The UK election must be a referendum on Iraq

The upcoming British election is presenting a big moral dilemma to many of my friends who opposed the war and the ongoing policy failures in Iraq since the main opposition party, the Conservatives, supported the war as enthusistically as the Blair government. While the third party, the Liberal Democrats, has been more critical of the war, the general perception is that it couldn't get the large swing needed to win, although if everyone opposed to the war voted for them this would be possible. The most firmly anti-war party is the Greens, while some of the regional parties like Plaid Cmyru in Wales have also taken strong stances. In a few constituencies independent candidates are standing, including the wonderful Rose Gentle in East Kirbride and Reg Keys in Tony Blair's home constituency of Sedgefield; both have lost sons in Iraq.

The situation would be easier if we had a proportional representation system, but under the existing first-past-the-post system the choice appears to be between two pro-war parties. As a result many people are tempted to ignore Iraq and vote on purely domestic issues. Having just spent 6 weeks in Iraq and seen the mess we have made of that country, I believe that voting in pro-war candidates, whether Labour or Conservative, would be a dreadful betrayal of the Iraqi people. Whoever wins, the clear message of the election needs to be that British governments cannot participate in the killing of around 98,000 people (Lancet estimate) and get away scot free.

More importantly the government which is formed must be compelled to make Iraq a policy and spending priority. A fortnight ago when I was in Basra & Amarah, the British controled regions of Iraq, I heard again and again how little we are doing to even repair the damage caused in the war and looting, let alone rebuild Iraq's tattered infrastructure. I know some wonderful people working for DFID and the FCO in Iraq, but the truth is they have not been given the mandate or the money to do a decent job.

An essay by Milan Rai, who lead the campaign against the sanctions, is helpful in clarifying our voting options. Here is a partial list of pro/anti war candiates. However you vote, please make it clear to your candidates that Iraq policy is the critical issue.

Goodbye Iraq

This is the most painful thing I've ever done and it breaks my heart in pieces, but I have left Iraq.

It turns out that my name has appeared on a Black List of priority kidnap targets. I'm not an important person, but with the British elections coming up I am the only Briton left who does not live behind concrete barriers and armed guards, and so am easy target. The fact that I stongly opposed the invasion of Iraq and am urging people to vote out the Blair government does not matter to the people who want to kidnap me.

I am ready to risk my life to help the Iraqi people, but having such an acute and imminent threat endangers all my colleagues and friends. I also know that if I was taken people would risk their lives and perhaps use violence to secure my release, no matter how strongly I have insisted that I would not want this to happen. So, after agnoising prayer, I decided the right thing to do was to leave Iraq.

This feels like a betrayal coming only a few days after the murder of my friend Marla. I had intended to help, alongside her friends in America, to pick up the pieces and continue her work for the innocent victims of this conflict.

This feels like a betrayal because I know many Iraqis who have also received death threats, and yet they do not have the option of leaving.

This feels like a betrayal because I have made commitments to help people here. Commitments to friends in Kerbala to support their pioneering work developing a Muslim Peacemaker Team; commitments to friends in Fallujah to clear rubble, mix cement and join them in rebuilding their homes, and to draw international attention to the continuing injustices there; commitments to friends in Baghdad to work for the release of family members detained unjustly in Abu Ghraib and Bucca.

While I am away from home (I feel Iraq is my primary home now, Briton was just where I was born) I will continue to devote my time, energy and prayers to Iraq until it is free from Occupation, free from terrorism, free from poverty and filled with peace & justice. I have seen the true character of the Iraqi people and have faith that in the long term their good nature will prevail over those who choose the path of violence.

Marla's memorial

Jill reads memories of Marla emailed from friends around the world at the memorial service in Baghdad today. Some of her favourite music from Neil Finn, Sinead O'Connor and the Beach Boys was played and a collection was taken for Faiz's widowed wife and children.

There is now a lot of good information on the CIVIC website: articles about Marla, a place you can write messages and make donations and details of memorial vigils around the US.

