlooked. Already interconnected, another layer of overlap between these places is the context of occupation: Palestine by Israel,and Iraq by the United States.

    What to do about Iraq?

    With respect to Iraq itself, we have our work cut out for us. First and most importantly, the sanctions regime which our State Department said would remain in place “as long as Saddam Hussein is in power or until the end of time” are still punishing the people of Iraq. What use do economic sanctions serve, and is there a bigger global lesson to be learned fromthe devastating effects that have killed more than a million and a halfpeople in Iraq since 1990? The issue of the sanctions, contrary to some opinions, is not obsolete. The recalcitrant sanctions are most relevant now, when the goalpost established by the State Department has been reached.

    In many of the news reports that I have read recently, especially through independent media, the common sentiment of the Iraqi people is tepid graciousness for their “liberation” and scalding desire for the rapid exit of U.S. presence in their country. The Iraqi people want the United States out of their country. They are furious that U.S. soldiers and tanks protected the Ministry of Oil and let looters and ransackers destroy food stocks, precious artifacts and civilian infrastructure. Just recently a group of Iraqi antiwar, anti-occupation protesters were killed by our military for demonstrating. Is this the free and democratic Iraq the Bush administration envisioned? Apparently not.

    As I said before, we should not give up on the United Nations as a powerful intermediary in creating and maintaining peace in the Middle East, and we should not give up on ourselves. After the first Gulf War, much of the peace movement felt frustration and chagrin for the lack ofsuccess in stopping the war, and effectively went to sleep on the issue until 1996 when many realized that the war had not ended. No-Fly-Zones and sanctions were a debilitating after-war presence.

    At the termination of the flagrant bomb-dropping and battlefield conflict in Iraq, we have some very strong leverage points as a movement. We can keep the momentum by working on what’s doable, like focusing internally on our own political pressure points and singling out people from our communities who helped to orchestrate the war and are complicit in maintaining the occupation of Iraq.

    For example, the University of California students present at the gathering today have a powerful ally in the Middle East. Her name is Barbara Bodine, and she is the UC Alumni Regent and has been active in the UC Santa Barbara community. As a regent, she has influence over the UC’s oversight of the nuclear weapons program as well as being one of the central administrators in Iraq under newly-appointed Iraqi interim leader Jay Garner. The UC students are her constituents, and we should be able to find some important things to say to her and to lobby for. Where are the places where we can apply pressure here? The options range from importing technology necessary to determine if depleted uranium is present in the body, to ensuring that student exchanges are able to take place.

    The young people of Iraq could possibly be our greatest concern in establishing a plan for the peace movement. In Iraq, 46% of the population is under age 16. What are their needs, and what is our accountability to them? Two wars and more than twelve years of sanctions later, policies enforced by our government have been met with unfailingcompliance by the American people who are ignorant of the experiences of average Iraqis. Our inaction and ignorance have helped to kill more than half a million kids in Iraq and imprison millions of others in the sequestered hell of a nation under sanctions. These kids have died because, quite frankly, they could not afford to live. The dinar devalued from 3.3 to 3,000 dinar to 1USD in the span of twelve years. Health care and education have become luxuries in a country where public welfare was once the envy of the Middle East.

    In February when I was in Iraq for an international student gathering, I presented students and teachers with the Campus Antiwar Network statements as well as the antiwar resolutions from many other American college campuses. One gap that my presence was able to bridge is the gaping disparity of cross-cultural communication between Iraqi and American students. In early March, students from UC Santa Barbara participated in a radio dialogue with students from Baghdad University for nearly two hours. They spoke frankly about the pending war, as well as shared jokes, poetry and personal insights about philosophies on life.

    As students, one of your most powerful platforms is making the connections between education and militarism, i.e. the need for funding schools and for teaching peace. Those of you who are called to be teachers should examine the vast amount of resources available to make educating for peace an integral classroom component. The military recruiters on campus should get no more access to students than is allowed under the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and certainly should be balanced with other peopleoffering careers with a conscience and peaceful alternatives to military service.

    So what’s the big picture? We have our work cut out for us. I am grateful for your hard work and organizing to make this student antiwar conference happen, and it will be a long process. I hope you are in this for the long haul.

    While I was in Hawaii, I had the time to look through a book of quotes I’ve compiled over the past few years. One in particular by June Jordan stood out to me because of its appropriateness: We are the people we’ve been waiting for.

    Thank you.

