IRAQ: Unlike the men and women in military uniforms, the Christian Peacemaker Teams are welcome because they come to wage peace, writes Michael Jansen, in Baghdad.
Among the foreign forces deployed in Iraq are five Christian peace-makers from North America. Unlike the men and women in military uniforms, they are welcome because they come to wage peace not war.
Disciples of Mahatma Gandhi and his Muslim contemporary Badshah Khan, the Afghan "Frontier Gandhi", they do not seek to violently subdue Iraq, but to non-violently oppose injustice they encounter.
The peacekeepers' weapons are not guns and grenades but leaflets on the rights of civilians and notebooks for recording the names and stories of Iraqis who have been "disappeared" or abused.
Christian Peacemaker Teams, established in 1988 and based in Chicago and Toronto, are set up along military lines, Ms Maxine Nash, a Quaker from Iowa, told The Irish Times. "There are core members, who serve for three years in different capacities, and reservists." At present there are 30 core members and 120 reservists. Most are taking part in operations in Iraq, Palestine, Haiti, Colombia, Mexico and North America. Teams normally spend three months in the field and a month at home before resuming their mission.
Last summer, the Iraq team joined daily demonstrations of the Union of the Unemployed outside the main gate of the compound housing the occupation administration. "The Iraqis [normally a violent people] knew how to organise a non-violent protest," Ms Nash stated.
But after weeks of camping there in the heat and dust, the jobless men gave up and went home. Non-violence got them nowhere.
In January, well before the scandal broke over US abuse and torture in prisons, the team, which had conducted dozens of interviews of Iraqi detainees and their families, reported to the US occupation administration on 72 cases where the rights of prisoners had been violated.
The report revealed that harsh treatment of Iraqis was routine and not an aberration committed by a few "bad soldiers", as the Bush administration claims.
In addition to Iraqis abused by troops, there are hundreds of Iraqis who have simply "disappeared". Although lists of prisoners and release dates are produced every two weeks, many Iraqis are lost in the system, others are on a "blacklist".
Attempting to get information on the latter is like beating one's head against a "blank wall". Some Iraqis are being held "hostage", like a son who has a "bad father", Ms Nash said.
Although the Iraqi Ministry of Human Rights is supposed to have set up an office at Abu Ghraib, the Baghdad prison notorious for abuse, Ms Nash said team members could not locate it.
She observed that some of 11 General Information Centres established round the country to provide assistance to Iraqi families seeking detainees and compensation for killed and wounded members or destroyed property were helpful, others are not.
Members of the team hand out leaflets to US troops to tell them how Iraqi civilians should be treated. The headline at the top of the page warns: "If any Coalition solider mistreats an Iraqi citizen, it endangers all Coalition soldiers."
Ms Nash said: "The leaflets are in English and Arabic, so Iraqis observing us know what we are doing." Ms Nash said that before the abuse story broke, soldiers would take the leaflets without comment.
But Ms Sheila Provencher, from Indiana, added: "Their reaction was negative after the scandal" hit the headlines.
Sister Anne Montgomery is a Catholic nun in her 70s, a member of the Society of the Sacred Heart, and a veteran peace campaigner. She has been in and out of Iraq since the 1991 war. She listed the accomplishments of the peace teams.
"We helped Iraqi teachers secure their pay, got Iraqis out of prison and traced detainees for their families.
"We conducted an opinion poll at markets, mosques, and petrol stations and learnt that Iraqis of all backgrounds want security, electricity, and communications.
"We joined demonstrations by women's groups and prayed with the bereaved at the sites of mass graves. My congregation [in New York] really likes what I am doing," she stated.
Mr Greg Rollins, a Mennonite from British Columbia, has taken part in the work of the Christian Peacemaker Teams in the West Bank city of Hebron where they try to interpose between Palestinians, on one hand, and Israeli settlers and soldiers, on the other.
"The situation here is similar to [that in] Palestine," he said. "There are house raids where Iraqis have their men seized and valuables stolen.
"People are arrested without reason, without being charged, and released without reason. There are collective punishments and targeted assassinations. The US has learnt a lot from Israel.
"But the situation there is different because of the Israeli land confiscations. The bottom line there is land." He dismissed the Bush administration's claim that it waged war on Iraq because the ousted regime constituted a threat to the US.
Ms Anita David is of Iraqi- Assyrian extraction and resides in Chicago but speaks no Arabic and only a few words of Assyrian learnt as a child. She flew out of Baghdad yesterday.
Back in the US she will speak to members of her Presbyterian congregation about her experiences in Iraq.
Waging the battle for hearts and minds on the home front is as important to peace teams as non-violent action on the Iraqi and Palestinian fronts.