Iraqi Christians join Shia to mourn Imam Hussein

The Iraq TV channels have been showing footage of hundreds of Iraqi Christians, dressed in white, participating in the mourning for Imam Hussein. Many people here in Kerbala have mentioned this in very positive terms. I've walked all over looking for them, but in a crowd of millions I've had no luck. Nor have I been able to find any mention of it in English language media - so you heard it first here. Here is a quote from Shiite scholar Mohammed Mohammed Ali a few weeks ago: "Who do you suppose cooked for Shiites during the recent Ashura celebrations in Kerbala? Christians... they do this every year."

Here are some of my photos, I'm having problems posting more using blogger in the terminally slow internet cafe here, so I've uploaded most of them to my fotopage - including pictures of the crowds, preparing food for the pilgrims, processions, self-flaggalation etc.


[left] Millions march from Baghdad, Najaf, Basra and other cities
[right] Drama of prisoners from the battle taken to Syria, in-front of Imam Abbas Shrine

Ya Hussein

It was pretty apocalyptic stuff. Millions of pilgrims dressed in black, the giant mosques of Imam Hussein and Abbas lit up in red, Muqtada Sadr's Madhi army drapped in white indicating a willingness to die chanting loudly, groups of hundreds rythmically beating their chests (and, though I haven't seen it yet, some self-flagilating with chains and swords). And to top it all off there were dozens of bursts of lighting flashing across the sky and earthing behind the mosque! (Apparently common weather for this time of year). Unfortunately I didn’t have the equipment, position or skill to get any meaningful photos of it last night, hopefully I will get some tomorrow morning to show you.

So what is this all about? Tomorrow is the Arba'een, the 40th day of mourning after the death of Mohammed's grandson and heir Hussein. He small family group was surrounded by a vast army, outnumbering them maybe 500-to-1, and slaughtered tragically. Now the inconspicuous patch of desert where this happened, about 100km south of Baghdad, has become the site for perhaps the biggest pilgrimage in the world. Maybe a quarter of Iraq - some say 8 million people (though is is probably an exaggeration) is gathered here. On Tuesday I drove past a human sea of marchers from Baghdad, walking for three days to get here, others make a 12 days march from Basra in the south. What is amazing is that most only bring the clothes on their back - all their food and lodging on the march and in Karbala is provided for free by local people - this is arab hospitality on a massive scale.

Unfortunately I haven't got time to write more now, but check out the piece in the Washington Post, and I'll write more and post some photos in a day or two. Also I've wrote a reflection last year on the significance of Hussein's martyrdom and parallels with the Christian understanding of Jesus' sacrifice.

P.S. A new UN report today says that 8% of Iraqi children under five are malnurished, twice the number under Saddam Hussein 2 years ago. This is a serious inditement of the US Occupation.

Eid Mubarak - Happy Easter

Our phone lines are flooded, would you believe, so I haven't been able to email or blog easily for almost a week. In the meantime I've managed to go to 4 Easter services here in Baghdad, one Chaldean, one Roman Catholic, one Anglian and one ecumenical. I've started teaching myself to read arabic, and was able to semi-sing along with some of the hymns (well, at my current speed i managed about 1 word a line, but it's a start!). Hamdullilah that there have been no attacks on churches over Easter. Also the churches are much fuller (I'm told) than last year, indicating that Iraqis are feeling slightly more secure now. Sadly there have been attacks on Christians in Lebanon today, so please pray for them and for all the Lebanese, that the country which had finally begun to recover from the civil war of the 70s and 80s could be spared a relapse into conflict over the issue of Syrian and US interference.

I spend yestarday traveling around US army bases with a sheikh from Mahmoudia, south of Baghdad, who hosted some Marines for breakfast on Thursday (typical Iraqi hospitality) and they repaid him by searching his house and stealing $2600. Anyhow every military base we went to passed the buck onto another base, so no luck so far. Interestingly some Army grunts we talked with agreed that the Marines might have indeed stolen the money. Whereas US Army units tend to be based in a particular area and so are in some sense locally accountable, the Marines will helicopter into areas that are often far from their home bases, and so they are very hard to trace and it's easier for dishonest Marines to steal with impunity. Of course there is rivalry between the Army and Marines, but there is some good logic in this argument and it fits with the numerous testimonies of theft and other abuse CPT has heard from Iraqis.

