CPTnet
4 April 2009
IRAQ REFLECTION: It takes a world (and then some) to raise a village

by Michele Naar-Obed

Remember the expression, “It takes a village to raise a child”?  CPT Iraq has found that it will “take a world to raise a village.”

By now our readers are becoming familiar with the plight of the Iraqi Kurdish villagers along the northern border from the releases, reflections and alerts the team has sent out about their plight.  

Over decades, millions of villagers have been displaced, their homes destroyed and their land has been laid to waste.  Saddam’s Anfal campaign in 1988 destroyed over two thirds of Iraqi Kurdish villages.  After they were able to rebuild their villages, the Turkish military started systematically destroying them, particularly along the western border of the Iraqi Kurdish territories.  These attacks continue to present and have become more numerous and aggressive over these last three years.  Iran attacks the Iraqi Kurdish villages along the eastern border allegedly coordinating the bombings with Turkey.  The US has opened up the air space for Turkish warplanes and gives Turkey military intelligence.  

The killing and injuring of the villagers and the destruction of their lands and livelihoods are all violations of the Geneva Conventions.

CPT’s Iraq team has been working on an accompaniment program with villagers from the Dohuk Governate.  However, the villagers do not want to return unless Turkey guarantees that the attacks on their villages will stop.  This request was a little more than CPT could handle by itself so the team began pursuing help from the United Nations.

“  All internally displaced persons (IDPs) have a desire to return home,” the head of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) told Craig Kite and Michele Naar-Obed.  “The U.N. will walk with them (IDPs) if they are informed of the situation and they voluntarily decide to return home and their return will be sustainable…Your documentation of human rights abuses can form the foundation by which the humanitarian branch of the U.N. can begin advocating on the villagers behalf for such a return.”

Apparently, no other NGO has been able to work directly with the villagers and document their plight at the grassroots level.  Kurdish Regional Government authorities have promised to give CPT’s Iraq team access to all the records they have of the attacks and will allow team members to work directly with the villagers.

And so we begin: CPT, the international community, and the IDPs, to build a village that is safe and sustainable.  It will take the world to build this village but it will also take Divine intervention.  The Iraq team is convinced that this work is in fact, guided by the Holy Spirit.

CPT Iraq longs for the day when the villagers will again be safe in their homes to raise the wheat and the barley and graze the animals that will help nurture both body and spirit.