Working in Harm’s Way

Group’s activist tactics seek nonviolent solutions to war

Editor’s note: This article went to press before the fate of Tom Fox — one of four members of Christian Peacemaker Teams who were kidnapped last year in Iraq — was known. His body was found March 10.

War-torn Baghdad, rife with insurgent bombings and a rising tide of sectarian violence, may be one the most dangerous cities in the world. The widespread

bloodshed has caused most civilians from Western countries — be they aid workers, journalists, or contractors — to either abandon the Iraqi capital or remain largely hunkered down in the city’s heavily fortified International Zone.

The shattered city is perhaps the last place you’d expect to find a 63-year-old grandmother from Ohio living and working. And yet, there she is.

Her name is Peggy Gish, and she’s a member of the Christian Peacemaker Teams, an 18-year-old humanitarian organization headquartered in Chicago and Toronto, which sends groups of trained but unarmed individuals into conflict-ridden places around the globe to promote nonviolent solutions and document human-rights abuses. The group has been in Iraq since before the 2003 invasion, living outside the fortified zone in the capital city and among Iraqis. In that time, Ms. Gish has spent some 18 months in Iraq, shuttling back and forth between the United States and Baghdad with fellow team members.

“Back home people like to tell me how brave I am,” Ms. Gish says over the phone from her Baghdad apartment where she has lived with a handful of fellow Peacemaker volunteers since beginning her latest visit last fall. “I don’t think I’m any more brave than any other person. I’ve learned to tap into personal and faith resources that help me to deal with this.”

‘Witnessing’ Horrors

Peacemaker calls one of its key strategies “getting in the way,” which means physically placing members in harm’s way in an effort to diffuse or repel violence.

During the “shock and awe” aerial-bombing phase of the U.S.-led invasion, this meant the group put down stakes around a Baghdad water-pumping station in hopes that the station would not become a target. The charity also makes a point of “witnessing” war, which means documenting the effects of violence on the general population. The group reported on abuses at the U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison months before the now-infamous photos from within the facility ignited an international scandal.

The group that says it only works for peace is not itself immune to violence. Last November a heretofore-unknown insurgent group calling itself the Swords of Righteousness Brigade kidnapped four Christian Peacemaker members — an American, two Canadians, and a Briton — at gunpoint in Baghdad.

The abductors accused the four men of being spies and have threatened to kill them unless all Iraqis held prisoner by the U.S.-led coalition forces are released. Two deadlines issued to carry out this threat have come and gone, with the whereabouts and fate of the aid workers remaining unknown. The four were last seen alive in a video released in January.

These four captives join the ranks of the more than 200 foreign “noncombatants” abducted in Iraq since the 2003 invasion, more than 50 of whom have been killed. While such actions are what led many humanitarian groups to leave the country, the Christian Peacemaker Teams is staying put for now — not despite the hostage crisis, but because of it.

“It’s real clear that we need to stay here until our men are released or there’s some kind of resolution,” Ms. Gish says. “And we know it’s possible that it could be a negative outcome. We do take more precautions, but we still go out and do our work.”

Though the team members are considered heroes in some circles, many conservative commentators and supporters of the American intervention in Iraq cast a jaundiced eye on the charity, labeling it both naïve and willfully ignorant of terrorism.

Rush Limbaugh, the radio host, last year called members of the Christian Peacemaker Teams “leftist, feel-good, handwringers,” adding that the kidnapping was a chance for them to be “shown reality.”

Richard Pritchard, co-director of the Peacemaker group, simply tells critics that his organization is opposed to violence of any kind.

“We are called upon to love our neighbors and to love our enemies,” he says. “And we are prepared to take the risks that are entailed in that kind of loving response to the world.”

‘Prepared to Die’

The group’s roots go back to 1984 and a speech given by a theology professor, Ron Sider, at the Mennonite World Conference, in France. He called on fellow Christians seeking a peaceful world to abandon the “backlines of isolationism” and to “prayerfully and nonviolently place ourselves between the weak and the oppressor.”

The speech also underscored the hazards of such an undertaking, saying that those who do this work must be “prepared to die by the thousands.”

Inspired by these sentiments, the Christian Peacemaker Teams was formed in 1987. Despite its religious name, the group carries no mandate to proselytize. Among the organization’s early international efforts was a 1990 delegation sent to Iraq before the first Gulf War to meet with Iraqi government officials to discuss the release of Western hostages being held at the time. A year later the group began a formal process of “peacemaker” training, which has since grown into an intensive, month-long process for preparing team members for potentially dangerous assignments. The four weeks of 12- to 14-hour days teach team members everything from how to get between angry soldiers and civilians to how to record the stories of traumatized victims of violence.

The charity now has 36 full-time members, volunteers who have completed the training and are committed to at least three years of service. Not counting the hostages, six are currently serving in Iraq. They also have nine people in the West Bank, nine in Colombia, and four in Canada. Another 150 people have completed the training and stand ready to serve in another country as needed.