I'm going down to Kerbala next week for the arba9een, the end of the 40 day period of mourning for Iman Hussein. This is one of the principal Shia festivals, and we've been invited to attend by friends there. All the roads from Baghdad have been packed for the last few days with pilgrims walking the 3 days route to Kerbala. I'll try and post some photos up soon. Anyhow, I have lots of stories to tell you, and even a couple of humourous anecdotes, but I'll wait until tomorrow when, inshallah, I'll have wi-fi broadband installed in my flat!

P.S. Congratulations to my old classmate Acer Nethercott who was coxing the victorious Oxford boat today!

A dilemma for Bush

I have a moral dilemma for George Bush to grapple with.

Here is the situation: after a horrific accident a lady is languishing in hospital in a persistent vegetative state, being kept alive artificially. Medically she has no chance of recovering and her loving husband says she would want to die peacefully. The doctors agree to stop feeding her intravenously, and soon she will die. Only thing can force the doctors to turn her machine back on - a Presidential Decree. So what is George Bush going to do?

Wait a minute before you answer by saying you know exactly what this President, who makes so much noise about “moral values”, will do. Let me add an extra piece to the puzzle: the lady is an Iraqi. Okay, so now we have a real dilemma for Bush. On the one hand his moral values apparently tell him very clearly that he cannot let a person in this state die naturally, while on the other hand his values also tell him that the only good Iraqi is a dead Iraqi… what is he to do?

Okay so I was fictionalising my example. As you probably know Bush has just cut short his holiday in Texas in order to intervene in the case of Terri Schiavo who has been removed from a life-support machine in Florida after over a decade in a vegetative state. But she’s a white skinned American, so he doesn’t have to grapple with my dilemma, and for him the answer is easy: "This is about defending life," said White House spokesman Scott McClellan. The reason I raise it is that two years ago today Bush gave the order to begin the bombing of Baghdad, an order which has claimed the lives of over 100,000 Iraqis – the vast majority civilians – as well as at least 1700 Americans and other nationalities. These figures include 3 of my friends.

Giving Bush the benefit of the doubt and assuming that his action today is based on conviction not to gain political capital, there is indeed something to respect about spending so much effort to try and save even someone who’s life-force is so dim. Rebuplican Senator Tom DeLay says some fine words: "We should investigate every avenue before we take the life of a living human being."

The Christian faith, which Bush claims to share, holds that every individual’s life is infinitely precious: Jesus was nailed to the Cross with his arms open as wide as they could go saying, in effect, “this is how much you, each and every one of you, is worth to Me”. Given that each individual is so precious, and given that it can be very difficult to decide precisely when life begins and when it ends, it makes sense to me to err on the side of caution. For this reason I personally oppose abortion and euthanasia – although I hasten to add that I would not condemn or criminalise those who do these things with good motives, given that the issues are so complex.

What I find very hard to understand is how some people can be firmly “pro-life” in the marginal cases of the unborn, the terminally ill or vegetative, and yet “pro-death” in the case of people who are clearly alive and healthy. Where were the concerns for defending life when George Bush signed over 300 execution orders as Governor of Texas? When he ordered his military to invade Afghanistan and Iraq, did he really investigate every avenue before taking the lives of these tens of thousands of living human beings? Of course not, as Hans Blixx will testify, and worryingly I have not even seen evidence of Bush showing remorse for these murders.

Today is also another anniversary, Palm Sunday, when we remember how Jesus was greeted by crowds laying palm branches in front of him as he entered Jerusalem. How different his Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem was to that off Bush’s army into Baghdad. Jesus’ people were oppressed by dictators – Herod, Pilate and ultimately Tiberas Caesar – every bit as brutal as Saddam, and yet he refused the calls to become a military leader, to liberate his people through shedding rivers of blood. He didn’t enter the city in a convoy of Humvees and tanks (or at least the 1st century equestrian equivalents). Instead he chose the path of the servant, riding humbly into Jerusalem on a donkey and then sacrificing his life on a cross, in order to liberate not just one nation but the whole world from the cycle of violence and sin.

[Today we held an outdoors memorial service in central Baghdad, reading out the names of dead Iraqis and foreigners and praying for peace. Later we joined Iraqi Christians for a Palm Sunday service. In Bethlehem today some of my Palestinian friends are staging a Palm Sunday procession to Jerusalem - or rather to the Israeli checkpoint at the edge of Bethlehem, beyond which most are not allowed to go even though it is still many miles from the Green Line border with Israel.]