I had the great privilage of talking about Marla on her home town radio station and too some other media. It was a kind of therapy being able to talk about her and urge people to remember the cause she lived for. Sometimes I was so overwhelmed I just babbled cliches, but occasional I found myself expressing things the way I understood them. One quote was: "Marla was so full of laughter and life. She was the social center of our life as well as being its conscience." Also the San Francisco Chronicle printed this which expresses the way I hope Marla will inspire people to pick up her cause (and other causes) with the same love and energy: "Although there have been many nice things said about Marla, I don't think she would want to be held up as this unattainable ideal, She would want people to know that if she, this California girl, came to Iraq with no money and no contacts, and made a difference in a conservative Middle Eastern country, then anyone could [with a bit of gumption]."

The Innocent Victim

Last night I went to the Hamra hotel, home to most of the foreign journalists working in Baghdad, to attend one of Marla Ruzicka famous parties. She'd told me 8.30pm, but there was no sign of her in her room or elsewhere in the hotel and I couldn't get through to her phone. I spotted some journalists sitting by the pool and shyly enquired "Do any you know Marla?" They turned to me and laughed "Are you kidding. Of course we know Marla, everyone knows Marla!" But no one had seen her.

As the evening drew on, fashionably late turned into worryingly late. The last sighting of Marla was in the Green Zone at midday, and she'd been heading off to visit an Iraqi family with an injured kid. Then at 1am I head the dreadful news, she had been killed. The initial reports were confusing, so I quizzed everyone I could thing about for information and then started searching for contact numbers and emails to inform her friends and colleagues back in the US. Most people had gone to bed so I sat up alone in the Washington Post house and they kindly let me use their phones to call the US. A big hearted guy, Colin, had already gotten the PalmPilot from her room and called her family, who had already heard the news from the US State Department. I finally went to sleep on a sofa for a few hours at 4.30am, unclear on the precise circumstances of her death or the fate of her Iraqi colleague Faiz.

At 9am this morning I learnt that there had been a carbombing on the Airport Road, near Hay al-Adil district, about 4pm, and it seemed likely that this was what killed Marla. This was confirmed when I talked with someone who had been in the private security convoy which was the target of the attack. She told me that she'd seen a Mercedes car, fitting the description of Faiz's car, completely incinerated in the blast. It is a small mercy that her death was instantaneous. A friend visited the hospital in the Green Zone and helped me talk to the chief nurse there. They had received two badly burned bodies but had no ID on them. I considered going in to do this, but the bodies had already been moved elsewhere for biopsies and DNA tests. Someone else IDed them and the US embassy issued a press release a few hours ago confirming this.

I started emailing with Marla in June 2003 when I learnt about the pioneering work she was doing identifying and trying to secure support for civilian victims of the war and their families. When we met in Baghdad in 2003 I could see the energy, compassion and charisma bubbling out of her.

This gutsy 27yr old Californian had started the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC) while working in Afghanistan in 2002. She entered Iraq immediately following the fall of Baghdad, and rapidly began organizing a survey of civilian casualties along with my friend Raed. This is still the most detailed attempt to gather specific data about specific victims, and whenever I have read out lists of the dead at protests, such as in Chicago in January, I have always used this data.

But this was not data collection for its own sake. Marla held a belief which one who think uncontroversial, that innocent victims in conflict or their families should receive some kind of restitution. Any country that claims to be fighting a "just" war for "moral" reasons, as the US and allies did in the 2003 invasion, should as a matter of course care for those caught in the crossfire. However this is not the case and Marla had an uphill struggle to secure even the most basic assistance for the victims. The US doesn't do bodycounts, and the White House lawyers would never permit an official to talk about compensation for victims and risk opening up the way for liable suits. With the help of Senator Leahy, Marla managed to persuade Congress to set aside a tiny part of the $18.4bn Iraq appropriation as aid for victims rather than for US corporations. In addition Marla helped families to secure the salacia (blood money) payments from the US army, though there are capped at a paltry $2500. She was also involved in helping seriously injured children get treatment overseas and undoubtedly many other projects of which I'm unaware.

