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Iraq Peacebuilders Study at Summer Peacebuilding Institute

Though friends sometimes chide him as "too optimistic," Laith Hassan holds onto hope for his battered country. Meanwhile, Sami Mohamed – a co-worker with Hassan in Iraq’s Al Amal Association – admits to being surprised by the friendliness of natives in the nation that invaded his own.

"Americans are very nice, polite people. They are so supportive, and they love peace – especially here in Harrisonburg," says Mohamed, visiting the U.S. for the first time to attend Eastern Mennonite University’s Summer Peacebuilding Institute (SPI).

Mohamed, a Sunni Muslim Kurd from Irbil, administers reconstruction work in northern Iraq for Al Amal, a nongovernmental, volunteer humanitarian organization. Hassan, a teacher, conducts Al Amal’s conflict resolution program for teens in Baghdad. These men, attending through Mennonite Central Committee scholarships, are among four Iraqis at SPI this summer.

Hassan, who is Arabic, aims to help teens, forced by war to grow up early, reject "violence and arms and things like that." He lists some remarkable successes.

The program’s 84 youth encouraged parents not to let violence prevent them voting in recent elections. With its 50:50 male-female ratio, "mixing genders became more acceptable." Parents, atypically, came to trust boys in the group to escort their daughters home.

At the Al Amal center, students open email accounts, something "very new" for them. Their own conflicts do not involve politics or religion, but gender, social customs and economics. Family circumstances range from wealth to poverty. To avoid missing program sessions, some affluent students actually decline to accompany parents on European vacations, says Hassan.

Safety issues force some to quit. But once when a session was scheduled after a bombing near the center, "I didn’t expect anyone to come, but they were all there."

Mohamed has presided over construction of schools and a large hospital in Kurdistan. Following SPI, he will return to train peacebuilders.

He and Hassan have seen mixed changes in the two years since the U.S. declared Iraq "liberated." Wage purchasing power has increased tenfold, yet unemployment in Baghdad is estimated at 60 percent. Hassan adds, "Some become insurgents for money." Rumor has it terrorist payoffs run from $500 to $1,000 for an operation, when the average salary is about $200.

He thinks most Iraqis are glad Saddam Hussein is gone. However, "Before, people could come and go freely. Now, half of Baghdad is blockaded; the other half full of concrete barriers." Bombs and mortar rounds are commonplace.

He and Mohamed both characterize the worst hardship as "lack of security." Hassan says, "We are short of basic needs." Infrastructure and government collapse have entailed lack of clean water, sanitation, electricity, health care, fuel and police protection.

When armed robbers recently stole Hassan’s car, he had no recourse. Four friends’ cars have also been stolen.

Kurdistan, Mohamed notes, was spared bombing this time. However, since a succession of wars began in 1961 in that region, "Kurdish people have lived very bad lives." Saddam Hussein attempted to "cancel the culture of the Kurdish people – their history and citizenship," says Mohamed. Yet, "Others before him did that, too."

He thinks today’s insurgents come from neighboring countries fearing "the flood" of democracy. Yet, he faults the U.S. for invading Iraq with no reconstruction plan and suspects U.S. representatives there operate "by trial and error." Mohamed looks forward to an independent Iraqi democracy that does not copy the U.S. but finds its own way.

After Hassan and Mohamed completed the SPI workshop, "Introduction to Conflict Transformation," Hassan studied "Violence and its Legacies," and Mohamed, "Religion: Source of Conflict, Resource for Peace." Characterizing the Sunni-Shia conflict as not religious but political, Mohamed says, "I hope that after this second war, we know more than before. I hope we learn to respect the religions of others."

Hassan explains, "There isn’t a family in Iraq that doesn’t have Sunni and Shia members." He has three cousins, brothers, who are all devout in their faith. "This is a matter of personal choice – how we choose to be near to God, he says."

The youth he teaches are split on their feelings about the invaders. In theirs and their families’ chance encounters with U.S. troops, "Some are helped, and some are hurt." That affects their attitudes. Yet those who disagree have "agreed to respect each other."

Chris Edwards is a free-lance writer from Harrisonburg, Va.

— article by: Chris Edwards; posted June 9, 2005