  • Iraqi Students Wonder What U.S. Goal is With War

    Few dialogues have taken place between Iraqi and American students on the topic of war in recent months. It seems remarkable that even when governments have ceased talking, students across the time zones are able to find a way to communicate their fears, concerns, angers and dreams to one another.

    Recently, eight students from Santa Barbara and seven students from Baghdad talked to each other in radio stations for nearly two hours. The talk was candid. We asked them about liberation, an argument for the war that has won over many Americans. Answering honestly, they felt anything but grateful for the prospect of 3,000 bombs falling on their city. What good will liberation be if they’re all dead?

    The students asked what authority we Americans have to impose our will on them. They reminded us that their nation in the 1950s had risen up to overthrow a monarchy that did not serve the people. What right have we, they asked, to determine who should rule their country, and how? Even if they exist in an imperfect system, the only truly democratic reform could happen from the inside. No one mentioned the end of the first Gulf War, in which the first President Bush asked the Shiites in the south to rise up against Saddam Hussein only to be disavowed by the U.S. military, which had promised the resisters protection.

    Our Iraqi friends not so gently reminded us that ours is the only country to have used nuclear weapons of mass destruction in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

    The students grilled us about why we don’t do more to end war. Those of us sitting in the room were speechless. We all feel like we do so much: We write, we speak, we organize, we demonstrate and we work nonviolently to persuade public opinion that this war is one of the saddest, most unhealthy and insane policies ever proposed on Earth. Yet, they struck the Achilles’ heel of the peace movement, the well-intentioned people here in the United States who cannot get it together enough to galvanize voters to elect true representatives and initiate real reform, even with all our constitutional freedoms. We pacifist Americans who have had nominal successes and noble failures need to start playing to win, said the Iraqi students. Regime change starts at home, they prodded.

    Joining most recently two career U.S. foreign diplomats and a host of other United Nations officials such as Hans von Sponeck and Denis Halliday, British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook resigned, stating that he could not accept responsibility for what Britain was prepared to do in concert with the United States and Spain. These folks have put their careers on the line for peace. What’s holding us back? Why did we not speak out before, addressing some of the real underlying concerns? Few address the issue of the sanctions, the more than 12 years of deprivation at the hands of the United Nations Sanctions Committee, commandeered by the United States and Great Britain. No one talks about the relocation of the marsh Arabs in Iraq, done by the current Iraqi regime under the watchful eye of the United States and Great Britain in the southern no-fly zones. And who in the United States was mourning the Kurdish massacre last year at this time? CNN certainly wasn’t.

    I couldn’t help but think of my freshman seminar in college called “The Decline and Fall of Empires.” We studied the last days of Greece, Rome, Sweden, Spain and Great Britain. The Azores Summit smacked of irony, placing two of the world’s great fallen empires on podiums next to the United States. It seems like we are following the legacy of all those nations, cutting spending on social programs, over-extending our military resources and acting not in our own self-interest on crucial domestic policy issues.

    Despite the United Nations, our former allies — France, Germany and Russia and maybe even China — the pleadings of Iraqi students and a massive people’s movement worldwide, my country has decided to plunge further into the wrongness of this war.

    The conversation with Iraqi students punctuated all the experiences I have had with friends there. Our group concurred that bombing Iraq is different now that we know people, now that we have heard their stories and their frustrations. We lamented that if more people had a personal connection, it would be harder to support the war.

    And all of us sank in our chairs when our friends said they hoped to be alive to have another conversation with us, feeling both guilty and lucky that we are bound to our friends in Iraq because we know each other’s stories and names.
    * Leah C. Wells recently returned from her third trip to Iraq. She is Peace Education Coordinator at the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

  • International Women’s Day: Women and War

    Two great principles govern all interaction on earth: the male principle of competition and the female principle of cooperation. The judicious balance between these opposing forces functions both as a means of perceiving the world as well as guidance for getting along in it.

    In our contemporary perspective, these polarities assume a hierarchical position, with corresponding values assigned to the superior and inferior roles. War and peace are often interchangeably substituted for what we identify as the male and female principles. Put another way, many people observing and trying to ameliorate global problems posit that the male principle, war, is wrong and the female one, peace, is right. Patriarchy seems to subjugate, quantify, label and differentiate, while matriarchy seeks to incorporate, include and envelop.

    So patriarchy is wrong, right?