Marla's colleague in the US just sent around an email: saying: "One of Marla's favourite quotes from Ernesto che Guevera was: 'The true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love.' Marla had enough love to cover the planet." Marla was a normal person not a saint, but she was driven by this great feeling of love and it was indeed leading her to try and cover the planet -certainly all the warzones on the planet - almost single handedly! A few months ago she visited Nepal with a view to expanding CIVIC's work to that wartorn country, and many other parts of the world would have benefited from her gumption. It is critical that Marla's work continues.

In the short term, along with her many other friends, here I am trying to find out about individuals she was helping her and ensure they are not abandoned. In the long term I pray that Marla's life may be an inspiration to many people to carry on CIVIC's work. We are in a stake of shock about her tragic death but Marla would be the first to remind us that she chose to put herself in risk. Much more tragic, she would say, are the thousands of civilians victims in Iraq and many other countries, particularly children, who never had any choice about being in a conflict zone. We mustn't forget Marla and we mustn't forget them.

Search Googlenews for stories about Marla

Reflections on experiencing another carbomb

So I'm not going to write about all the bombs which go off while I'm here. In part this is because I don't want to worry my parents who'll be reading this blog, and in part because the violence here is just so routine that they hardly register. But this one time I'm going to try and give you a feel of what its like to live through these events on the ground.

So it was about 9.30am this morning and I'd just got a call from an Iraqi friend saying there was a rally happening over in Kharkh (the other side of the river) for the families of detainees. While waiting for her to arrive I was talking with my CPT team mates about our plans to go back to Kerbala to support our friends in the newly formed Muslim Peacemaker Team there.

Suddenly the room shock and we gave each other that "not again" look. "I guess someone better go up on the roof and check" said Sheila. We all assented but no one got up to move, willing that someone else would volunteer. I always crack first in these situations so I sprinted up the 4 flights of stairs. As I reached the third floor the second bomb went off (if you read the BBC report this is the car which flipped over in the centre of the street). "Get away from the windows" someone shouted, since there is a danger of flying glass if the shockwave is powerful enough. However I could see that the windows were open, which means that they'll swing on their hinges with the blast and so there isn't much danger from glass (often you'll see in houses that people leave windows slightly ajar for precisely this reason).

As I reached the top of the stairs I saw our landlady and her housekeeper in a huddle looking South West. This is the direction of the university and, as I emerged with foreboding onto the roof, there was the dreaded plume of black smoke belching forth from the vicinity of Baghdad U, about a mile away along the river. The housekeeper was in floods of tears as her son was over there studying. She fumbled with her phone and called his number. Thankfully he answered, "Mum, I'm in an exam now, not allowed to talk, bye" and hung up. I had a picture of a hall of exam students scribbling away, looking up briefly as the building shock and then returning immediately to their papers until they were disturbed a second time by the ring-tone cacophony of worried parents. This is Baghdad, you've just got to carry on regardless.

I look down from the roof as the activity and sounds of the city continue: the metallic tap tap tap of a man on a donkey cart advertising his gas cylinders for sale, the kids in the park who haven't even paused their game of football, the annoying synthesised jingle (always to the tune of "It’s A Small World" for some unknown reason) played by cars as they reverse, horn honking by drivers stuck helplessly in the vessels of Baghdad's capillaries, narrowed and clogged like a smoker's lungs.

In a spinal reaction I fumble for my camera and take a few snaps of the smoke cloud. I know this is a completely futile gesture, and the photos will be indistinguishable from dozens of similar ones taken over the past two years, but somehow it always feels necessary to reverently document these things. I sink to my knees on the roof and try to concentrate my thoughts enough to pray coherently - for the injured, for the families of the dead and for a change of heart in the people who planned this attack. By the time I look up the smoke cloud has already dispersed, petrol tanks burn up quickly.

