CPTnet
4 March 2006
IRAQ: What you haven't heard
by Michele Naar-Obed
Since the bombing of the Al-Askari Shrine in Samarra on 22 February 2006,
local media and friends have deluged the Christian Peacemaker Team (CPT) in
Iraq with information. Iraqi Islamic television reported that the U.S.
military and Iraqi police were seen at the shrine the night before it was
bombed. The next morning, two shrine guards were found alive but handcuffed
inside. Baghdadiya television aired the same report. The Minister of
Housing and Reconstruction said the job would have taken ten men about
twelve hours to set up enough explosives to do this kind of damage. We have
not heard this information reported outside Iraq. The U.S. made offers to
rebuild the shrine, but the Iraqi Islamic Party asked that repair be delayed
until an independent investigation was completed. Samarra citizens have
locked down the shrine to preserve evidence.
While Baghdad and surrounding provinces were under strict curfew, CPT
received calls from friends who described mosques under attack and gun
battles in the streets. Iraqi Islamic TV reported that men dressed in black
burned down a village near Dialla. The next day the Iraqi military, the
Mehdi army and U.S. Apache helicopters attacked the same village. A day
later, we heard that Iraqi Islamic TV, which aired footage of the attack,
was bombed.
One night, we counted the thuds of mortars dropping on a neighborhood across
the river. We've listened to gun battles, watched the smoke rise from a car
bombing in our neighborhood and sat with our neighbors as they wept in
despair. We've received reports of sectarian cleansing and mass
deportations. The team has searched the prisons for friends taken in raids
and gone to the morgue to identify the dead.
But the news isn't all bad. While the _New York Times_ and other media
focus on ethnic hatred, sectarian violence, and civil war, we receive other
reports that most of the western media ignore. A team friend calls us daily
with stories of Sunni/Shi'a unity, cries for peace, and the deep passion of
all Iraqis to live as one family. In neighborhoods that have been hotbeds of
violence, we hear of Sunni and Shi'a working together to repair and rebuild
damaged mosques. Shi'a Iraqis have protected Sunni mosques in their
neighborhoods. In a Basrah shrine, Sunni and Shi'a have gathered to pray
together.
While people in power seem to manipulate events, pitting groups against each
other, and military advisors trained in counterinsurgency plot terror
campaigns behind closed doors ( See "The Way of the Commandos," _NY Times
Magazine_, May 2005), heroic acts of love and kindness among the people in
this tattered country go on unnoticed. We continue in our efforts to work
with a Sunni, Shi'a and Christian coalition to develop a human rights
campaign for all people in Iraq. Human Rights groups continue to form,
teenagers continue attend nonviolent conflict resolution classes and hope
for the future still remains.
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