    The hierarchical superpositioning of masculinity over femininity is inextricably connected to the nature of the problem itself. Fritjof Capra, in The Web of Life, describes the problem as a “crisis of perception” where problems are viewed as distinct, unlinked entities. In reality, the interconnected male and female principles play a tug of war with each other, balancing each other’s creative and destructive powers, a natural system of checks and balances. In Eastern philosophy, the yin and yang cannot exist independently. An ongoing intimate dance between yang, the male principle, and yin, the female principle, governs the seasons, the transformation from daylight into darkness and the relationships between human beings. The Egyptian ankh symbolizes the male and female union; its name in Arabic means simply, “life.”

    Thus, the nature of the problem lies not in stratifying the principles into a “better or worse” paradigm, but rather realizing that the problems of the world, at the individual, local, national and global levels, result from the imbalance between the principles of cooperation and competition. The Western dominant culture has distorted its values to place more worth in competition and aggression, and the mysterious feminine principle of integration and synthesis is summarily dismissed as witchery or weakness.

    Yet most importantly, inherent in this disproportionate attention to the male principle is the unchecked capacity for destruction and objectification.

    Perhaps this is why it is so troubling to see primarily males occupying the vast majority of seats at the United Nations and serving as heads of state for the majority of countries. Perhaps this is why it is disturbing that the purportedly balanced and accurate news programs boast a majority of males in the roles of interviewer and interviewee. Perhaps this is why the theater of war, comprised of a cast of mainly men, is the ultimate assault on femininity.

    Liberation, the act of rescuing the damsel in distress, the art of war to free people seen as incapable of carving out their own destiny, is a patriarchal fallacy. The idea of liberating Iraq by force represents the systematic domination of male over female, the forcible rape and ensuing grief and shame of disempowerment that women have historically encountered as victims of male-perpetrated violence.

    Human nature, incorporating the experience of both men and women, has a predisposition for conflict. People inherently perceive the world from different perspectives and have an inclination to disagree. War, however, is a different case entirely. Its entire existence rests on the premise of otherness and separation, of a definitive right and wrong, of intensive training and preparation for battle, of desensitization to that which makes us uniquely and more deeply human: conscience.

    Embodied in the female experience is this notion of conscience. It is the intuitive, secret voice that whispers the directions for following a higher path. It is the dreamlike symbolism revealed through humility and introspection. Turning inward requires reflection and self-knowledge, faith in the unseen. It is the root system which takes hold beneath the soil before peering upward into the light. First we must go deep before emerging into the world.

    Iraq, the religious and historical cradle of civilization, is a potent metaphor for femininity. It is the Fertile Crescent, the great mother womb which gave birth to inventions like the wheel, the art of writing and three of the world’s far-reaching religions, Islam, Judaism and Christianity which share a common Abrahamic lineage. It is the home of archaeological treasures buried deep in the vast desert sands. It is the home of unheard weeping, suffering borne disproportionately by grandmothers, mothers and children.

    The invasion of Iraq is a crime against all women, against all that is feminine and sacred.

    Around the world, countries amass arsenals of weapons like the testosterone buildup in prepubescent males. Bombs and missiles gather tension as they lie in wait of evacuation from planes which vanish from their targets quicker than absentee fathers evading child support. Barbara Hope, in her essay “Patriarchy: A State of War” recounts the U.S. Army basic training jingle, “This is my rifle (slaps rifle). This is my gun (slaps crotch). One is for killing, the other for fun.”

    The decision to go to war with Iraq is one which will impact all members of Iraqi society, of American society and of people across the globe. A democratic process of hearing concerns from all involved has been systematically avoided and effectually discounted. The experiences of women and children, of students and elders, of those who will be on the receiving end of bombing campaigns and labeled ‘collateral damage’ have been given zero space in a credible, public dialogue.

    An egregious disparity gapes between whose narrative matters and whose does not.

    The runaway train of male competitiveness has flattened in its tracks the female experience, leaving a perpetual state of war and chaos where brute force is the law of the land. The feminine principles of cooperation, dialogue and diplomacy have been disregarded as ineffectual and powerless.

    We have long outgrown the Roman motto, “If you want peace, prepare for war.” Men on either side of the battle lines may declare a victory, but the women on both sides declare losses.
    *Leah C. Wells serves as the Peace Education Coordinator for the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

  • When Oprah Says No To War…

    On September 19, 2000, Danny Muller and Andrew Mandell, both of Voices in the Wilderness, went to the Oprah show. Her guest that day was presidential hopeful George W. Bush. They had come to ask important, unscripted questions and to find out if our future 43rd President would toe the same line on the Iraq issue as the administrations of his father and Bill Clinton.

