As Christian Peacemaker Teams has introduced Undoing Racism into all aspects of our organization over the past few years, I, as delegations coordinator, have been integrating the topic into orientation materials for delegates.  “Racism is often a root cause or at least a significant factor in war, and unless we have a clue about that, our work will be superficial, or worse, deeply damaging,” one document reads.  Specifically, the materials cite racism of White, European, and European-descended people against people of color as a cause of war.  Undoing racism means that those of us who are White have to first see and then take responsibility for that privilege.

Thus, when I led a delegation to the Kurdish north of Iraq last fall, I tried hard to encourage delegates to ask questions about racism, and its corollary, White privilege, when interpreting what we were learning about the situation in northern Iraq.

I write this from the city of Suleimaniyah, in northern Iraq.  I came here fragile.  Frightened.  I came unprepared.  A part of me understands that there are more then enough issues to keep one occupied in New York City, or wherever one resides. Yet there seemed something right, if belated, about going to a country that my government had declared war on.

 I have only been here one month.  I have listened to stories of discrimination, torture, and murder. I have traveled to Halabja and toured the museum telling the story of the chemical bombing and attempted genocide by Saddam in 1989.  I see construction and reconstruction all about.  And I feel love.

Her dropped head, her clasped hands, her sad face continue to haunt me.  I ask myself how anyone could endure this kind of pain, especially a mother.

The first time that I heard about Métis people, I thought, “Hey, wait a second, that’s me.”  Métis are a group of people in North America who recognize Indigenous and European origins, and I belong (like most Latin-Americans) to a group of people called Mestizos, which also recognizes Indigenous, European and African origins.  However, I admit sadly, we are not as proud of the African and Indigenous origins as we are of the European.

The photograph showed branches of trees spreading the green to every corner. The green alongside the road or in the garden of people’s house could almost touch the passersby.  It bore the caption, “Kirkuk before 2003”.

“ Do you know Kirkuk is the capital of culture? ” Awezan asked us.

In photos taken after 2003, we saw large posters of martyrs carelessly displayed, instead of in manner likely to gain the respect of observers.  “ We are the city of martyrs,” she said.

This autumn, as our delegation visited families in villages tucked away in the mountains along the Iranian border, we heard stories of how violence brought about by bombs, land mines, guns, and forced displacement had forever changed their lives.  They long for a day when they can walk outside their house to a plot of farmland instead of a fenced-off field of land mines.  They long for a day when they can leave a camp for Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) and go home without fear that any house they build or produce they grow will be bombed.

"It's been a hard day's night, and I should be sleeping like a log.”

A couple weeks ago, I started downloading some of those old Beatles songs that I didn't yet have in my collection and it occurred to me I did sleep like a log despite the following:

a) An armed Israeli soldier less than thirty metres away was keeping us and of course some neighbouring Jewish settlers “safe”.  His radio crackled constantly; and his guard dogs were barking.
b) The CPT Apartment in the old city Al-Khalil/Hebron is a chicken market with cockerels crowing all night and every night
c) It was my fifteenth different bed in thirty-five nights.

"A voice was heard in Ramah, 


wailing and loud lamentation,

Rachel weeping for her children; 


she refused to be consoled, 


because they are no more."

-Matthew 2:18



Throughout history, governments have resorted to barbaric acts of violence to remain in power.  In Christian tradition, the Gospel of Matthew reminds us of this reality through the story of the massacre of the Holy Innocents.  The history of the Patriotic Union in Colombia is reminds us that massacres of innocents continue 2000 years later.  



In October, as our delegation visited families in villages tucked away in the mountains along the Iranian border, we heard stories of how violence brought about by bombs, land mines, guns, and forced displacement had forever changed their lives. They long for a day when they can walk outside their house to a plot of farmland instead of a fenced-off field of land mines. They long for a day when they can leave a camp for Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) and go home without fear that any house they build or produce they grow will be bombed.

This autumn, a local businessman alerted three CPTers to the presence of a group of soldiers outside the Ibrahimi School, located in the heart of the Old City.  Upon arrival, the school principal informed CPT that a settler boy, around seven years old, had accused two Palestinian boys from the Ibrahimi School of throwing a rock at him.  Soldiers wanted to enter the school with the settler child to identify and arrest the Palestinian boys, and the school principal responded by saying they would first need to get permission from the Palestinian Minister of Education.

Over a period of three hours, fifty Israeli soldiers, twenty settlers and Israeli police gathered outside the school.  When the Palestinian Ministry of Education told the soldiers that they could not enter the school, the Israeli army disregarded his decision and entered the school with the settler boy in tow.  Two Palestinian boys under the age of eighteen were arrested in front of their peers and taken to the local police station.  The Israeli army and police informed the Minister of Education that these arrests were necessary for “maintaining the peace,” because the group of settlers gathered outside the school had threatened to remain and harass the school children if the police did not arrest the Palestinian boys.