One challenge for the charity has been “how to work with local people” without being seen as a meddling outsider, says Gene Stoltzfus, founding director of the group who retired in September 2004. “Was this nonviolent imperialism? Was this another expression of somebody pushing their ideas on somebody else?”

Early efforts undertaken by the group in Haiti, Palestine, and a Canadian Indian reservation showed the importance of paying close attention to local wants and needs. Mr. Stoltzfus adds that the group never goes anywhere without an invitation, either from a local humanitarian group, government entity, or church.

In 1995 the mayor of Hebron in the West Bank asked the Peacemakers to visit, and they have had a presence there ever since. The group frequently escorts Palestinian children to and from school, and it was while performing this task in 2004 that two of its volunteers were attacked by masked men. One charity volunteer suffered a broken arm; another was hospitalized with a punctured lung.

“We’ve had people dragged through the street and experience some pretty bad stuff, but we have not had a person shot or taken hostage until recently,” Mr. Stoltzfus says. “We assumed that by this time in our history we would have dealt with at least one, if not several, death situations.”

The group’s only on-assignment fatality occurred two years ago in Iraq, when a 73-year-old Canadian volunteer was killed in a car accident.

Documenting Abuses

Long before the four Peacemaker volunteers were kidnapped in Baghdad, the group took steps to lower its profile. Members stopped wearing their trademark red caps emblazoned with the group’s logo, for one thing. Ms. Gish says when she goes out in public she wears a long skirt and a headscarf of the sort worn by many Iraqi women.

“It’s not wise to be picked out on the street as a foreigner,” Ms. Gish says. “When we go and meet people we tell them who we are, but when out on the street for general public view, we try to blend in as much as possible.”

In response to the recent rise in sectarian violence, the group is speaking with both Sunni and Shia Muslims to learn how each side views the tensions, and plans to organize meetings between members of the two sects.

Perhaps the single most intensive effort the Peacemaker Teams in Iraq has undertaken is documenting the abuse accusations from Iraqis detained in coalition prisons, a project that began in the summer of 2003. Former detainees and the families of those still imprisoned recounted allegations of violent house raids, unwarranted imprisonment, humiliation, and torture.

“When I first started hearing the stories I didn’t want to believe them,” Ms. Gish says. “I love my country and didn’t like to think that we were doing those things. But we just kept getting stories from all over the country.”

In January 2004, the group produced a report containing case studies of 72 detainees alleging mistreatment and presented it to coalition authorities in Iraq, politicians back home, and the news media. In late April of that year, the graphic photos of prisoner mistreatment in Abu Ghraib prison emerged.

While the group says that conditions have improved in American-run prisons, it is now hearing stories of abuse by the U.S.-trained Iraqi military. All told, Ms. Gish says, anger towards the United States is “growing daily” in Iraq.

“After the initial invasion there were so many people thankful to have Saddam gone,” she says. “The delays in the reconstruction efforts and the excessive violence now have the people feeling disrespected. We have also attracted terrorists from other places to come here, and the Iraqi people are very upset about this.”

Drawing Rebuke

The Christian Peacemakers put out a press release days after last fall’s kidnapping, stating: “We are angry because what has happened to our teammates is the result of the actions of the U.S. and U.K. governments.”

For the group’s critics, this was but another example of what they see as a biased and politically motivated willingness to readily fault the U.S.-led coalition while ignoring the terrorists and insurgents.

“I am distressed at the tendency of some activists to conflate pacifism and leftism,” Michael Rubin, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a former political adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, said in an e-mail message. “They may think they are helping Iraqis. Rather, they are considered naïve ideologues by some and despised by many.”

The budget of the Christian Peacemaker Teams approached $1-million last year, up from the $800,000 raised in 2004. Mr. Pritchard says the charity receives no grants from governments or major foundations, with most support coming from individuals and a few small family foundations. The group’s support now extends well beyond its founding church affiliates to include Catholics, Quakers, and other Protestant denominations.

The cost to support a charity volunteer is around $15,000 a year, which covers food, lodging, and airfare.

Peacemaker members are also expected to do a lot of their own fund raising to cover their expenses. “We ask people to tap their own networks of friends, colleagues, and churches,” Mr. Pritchard says.

The group is also eager to spread its concept to other organizations. In 2002 the World Council of Churches, an international coalition of some 340 Christian churches based in Switzerland, hired a Peacemaker member to assist in developing a version of the program. And last year members of the group’s Iraq contingent were invited to Karbala, Iraq, to teach a group of largely Shia Muslims the methods of nonviolent intervention, which ultimately led to the creation of two unaffiliated Muslim Peacemaking Teams.

The presence of such an indigenous group may take on extra importance. Pending the outcome of the hostage situation, the Christian Peacemaker group plans to undertake a thorough evaluation of the situation in Iraq. In the end, it may conclude that it’s time to leave the country, if only temporarily. One thing the group’s members are increasingly wary of is putting the Iraqis they work with in danger. But Mr. Stoltzfus is hopeful that the organization’s mission will thrive.

“It’s just been a tremendous experiment over the last 20 years,” he says. “We are still defining just what peacemaking is, but it has tremendous possibilities.”