    Other Voices in the Wilderness members handed out roses to the other audience members before they were seated in remembrance of the 5,000 Iraqi children who die each month due to sanctions.

    We didn’t see those roses on television, however, because before each audience member could enter the studio, they had to hand over their rose.

    Halfway through the show, impatient for the canned question period from the audience, Mr. Muller stood up and asked Bush, “Mr. Bush, would you continue the Democrats’ policy of bombing and sanctions that kill 5,000 children a month in Iraq?”

    The show immediately cut to commercial.

    Mr. Mandell then stood and asked what the children of Iraq could expect. Bush stared directly at him. Both Muller and Mandell were escorted out of the audience for their acts of conscience.

    More than two years later, the children of Iraq know what to expect.

    Bombs.

    For many Americans, Iraq had disappeared from the map since the last Gulf War. The economic embargo remained in place, routine bombings dotted the landscape, and Iraqis suffered in silence.

    In September 2001, Thomas Nagy, a professor at George Washington University, released a report detailing the U.S. government’s foreknowledge of the devastating effects of sanctions and the impacts of the Gulf War on civilian infrastructure. The document, published in The Progressive, outlined the outcomes of impure water and insufficient sanitation on the most vulnerable members of society: the children. He cites the Geneva Convention as precedent for why these actions are illegal and punishable under international law.

    As history repeats, a country considerably less prepared is bracing for another invasion.

    “There will be no safe place in Baghdad,” the U.S. Department of Defense declares. Only now the country is dependent on the U.N. programs which keep the cycle of food and humanitarian goods in motion. Were that to be interrupted, there will be major problems for the Iraqi people.

    The pipeline for humanitarian goods for Iraqi civilians is potentially jeopardized by an invasion. In the event of a massive conflict, who will take responsibility for the unfulfilled contracts for humanitarian goods? Governments and private companies enter into contracts under the current conditions the Oil for Food Programme and the current Iraqi regime, but if a major war occurs, the agreements to fill orders for wheat and rice, or to transport those goods into Iraq, may fall through.

    This would mean that the people of Iraq would be forced to buy their food at market prices. Currently they pay the equivalent of $.12 for their monthly ration which includes rice, lentils, baby formula and flour. The market price is $3.50 and the international price is $8.50. Most Iraqis have a monthly salary equivalent to $2-4 USD. Even government employees only make an average salary amounting to $12 USD. Iraqis could not afford to pay the market or international prices for food, and thus the alternative is starvation if the food basket under the Oil for Food Programme were interrupted due to war.

    Mr. Mandell and Mr. Muller doubtfully could have predicted the catastrophic global events which have transpired since their appearance on the Oprah show. The events of September 11th changed the face of modern geopolitics, of civil liberties and of human interaction.

    But rather than recognizing the human capacity to transcend hateful acts of extraordinary desperation, our leaders have called for retributive justice smeared across a global canvas. Afghanistan was not enough revenge. The detainees at Camp X-Ray were not enough. Peaceful Tomorrows, a group comprised of the families and loved ones of those killed on September 11th, calling for an end to war has not been enough. The unprecedented international dissent and the street protests in nearly every country have not been enough.

    Unfortunately, short of Oprah taking a stand against the war or adding Thich Nhat Hanh’s “Peace Is Every Step” to her book club list, those with something to gain from waging this war will continue to do so at the expense of those who have everything to lose.
    *Leah C. Wells serves as the Peace Education Coordinator for the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. This piece also appears at http://www.electroniciraq.net.

  • Three Blind Mice

    I sat next to seventh grader Amina and ninth grader Samara on the Royal Jordanian flight from Baghdad to Amman a week ago. These two young girls are fleeing Iraq with their family, as are millions of other Iraqis, for neighboring Jordan. Syria is inundated with Iraqi refugees; the girls’ father estimated around four million.

    “Iraqis right now are like this,” describes Samara. “It’s like putting mice in a jar and shaking it up and then letting the mice run loose. That is Iraq. That is how the people are.”

    Disoriented. Chaotic. Dazed. Quaking.

    But on the surface you’d never know. In Baghdad for an international student gathering, I had the opportunity to walk around the city to restaurants, strolling and taking stock of the fragile situation. Old men sat outside cafes playing chess, drinking Iraqi chai, or sweet tea. Young men worked to clean out and repair building facades. Boys washed cars and peddled cigarettes. Women and children walked to and from the markets, and kids went to school. Life on the surface appears normal.

