05656
Dec. 8, 2005

Peacemakers await warmakers’ deadline

Christian activists in Baghdad
pray for 4 colleagues held hostage

by Alexa Smith

LOUISVILLE — As the Christian Peacemaking Team (CPT) in Baghdad awaits news about the release — or executions — of four of its team members held hostage for 11 days, former team members in the United States are reflecting on what it means to love one’s enemy.

        Even if it kills you.

        The hostages reportedly were snatched at gunpoint near Baghdad University on Nov. 26 while the four-member team was being driven to an appointment. According to CNN, gunmen threw the team’s longtime driver and translator out of the vehicle and drove away with the westerners.

        The kidnappers have said they will kill the hostages — American Tom Fox, 54, and Britons Norman Kember, 74, James Loney, 41, and Harmeet Sooden, 32 — unless the Iraqi government frees all prisoners from its jails and the U.S. and British governments leave the country.

        The deadline is Thursday, Dec. 8.

        The kidnappers claim the westerners were working as spies.

        “When we learned of the demands, we were fairly astonished,” said Anita David, a Chicago Presbyterian who is part of the Baghdad team. “Our work is working with detainees and advocating (for) detainees … with human-rights organizations.”

         The Baghdad CPT team documented abuses of Iraqis by U.S. troops in the Abu Ghraib prison. It also helps Iraqi families find out where family members are imprisoned.

        Because their drivers and translators often are picked up for questioning by Iraqi police, the team also tracks them in the bureaucracy. “They’re deeply trusted,” David said. “We’ve known them for years.”

        The Baghdad CPT issued a statement on Dec. 6 asking the kidnappers — the Swords of Justice Brigades — to “immediately release” the hostages “unharmed.” The statement condemned the U.S. and British governments for their actions in Iraq and urged the kidnappers to “show mercy” and allow the four men to “come back safely to us to continue our work.”

        “We believe there needs to be a force that counters all the resentment, the fear, the intimidation felt by the Iraqi people,” the peacemakers wrote. “We are trying to be that force: to speak for justice, to advocate for the human rights of Iraqis, to look at an Iraqi face and say, ‘My brother, my sister.’ Perhaps you are men who only want to raise the issue of illegal detention.

        “We don’t know what you may have endured. As you can see by the statements of support from our friends in Iraq and all over the world, we work for those who are oppressed.”

        Statements of support are arriving in Baghdad from religious and political leaders, including many in the Arab world.

        PC(USA) officials wrote a letter urging the kidnappers to release their hostages unharmed.

        Two other Presbyterians, now home, have served on the Iraqi team — and intend to return to the team’s Baghdad apartment later this year. They are Charles Jackson, a computer consultant from Austin, TX, and a member of St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church; and Beth Pyles of Fairmont, WV, a recent Princeton Seminary graduate who attends First Presbyterian Church in Fairmont.

         “You’re always concerned about the possibility of kidnappers in Iraq,” said Jackson, who, like other peacemakers, thought the biggest risk was kidnapping for ransom. “The other concern is that you’re walking down the street and a bomb goes off.”

         The abduction of the four peace activists followed a month long lull in kidnappings. In the past, grotesque — often televised — executions have brought condemnations from many Arabs, including an Egyptian cleric who issued a fatwa, or holy decree, saying that, while hostage-taking in a war zone is acceptable, killing hostages is not.

        Some experts think the recent surge of kidnappings, including those of a German aid worker and a French engineer, may be related to the ongoing trial of Sadaam Hussein or an effort  to disrupt elections scheduled for Dec. 15.

        Jackson said he turns often to a quote from the peacemaking team’s founder, Gene Stoltzfus: “What would happen if Christians devoted the same discipline and self-sacrifice to non-violent peacemaking that armies devote to war?”

        Pyles said Stoltzfus‘ question is what drew her to Iraq for seven weeks in September, and why she’ll go back next year. “Do I really believe this stuff that I say I believe?” she said, citing Jesus’ admonition to not just turn the other cheek, but to actively love your enemy. “If I really believe Jesus Christ, what ought my life be like? … There’s a cost to that, sure. But what a benefit.”

        She said the peacemakers don’t wish to be martyrs, but know that there is no way to avoid risks. Pyles said she was nearly hit by a bullet from a neighbor waving a gun next-door. “That’s a silly way to die,” she said with a wry laugh, adding that a gun-waving neighbor wasn’t a risk she’d weighed before arriving in Baghdad.

        “Soldiers accept that as a risk of doing business. Harm might befall them. But do they dwell on that? I suspect not … until it happens,” she said of life in a war zone.

        Jackson said his work with CPT isn’t just pacifism ¾ because lots of pacifists oppose the war while sitting in their living rooms. He prefers to be called a “non-violent peace activist.”

        What he said he wants to do is stop war by forcing decision-makers to find other ways of resolving conflict. “Imagine,” he said, “if before the bombs dropped on Baghdad, the choir from Ebenezer Baptist Church — and a couple of big Chicago churches — went there. Do you think they’d drop bombs on the city?

        “ I saw (CPT’s work) in Bosnia. We weren’t able to stop the war, but we stopped it for little periods of time,” he said.

        Pyles said the silence of U.S. congregations has been hard to take since she got home. Local churches often avoid the subject to prevent tension, she said, sometimes even failing to pray for the enemy.

        "We ought to be much louder than we are, louder in our prayers,” she said. “It is appropriate to sit in our churches and pray for (our) soldiers. But when we pray for soldiers, seldom do we give the same prayer time to the people of Iraq. For every dead U.S. soldier there, there are anywhere between 10 and 100 dead civilian Iraqis.

        “Not soldiers. Not insurgents. Civilians. Many of them children … As Christians, we’re not controlled by borders. … We’re called to love and care for everyone.”

        Meanwhile, David is waiting to see what tomorrow will bring.

        She is sifting through detainees’ files. Worshipping, often in quiet, Quaker-style. Staying attentive to tensions in the house. Eating more chocolate than usual. Trying to retain her sense of humor.

         “We know the danger here,” she said, “but think it is worth it.”

        CPT has other teams in Colombia, Palestine and Canada.