by Matt Andrews

[Note: Andrews was a member of the 14-27 October 2010 CPT delegation to Iraqi Kurdistan. This reflection has been edited for length. The original is at http://cpt-iraq.blogspot.com/2010/11/delegation-fall-2010-one.html]

On Sunday our delegation visited Amna Suraka, a prison where Saddam Hussein kept Kurdish dissidents and political prisoners. We walked through the facility and listened to our guide tell us stories of merciless torture, overcrowded cells, and unsanitary conditions for men, women, and children.  On Monday we travelled southeast to the village of Halabjah, where the Iraqi government used chemical weapons to murder more than 5,000 Kurdish civilians, almost two-thirds of which were women and children, in March of 1988.

The things we saw got our group talking about the nature of evil. Tiffany, one of our delegation members, noted that violence of this nature was what happened when there is a lack of accountability amongst people, and the more I've pondered this idea, the more I've realized that each of us has what it takes to commit unspeakable acts of cruelty. Because of sin, each of us has been poisoned to consider violence as an acceptable means of resolving conflict; when we are allowed to explore that option without any kind of deterrent, it tends to grow and expand like a cancer until it has dominated our lives.

We tend to think of peacemaking as stopping one group of people from killing another, and while that is part of it, it addresses only one specific manifestation of the violence in the world. The true essence of peacemaking involves forcing people to examine the attitudes and prejudices in their hearts and exchange them for love, forgiveness, mercy, and friendship. It is a method that involves not just convincing an army to lay down their weapons, but convincing a person to ignore his/her own violent impulses. By changing hearts, minds, and souls, we attack the very nature of the problem and not just a symptom. I am learning about how CPT is doing this in ways they have forged powerful and lasting connections to members of the Kurdish community. In time, the hope is that enough people will undergo this transformation so that violence is taken off of the table as a viable option for future conflicts.

We got to see an example of this in Halabjah. Both of the men that guided us through the exhibit were able to point at pictures on the wall and identify corpses of family members killed in the chemical attacks. I was shocked that a man could set aside the anger in his heart in order to face the bodies of his loved ones on a daily basis. When asked why they continued to face their demons in this way, they replied that they wanted to teach the next generation about what had happened so that it would never happen again.

My hope is that in my life, both in Iraq and back at home in America, I can embrace forgiveness and mercy in the manner of our new friends in Halabjah. May I always choose to reject anger and violence, embrace forgiveness and non-violence, and teach others to do the same.