I stumble back down to our apartment and my Iraqi friends have arrived. Their main concern is whether the roads will be open, as the bridge we need to cross isn't far from the epicentre of those explosions. They decide to give it a go and we drive towards Jadriya. The traffic is dense but it is moving. Some motorcycles weave through the lanes and I notice that the passengers have video cameras out, so these are the journalists rushing to record pictures which you may have seen today on TV. Our driver is actually a part-time journalist himself and asks me to load up a new film into his camera. My nails are pretty blunt and I'm having difficulty unwrapping the awkwardly wrapped tapes. Eventually I succeed and pass him the camera, by which time we are driving over the bridge, which is open for the time being. There are no obvious signs of the explosions nearby so he decides to drive onwards to the detainee meeting as we'd arranged.

Throughout the day I hear garbled second hand rumours about what happened. Firstly the news is that 10 students were killed; next I hear that no, the blast was at the office of the Badr Brigades (a militia group attached to one of the main Shia parties) and the casualty figure is more like 12. Eventually someone sets us straight that the Interior Ministry seems to have been the intended target and by now the bodycount has risen to 15. After the rally (which was really productive as it happens - we saw old friends who we'd helped in the past and took details of some new cases including a 14yr old kid locked up in Abu G) we try to head home. We hear that by now the bridge has been closed and we wonder what to do. There's a possibility of a lock down on all the bridges, essentially cutting Baghdad in two and marooning us on the wrong side of the city. Our Iraqi friends (naturally) invite us to come and stay at their home on this side, but we still have some important meetings today so decide to try and break through. Heading north and weaving through a maze of back streets (which by now all Iraqi drivers have come to know better than the freeways) we manage to find a bridge which is still open and get back home.

Finally, hours after the event, I wait until the electricity comes on and am able to check the precise details of the attacks on the web and see some photos - there's a good chance that you saw this on the news hours before I did. In the street people discuss the attacks, but in the bored and formulaic way people usually discuss the weather - all you can do about it is moan and just get on with your lives.

So this is not the first and unfortunately I'm sure it won't be the last bombing I experience. But I probably won't blog about them much because they just are a background noise, albeit a painful one. Be aware of the psychological effect they have on the city, pray for the victims and perpetrators, but don't let them drown out the other news. This is the news of Iraqis knuckling down and trying to build lives for their families in spite of the Occupation. This is the news of the guy who's started welding signal-boosting aerials out of scrap metal in order to set up a wireless internet business. This is the news of the family squatting in an abandoned building who's kids nonetheless have the biggest smiles I've ever seen. This is the news of Iraqis who have spent time in detention, have had family members killed or abused by my government, and yet who nonetheless greet me with the traditional "peace upon you" and insist that I drink endless glasses of sweet tea.

Boating in Basra

I'm being chivied to leave the internet cafe, so can't write much now, but here are some photos from the Shat el-arab (the river Delta between Iraq and Iran which has been the focus of many wars). The ship lying on its side was one of Saddam's yaghts (help i can never spell that word!) and I'm am standing on a boat with an oil worker from the local trade union.

Zeynab back home

This is Zeynab, maybe the most famous Iraq 11yr old in the world. 17 members of her family were killed by an American bomb in March 2003, which also destroyed her right leg. A Palestinian friend paid for her to go to London to get a prothetic leg fitted, which is where I met her. She is pictured with her father (her only close relative still alive) writing messages to friends in England. The Islam TV Channel in Britain had an appeal a few days ago, in Zeynab's name, which raised $200,000 for the Basra hospital.

In Basra

So after a grueling 10hr journey, being stopped at about 30 checkpoints, I arrived in Basra. Typically for Iraq none of the contact phone numbers I had were working, also typically for Iraq within 30 minutes I had dozens of new friends! A couple of them are looking over my shoulder as I type this (and they owner of the cafe won't accept any payment of course!). One of the people we wanted to meet was the Catholic Archbishop, who we'd heard is an energetic peace & justice activist. It turned out that the Cathedral was around the corner and so we walked there... arriving just as a service of rememberance for the Pope began. Most of the hundres of people present were Muslim clerics - what an amazing sign of brotherhood and hope.