Posted on 03/04/2003 10:49:39 AM PST by kattracks
AMMAN, March 4 (Reuters) - Outraged by the prospect of a U.S. war on Iraq, Ryan Clancy left his music shop in the United States and put himself in harm's way in Baghdad last month to serve as a "human shield" against Iraqi civilian casualties.
But, like others, he has found idealism at odds with the hard-nosed reality of Iraqi officialdom.
Last month Clancy was among about 50 Western anti-war activists who rode on red double-decker buses to Baghdad after an overland trip that started at London's Tower Bridge.
They hoped to avert a U.S.-led war by putting a human face on the potential civilian casualties by positioning themselves in communities and at hospitals and schools.
Clancy had tea with Iraqis in the market, played football with children and visited schools where students drew pictures of fears of war, such as missiles falling on smiling families.
"It was better than sitting at home and yelling at the television," the 26-year-old from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, said.
"Americans tend to see the entire Iraqi people as the enemy. One of the things we want to do is humanise the Iraqis because it is a lot more difficult to drop a bomb on a person."
But in the past few days, some activists have left Baghdad disillusioned after Iraqi officials told them they had to be stationed at infrastructure sites to discourage U.S. attacks on communications, water, power and oil installations.
They were told schools would be empty anyway in war and that Iraqis needed infrastructure as a foundation for civilian life.
Two activists tagged along for a ride out of Baghdad on the buses when they returned to Syria on Monday.
Some of the 17 who left Iraq for neighbouring Jordan in the past few days are stocking up on supplies and tentatively plan to return. Others object to Iraqi interference with the choice of sites and are still deciding what to do.
"We are personalising the face of a war by showing it will be people who are under attack. It is not a computer game," said Sue Darling, a former diplomat from Surrey, England, as she sats in a hotel in the Jordanian capital of Amman sipping tea.
"I feel a sense of obligation to the Iraqi people. But the choices have now been foreclosed."
STAGING POST FOR WAR
Darling estimates about 100 remain in Iraq in a loosely knit group of peace activists and "human shields".
The shabby Saraya hotel in downtown Amman serves as an impromptu staging post for foreign activists deciding what to do next: stay out or go in.
It resembles a recreation hall in an American university dormitory. Young men and women with sandals and backpacks mill around, sip tea on sagging couches, read newspapers, smoke cigarettes or type out e-mails.
Some wear T-shirts imprinted with "Human Shield" in Arabic, or walk around in the black and white chequered Keffiyah scarves often associated with aspirations of Palestinian statehood.
"I want to go for the Iraqi people. I don't want to deploy next to water and electric installations," said Antoinette McCormick, who was a waitress in the U.S. state of New Mexico when she found out about the activist movement on the Internet.
She questioned why activists should set up camp at infrastructure sites when their first concerns are for humans.
"Most schools and hospitals have their own generators. And the water purification plants only serve the rich 40-percent of the population," she said. "That changed my mind."
Despite the collegial atmosphere, the realities of war are not overlooked. Flyers stacked up on a table in the hotel lobby warn of the dangers.
They advise volunteers of the chances of civic uprising, hostage-taking, being tried for treason, or hostility from Western troops. And of course, there are the bombs.
"Shields" would also encounter language problems unless they speak Arabic, and should avoid burdening Iraqis dependent on rations in a country strapped by sanctions, leaflets say.
And once you sign on, you might never leave.
"After war starts, it may be much harder to get out of Iraq than how you found it coming in," the flyers say. ((Writing by Christine Hauser;
No, they do NOT, idiot.
No we don't and no, it isn't.
Oh, bulls---, you delusional jerk.
Oh, excuse me, I meant to say you delusional COWARD.
"Most schools and hospitals have their own generators. And the water purification plants only serve the rich 40-percent of the population," she said. "That changed my mind."
Any port in a storm, I guess.
You can’t tell all your admirers at the wine-and-brie social that you were merely a chickenshit.
Only if they're driving really fast. If they're dug into a bunker they're pretty easy to hit.
So they are not "for the Iraqi people", just 60 percent of them. I get it. Sounds familiar.
Did it ever occur to her that maybe what is best for the Iraqi people is to have Saddam removed?
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