(Credit: iraqichildrenart.org)I've been working with Iraqis since January 2001, when I made my first trip to Baghdad. Some of these long-time colleagues and friends are Christians, most are Muslims. I don't know if they're Shi'ia or Sunni. I've never asked, and they have never offered. So, I don't know if my friend Mazin in more danger or less in this current crisis… perhaps it's all the same. He doesn't worry to me about "the others" if indeed they are the others… maybe they're not.
Then there's Khalid, a young father now living in Jordan who for two years has been helping critically ill children in need of surgery transit from Basra through Amman to Europe. And, Thamir, a devout Muslim and the artist who coordinated projects for Iraqi refugees in Amman, including ones in a Melkite Catholic church in a neighborhood where many Iraqi Christians lived.
No one ever asked about religion when they agreed to be of help to other Iraqis. They rail against the violence and the corruption of the government, they want the borders in Iraq closed and long for security so they can resume something like a normal life. But they don't talk in sectarian terms when they talk about what they've been through or their fears about what is coming. It's a small sample, but it makes me wonder why the media is so insistent on this issue; why the narrative is strictly framed in sectarian terms. I expect this religious conflict doesn't make sense and even doesn't matter to most people in the US anyway. It's just, in my opinion, TMI.
I became an activist on behalf of children in Iraq in 1997, when UNICEF and other reputable agencies on the ground were reporting that between 5.000 to 7,000 children were dying every MONTH in Iraq as a result of US supported UN Sanctions. I didn't know anything, really about Iraq at that point, but I'm an educator and advocate for children. What American could live with this, our government sustaining a policy that was resulting in the death of so many, many children? I thought it would be an easy fight, tell people what's happening, and they'll demand an end to it.
But it wasn't an easy fight. These were not "just" children, these were Iraqi children. People heard the figures—not just from me and other activists but from "authorities" like then Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. When asked about the deaths of 250,000 children on that infamous segment of 60 Minutes in 1998, Albright responded that the price of keeping sanctions in place, the price of US policies in Iraq, might indeed be the death of all those children. But, she said, the price was worth it. An entire Sunday night viewing audience heard this horrifying acknowledgement; I'm sure some felt badly But neither the public nor our elected officials reacted with enough moral outrage to change US policy.
Part of my activism was standing on a vigil line for one hour every Saturday for eight years, holding signs and handing out flyers about the human disaster created by UN sanctions against Iraq.. I live in what would be described as a liberal college community. It was my experience that the public—people passing by and talking or taking our flyer—couldn't care about Iraqi children because they were too worried about Saddam Hussein. Some even asked, well, how bad is 5,000 deaths per month in terms of the population of Iraq… is it significant?
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