Corruption and confusion

In a strange way I feel more aware of what is happening in Iraq when I'm home in the UK than out here in Baghdad, because my internet access here is so limited. At present I'm sharing a very unreliable dial-up internet connection with my 5 collegues, and we only really get a semblence of a connection when the electricity is on (still only a few hours a day). So I can't continually scan the news and exchange dozens of emails a day with Iraqi friends. A car bomb went off about 3 blocks north of here at midday - our windows shook and I watched the smoke and prayed on the roof - but until the electricity came back on there was no way of getting much information about it short of walking over there, which wouldn't be particularly wise (I've just found some info - no casualties hamdulillah). There have also been quite a few mortar attacks on the Green Zone today, probably connected with the inaugral meeting of the National Assembly (at last! Though little seems to have come out of the meeting).

Actually I got a big shock when the internet did start working about half an hour ago: The second news item on the BBC's website today is on corruption in Iraq, based on Transparency International's Global Corruption Report, released today. I co-wrote the section of the report on Iraq (download as 1MB pdf), almost a year ago, and had completely forgotten about it - for once though I think the dreadful Iraqna phone network is working in my favour, protecting me from calls from journalists that I'm not quite prepared for! Here are some more articles about the report (for my own record, don't bore yourselves looking at them!): Financial Times, Reuters, Bloomberg, AFP, Jazeera, Globe & Mail, CSM, TI's press release + more from Googlenews

Tea with terrorists

“Our hearts are open, but our borders are closed,” said Sheikh al-Jumaily of the Furqan mosque, as he urged us to draw international attention to the devastation of Fallujah and the ongoing suffering of her people. Nothing in my experiences in Iraq and Palestine really prepared me for what I saw today – it reminded me most of old film reel of Hiroshima or of Dresden after the firebombing. Whole districts are flattened and the soot and rubble which remains has been moulded into a polluted quagmire by the spring rains. Yet somehow the Fallujans are re-establishing themselves - large families living in tents or in the one remaining room in their house with a semblance of a roof.

[left] Three girls and their mother are still living in this house, in the one tiny room still with a roof. [right] the car on the left was crushed by a tank, with a boy and his father inside.

Although 85% of Fallujans have now returned (many forcefully evicted from refugee camps) the US is working hard to keep the city cut off from the rest of Iraq. In a move reminiscent of Israeli tactics, special Fallujah IDs have been issued, which block internationals and even other Iraqis from entering. A senior official in the Fallujah Reconstruction Commission (based in the cement factory outside of town) explained that, although he had moved to Fallujah 13 years ago, because his ID card is from Baghdad he and his children have not been allowed to return. The head of the Reconstruction Commission was delighted we were visiting but cautioned that we had a 99% chance of being refused entry. The prospects of entry were clearly dim, as US soldiers had turned back the Minister of Sunni Religious Affairs a few hours before. Yet somehow we passed through the tripled checkpoints.

The American soldiers at the checkpoints could not believe that we were entering this city of terrorists without guns and armour. Yet, wherever we went amongst the ruins, crowds of ragged people greeted us warmly and, if we lingered more than a few minutes listening to their stories, glasses of tea inevitably emerged. The ability of Iraqis to distinguish people from the actions of their governments never ceases to amaze me, and I wish that this attitude would take root back home in Britain.

One of the Iraqis in our group had brought wheelchairs for the hospital. As I pushed one across the elegant green bridge spanning the Euphrates I remembered the satellite imagery from last November, as the media tracked the operation with clinical graphics. The hospital was seized by special forces on the first day, depriving the injured of medical care in order to prevent body count figure from getting to the outside world. We also visited a health centre in Jolan district, currently handling a case load of over 1000 patients a day as it is the only clinic in the city still standing.


[Left] One of the few minarets still standing - only just. [Right] the only room in her house with some semblence of a roof.

Independent journalists and NGOs have reported that over 65% of the homes in Fallujah are destroyed or so badly damaged as to be unlivable. This figure is consistent with the massive destruction that we saw. Even the buildings still standing are peppered with the acne of bullet holes. The Reconstruction Commission told us that 30 of the 55 mosques in the city had been attacked and all the electrical and water infrastructure in the southern half was destroyed. There is also massive pollution and infection. The Jumhuriya and al-Wehde areas, for example, now have too much bacteria in the water for it to be drinkable.

