BAGHDAD: An Irish peace campaigner tells Michael Jansen in Baghdad why he is there
Michael Birmingham is a man on a mission. It is to do whatever he can to help the Iraqi people to get their voice heard. "If you are going to bomb people, you should listen to what they say first. No one listens to them."
Michael is a 31-year-old Dubliner, blond with a quick, wide smile, clear blue eyes and a Dublin accent. A peace campaigner, he has been in Baghdad since the third week of October.
Nearly three years ago he became involved in the Irish campaign against the punitive sanctions regime imposed on Iraq in 1990. Taking leave from his job as manager of a housing rights service which helps homeless people and asylum-seekers, he came to the Iraqi capital to learn about life there and to try to alert others about the catastrophe another war could wreak in this country and across the volatile region.
He was in Dublin during the first two weeks of December to settle personal matters and lobby politicians before returning to Baghdad.
Michael says he will stay for the duration. He is paying his own way as a volunteer with the US-based advocacy organisation Voices in the Wilderness.
"Knowing what happened during the last war, I was eager to do what I could to avert a new war as well as to push for an end to sanctions . . . I worked part time as a volunteer with UNDP [United Nations Development Programme\] for a month. During this time I concentrated on finding ways to get medical journals needed by teaching hospitals into Iraq within the limitations set by sanctions sanctions and the lack of money."
Now he says he concentrates on helping delegations visiting Iraq.
"I assisted the families of the victims of September 11th when they came here and helped Denis Halliday [the former head of the UN humanitarian operation here] arrange his programme. He was fantastic, he worked all the time, was ready to speak to everyone."
He makes use of any opportunity to find out what life is like for ordinary Iraqis. He has met heads of UN organisations and keeps abreast of what is happening. He has written articles for US, Japanese, European and Russian newspapers about what it's like in Baghdad and about the sanctions.
"Sanctions have killed hundreds of thousands of people. Every day I discover different angles on how war and sanctions are devastating people's lives. The vast majority of people are on a subsistence level."
Their food ration enables them to survive, but still 25 per cent of the children are malnourished. If someone in a family falls ill, they have to sell rations to buy medicine. For them, a war will be something between a disaster and an incredible catastrophe.
"All this talk of liberation for the Iraqi people is not realistic when you consider that they cannot afford any disruption of the existing system. I know many Iraqis who are genuinely interested in human rights. Human rights are not only an issue in the west."
He observes: "The anti-war movement and peace camp in Shannon is really positive but we've got to drive home the issue of war planes going through our airport because the Irish Government will never stand up to the United States."
