CREDIT: Heathcliff O'Malley, The Daily Telegraph
Posted on 02/17/2003 7:14:17 AM PST by Loyalist
'I mean, what choice does it have?' Gustavo the 'canine shield' is conscripted into protest
CREDIT: Heathcliff O'Malley, The Daily Telegraph
Gustavo, shown with owner Juliana Tucci in Baghdad, has become a mascot of anti-war activists in Iraq.
BAGHDAD - Gustavo is having a hard time. He doesn't like the Japanese traditional drummers and Baghdad is too hot for marching in a warm coat, even if it is for world peace.
"He is afraid of the sound," says Rodolfo Tucci, pointing to the drummers. "I'm afraid what will happen when the bombs fall."
It isn't easy being a human shield, especially when you're a dog. Since leaving Italy, the nine-year-old St. Bernard has a lost a few pounds. He slept for most of the 10-day drive but then Mr. Tucci ran out of dog food. Now he lives on a diet of pasta and meat, which turns out not to be as appealing to an Italian dog as you might think.
After arriving in the Iraqi capital with Mr. Tucci, the founder of a group called Human Shields, Gustavo has quickly become Baghdad's anti-war mascot.
He is also something of an ethical dilemma. Should a dog be a human shield?
"You know, I personally don't agree with a dog as a human shield," Kenneth Webb, a former member of the U.S. National Guard, said with a thick Virginia accent. "I mean, what choice does it have?"
Mr. Webb, a dreadlocked vegan and fellow human shield, hopes to save Iraqi zoo animals during the war, just as his girlfriend saved zoo animals in Afghanistan.
Originally, Mr. Webb had planned to drive a 50,000-watt sound system between the American and Iraqi armies with the help of his San Francisco-based music collective with the unwieldy name of "5lowershop."
Instead, he came to Baghdad as a human shield and marched this weekend with Gustavo and a few hundred other anti-war demonstrators, including the Japanese drummers from Okinawa.
The group, waving signs bearing their name -- "All weapons into the musical instrument" -- beat drums and played traditional Japanese music.
"We are not peace activists by training," said Roberta Taman, a retired Canadian civil servant from the Collingwood, Ont., area waving a Canadian flag out her car window.
Ms. Taman, who says she came for her grandchildren, travelled 7,000 kilometres in three weeks, much of it by car in a convoy with Gustavo. They were delayed by snow in Greece and a lack of visas, though Mr. Tucci said Gustavo helped by making friends with policemen at the borders they crossed.
"Historically, this is the most important time in my lifetime," said Ms. Taman. "One month ago, I was having Christmas dinner at home and now I'm driving around Baghdad."
Buoyed by UN weapons inspector Hans Blix's mild statement to the Security Council on Friday and anti-war demonstrations around the world the following day, the human shields believe the war can be averted.
"This is just something we wanted to do," Ms. Taman says. "I believe the war can be stopped."
Few Iraqis are quite so optimistic. They have been attacked before, and after 12 years of sanctions have little liking for British Prime Minister Tony Blair's arguments for a humanitarian war.
"Yes, of course, there will be war," said Mohammed Obadi, a car parts salesman in the old quarter of Baghdad.
Mr. Obadi and some friends watched the foreigners' noisy, colourful peace parade as it made its way down Rashid Street.
"Bush is crazy," he said. "He wants to come to Iraq and he will."
The Iraqi government widely publicized Saturday's anti-war demonstrations. Government-controlled newspapers ran headlines reading, "The world said with one voice: 'No to aggression on Iraq'," and "The world rises against American aggression and arrogance of naked force."
In a meeting with papal envoy Roger Cardinal Etchegaray on the weekend, Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi dictator, described the idea of regime change as "impertinent."
In orchestrated demonstrations of its own, the Iraqi government reiterated its message that a war in Iraq will be bloody and an American occupation impossible.
While the foreign visitors paraded down Rashid Street, across the city organized phalanxes of heavily armed demonstrators chanted and waved rifles.
"We are demonstrating for peace with guns," said Omar Kochnar, a 29-year old Kurd carrying a machine gun. "We will fight to the last drop of our blood."
The majority of the thousands of well-organized marchers were middle-aged men carrying automatic weapons, although some waved pitchforks and clubs.
Marching in an assortment of mismatched army uniforms and civilian clothes, the men hoisted banners that read, "We are going to burn down the Zionists and the U.S." and "The Americans and Zionists will be defeated."
"We must fight until we die, all the Iraqi people," said Riyaz, one of the middle-aged men wearing a vaguely military outfit.
"I wish to send a letter to Mr. Bush. If he wishes to come here, he has only one solution. He must kill 25 million people, then he can take the oil from Iraq," he added.
But the marchers could neither threaten potential invaders nor their own government. Few of the guns appeared to be carrying magazines and even Mr. Kochnar admitted he had no bullets.
Soldiers lining the road kept order and white trucks mounted with machine guns guarded intersections.
After passing an official reviewing stand and chanting the obligatory, " Our blood and souls we sacrifice for Saddam," they dispersed quietly.
© Copyright 2003 National Post
Which one is the mangy mutt?
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