One of the aims of our visit was to investigate the possibility of joining with Fallujans to help rebuild homes. CPT isn’t a development NGO and actually has a policy against providing material aid, as this could get in the way of our primary work of violence reduction. This idea instead is to offer our time to do physical labour, along with Shia colleagues from the newly formed and energetic Muslim Peacemaker Team in Kerbala (some of whom came on this trip), to demonstrate cross-partisan support for Fallujans and draw media attention back to the city. We had a long talk about this with Sheikh al-Jumaily (who’s own home was burnt to the ground with all his possessions), and we hope that we will be able to return in a few weeks and implement this project. When I was telling with some young men in the devastated Shuhada district that I wanted to help rebuild their homes they straightaway asked me to flex my muscles – they seemed satisfied with my physic (I think they were being polite!) and began to lead me behind their tent to the pile of cement and bricks. Unfortunately I was not able to stay on this occasion, but I was inspired by the grit of the Fallujan people – instead of standing around complaining about the lack of assistance they have received (none of the $500m promised by the US has arrived), they are salvaging bricks from the rubble, mixing mortar, and rebuilding their city themselves.

Tea with "terrorists"

Arrived in Baghdad

The plane made its infamous corkscrew descent to Baghdad, spiralling to deter heat-seeking missiles, but by now this maneuvour was so routine for that most of the passangers that they were sleeping through it rather than clinging onto their seats for dear life.

I was preparing my suncream for the blazing Baghdad sun I'm familiar with, but actually it's gloomy and pouring with rain here - feels like I'm back in Blighty. One Iraqi friend asked me jokingly "are you ready for some surfing?" as we drove through two foot of water on the way to lunch with his family in Mansour district.

Calls are welcome here (my timezone is GMT +3hrs) on +964 17197163 (landline). I'm also sharing two mobiles with my team here: +964 7901339537, +964 7901379408. There are calling cards/accounts/numbers available in many places to call iraq cheaply (e.g. from USA or from UK you can dial 0911 552 0222 from any BT phone and calls are 15p a minute, or shop around for more options here).

Curfew in Hebron

I've just returned to Hebron (al-Khalil in arabic) 20 mins ago, from the village of Tuwani where I have been for the last four days. At 8am this morning (6 hours ago) two Israeli soldiers were shot an injured by gunmen at the checkpoint near the Tomb of Abraham, about 100m from the flat I'm in now. A 14yr old boy was killed by Israeli soldiers and a women serious injured in two other incidents at this same checkpoint over the last three weeks (see brief article by a wonderful journalist I know who lives just outside Hebron).

The Old City of Hebron has been put under curfew as soldiers go door to door searching houses - one of the many forms of collective punishment which Israel uses to harrass the people here daily. All males above about 15yrs are being rounded up and detained near the mosque.

I managed to get back into the Old City to get to our flat alone but the other members of the team are scattered about town. As I entered I met a pregnant lady with a 2year old daughter with a broken leg - the soldiers wouldn't let them leave to go to the hosptial, but when I arrived they let her through - a small example of the effect having an international presence here can (sometimes) have. I'm currently waiting for my team members to arrive back to the flat, then we need to decide what we should do next.

Also I have just heard, in an unconnected incident, that two women from a village nearby to Tuwani (where I've just come from) where beaten up by settlers last night. My teammates there have gone to visit them and probably take them to hospital.

Please pray that our team could regroup quickly and have wisdom to do something to help calm the situation and protect innocent people here from arbitary arrest and other harrasment. Please pray for the two injured Israeli soldiers, that they could recover, and for the two beaten up Palestinian women. Continue to pray for the peace of Jerusalem and all the region. Also please pray for me tomorrow and wednesday as I travel to iraq.

UPDATE 11pm: Thanks for all your prayers. I've just spent a productive few hours walking around the cobbled passage ways of the old city, accompanying mothers searching for their children, getting food and blankets to men being detaineed and just talking to people who are confused and distressed. It's frustrating that my arabic isn't better and I often don't understand precisely what people want in this tense situation, but nonetheless it feels like we've been able to help in some small ways. I've been very impressed with the particular unit of Israeli soldiers on duty here. It turns out they are all from the kibbutz movement and they are much calmer and more respectful of Palestinians - even in this tense situation - than many others I've encountered recently. I have enjoyed opportunities to praise the soldiers on their conduct. However alongside this I have heard multiple accounts of a serious beating by soldiers of a man who didn't have his ID with him.