    But the two girls, Amina and Samara, are correct. Their metaphor accurately depicts Iraq at this moment. People are recalling the first Gulf War, thinking of all that was destroyed and the enduring catastrophic sanctions which have left their country largely unrepaired. The people of Iraq are considerably less prepared and certainly less healthy than they were twelve years ago.

    Iraq’s medical infrastructure provided for preventative medicine for all members of society. Children in 1990 had all their inoculations and an infrastructure which provided them with clean water and adequate nutrition. Today, due to the sporadic functioning of electrical plants, refrigerated vaccinations ruin, and crucial medical supplies like x-ray film and bloodbags are hard to come by. A centrifuge waited on hold in Amman, banned by the Sanctions Committee 661.

    UNICEF and the World Food Programme have been trying to prepare the country for a U.S.-led invasion. These agencies, along with every other United Nations agency dealing with children, agriculture, health, welfare, education and nutrition, have reported on the devastating effects of the sanctions, and now they are bracing for a humanitarian crisis resulting from a massive attack. UNICEF worries most about the people having access to clean water post-invasion. In 1991, civilian infrastructure like water and sewage treatment facilities were targeted, as were roads and bridges. UNICEF is working around the clock to distribute humanitarian goods all over the country so that in the case of damaged transportation routes, the people will have access to vital sustenance.

    They are getting unprecedented cooperation from the Government of Iraq in importing and distributing necessary goods, like high protein biscuits and F100, a therapeutic food/medicine which helps to recover body weight and fluid in cases of severe dehydration and malnutrition. These two particular items had been unimportable for over two years.

    While major media networks are reporting that as a tactic of war, Saddam intends to starve his people, the humanitarian agencies dealing with food distribution are reporting the exact opposite. Already, UNICEF is distributing the food rations for June and July, and they were given the authority six months ago to begin distributing rations in two months’ supply at the urgence of the Government of Iraq. In essence, the government and the United Nations agencies are working in concert to ensure that in the case of war, the people would not be unprepared.

    Many U.N. agencies are also working with the local Iraqi staff to complete post-conflict assessments. UNICEF has been training teachers how to diagnose students with severe trauma and where to refer them for further in-depth care. Schools are also a crucial part of the post-conflict plan for supporting the children of Iraq whose age demographics comprise half of the country, and UNICEF believes it will be very important to have a functioning educational infrastructure so that students can resume some normalcy as quickly as possible after a major attack.

    But what will that normalcy look like?

    How can life be normal for a four-year-old who has experience the “shock and awe” of 800 bombs falling on his city in just two days? Even if school restarts, even if there is a commitment from the United States to rebuild Iraq, how could we ever undo the damage done to the children of Iraq who have no control over their leader, his policies or the past grievances of the Iraqi government.

    The internationally supported alternative weapons inspections should be given ample time to work. The aforementioned student gathering is another means for creating spaces for peace: dialogue. Young people separated by warring governments need the space to know each other as people, not as enemy nations.

    War is not liberation. Bombs do not bring peace.
    *Leah C. Wells serves as the Peace Education Coordinator for the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

  • Greetings from Baghdad

    Dear all,

    Greetings from Baghdad. We are having a really inspiring time talking to students from around the world who are motivated and who have gathered here to show solidarity with Iraqi students. There are hundreds of students from all over the world who are working in so many ways in their own communities to shed light on the continuing problems in Iraq due to sanctions as well as working to oppose the current rush to war. The Belgians organized a “5k run for peace” today which went well. We have had the opportunity to talk about last weekend’s marches and their global impact. It is encouraging to see such organization and concern among students worldwide.

    The students’ big message here: war is not liberation. Bombs do not bring freedom but rather death and misery. We also must continue to make the global interconnections between war and education – what gets spent on war does not get spent on education. This message from the students is clear and strong.

    The Iraqi people are in good spirits in general here. We see them repairing building facades, washing their cars, going to and from work and the mosque, and playing checkers and socializing in cafes. It is quite clear that a war would be devastating, though. As always we have been met with the graciousness and hospitality by friends and strangers. People are forthcoming with their stories and their personal messages, for which i am tremendously grateful. one student shared his experiences living in a state of continuous war since 1980 and the impact it has had on his life perspective, on his family. Still, with the tremendous sorrow wars have brought, he does not have hatred in his heart but rather a constructive perspective that does not hold individuals accountable for events beyond their control. In short, he does not hate you or me, a sentiment I have encountered time and time again in this country.

    Thank you for your continued good work and support. See you all soon!

    Peace,
    Leah
    *Leah C. Wells serves as the Peace Education Coordinator for the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.