Brethren peacemakers return from Iraq.

Peggy Gish and Cliff Kindy, Church of the Brethren members of Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT), were in Baghdad the day the bombs began to fall a year ago, and on March 20, the one-year anniversary of the beginning of the war. Both returned to the US in late March.

On April 13 the current CPT team left Iraq on the advice of Iraqi colleagues. "The extremely aggressive actions of the US and Coalition forces throughout Iraq and especially in Fallujah have created widespread suspicion and fear," a CPT release said. "This suspicion puts all internationals at risk." CPT is a ministry initiated by Mennonites, Brethren, and Friends, and has had a team in Iraq almost continuously since Oct. 2002.

Gish, of New Covenant Fellowship in Athens, Ohio, spent 11 months of the last year and a half in Iraq, and Kindy, who attends Eel River Community Church of the Brethren, Silver Lake, Ind., spent ten months there. In separate interviews conducted after their return, Kindy and Gish reflected on their work and the situation in Iraq "then and now."

"We were there before the war with the hope that we could stop a war," Kindy said of CPT's initial decision to place a team in Iraq. The CPT presence, along with massive anti-war demonstrations around the world, helped delay the war, he contends.

"We resist getting caught in the mindset of the occupation system," Gish said, emphasizing that CPT's spiritual resistance to the war continues. "We refuse to accept the mindset that anyone resisting the US occupation is a terrorist. We resist seeing either Iraqi or US soldiers as our enemies, or believing that violence is the only way to combat terrorism." In Iraq, Kindy espoused nonviolence to people on all sides of the conflict including an American colonel who befriended the CPT team and an Iraqi-Canadian physician with plans to finance a militia. Such conversations illustrate CPT's mission Kindy said.

Assessing the current situation, he said that the war has been "lost in every way, except maybe for corporations who have more business." "There are little visible signs of hope, but we hold on to hope," Gish said. "Iraq may go through a lot more hell, but good things are happening there too. God is raising up leadership right now, people who have vision for rebuilding a more peaceable society there." Gish gives credit to the many Iraqis who do not resort to violence even though they are angry with the occupation.

Both fear the longterm effects of the war. "We're going to bring the war home in ways we can't even think about in our nightmares," Kindy said. His concerns include loss of US credibility, effects of the war on troops, and the effects of weapons made with depleted uranium, which may include a high incidence of cancer in those exposed and deformations of babies born in Iraq and to US veterans. Gish's concerns focus on the continuing violence. She said that US actions are rapidly increasing the ranks of the opposition, who in her opinion are not terrorists or Al Qaeda "but mostly Iraqis wanting their own autonomy and feeling desperate."

When soldiers return from Iraq, few family or friends know how to deal with their war experiences, Kindy fears. There is a ministry for the church in hearing the stories of the soldiers, both for their healing and to change what is happening in Iraq, he said. "It's going to take the soldiers and us working together."

Gish and Kindy bring questions from Iraq, for themselves and the church. "Is it possible to walk, live, and work in a system of horrendous overt and structural violence without being overcome by it? How can we do it in Iraq, the US, or any other nation?" Gish asked. Kindy wondered how peacemaking in Iraq may help Brethren understand discipleship. "It's the kind of vision that could attract serious followers of Jesus," he said.

Gish is writing a book about her experiences, "Iraq: A Journey of Hope and Peace," to be published by Herald Press in early fall. Kindy is on a speaking tour to churches. For more information call CPT at 773-277-0253 or log on to www.cpt.org.

Source: Newsline 4/16/2004 top