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Soldiers positioned around Azadi Square, Suleimaniya Iraq |
by Michele Naar-Obed
In June, I returned home to the Loaves and Fishes Catholic Worker in Duluth MN after finishing another five-month stretch in the Kurdish North of Iraq working with the human rights, violence-reduction organization Christian Peacemaker Teams. This would end my sixth year of spending five months each year in the Middle East. It was a hard but inspiring five months. Like many others in the Middle East, the Iraqi Kurds had enough of corrupt foreign and domestic policies, poverty, and misappropriation of their resources.
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A portion of the Peace Wall, positioned between the soldiers and the demonstrators, Suleimaniya Iraq |
After 20 years of rule by two party leaders accused of nepotism and corruption, the people rose up. From February to April, thousands of Iraqi Kurds gathered daily in the cities of the Suleimaniya Province in their Azadi (freedom) Squares to voice their complaints and create their road map to peace. The commitment of the organizers to nonviolence was remarkable. Every day they faced government provocateurs and security forces, many of whom were trained by US forces in crowd and riot control, who were bent on turning these daily nonviolent demonstrations into violent chaos in order to take it down by force. Every day the organizers, many of whom were students and youth, trained through the lessons of Gandhi and M.L. King, found creative strategies to diffuse the tensions in the square and persevere with their plans to build their “beloved community.”
Scores of deaths, hundreds of injuries, and thousands of arrests later, the Kurdish security forces put the demonstrations to a temporary end. In the midst of fires, tear gas, beatings, rubber bullets and live ammunition the people cried out, “you broke the square but you can't break us”. They mourned their dead, visited their wounded and fought for the release of their imprisoned with the help from groups like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Christian Peacemaker Teams.
I spent 62 days in Azadi Square with these valiant nonviolent warriors and I will never forget them or the lessons they taught me about waging a campaign for freedom from oppressive and unjust rule. More than nonviolent resistance tactics, the Kurds taught me how to maintain hope and vision in the face of death and despair. They know how to build relationships even with their enemies because they know that when it comes right down to it we all need each other. There were times when I literally saw guns melt in the face of love and right relationships. I don't say that flippantly nor am I trying to be overly dramatic.
I've found it really hard to adjust to life in the US after these experiences. I know our oppressive rule under the US empire is not only lethal to the majority of its own citizens but its lethality extends to most of the world. I know that it is too big for any small group of us to take it down. There are no individual heroes, but together with the power of the Divine Force pulsing through us, we might be able to rope down the giant.
Like every empire that has gone down in the past, I also know that over time it will fall on its own. I hope to hasten the process in an effort to reduce the number of casualties. I applaud the Wall Street Occupiers and support their efforts. Their efforts are combined with all the efforts of nonviolent resistance that many of us in the Catholic Worker movement have participated in both past and present.
Combined with the efforts of dismantling oppressive systems are the works of building the new “beloved community”. This is the vision that Peter Maurin gave us and I saw it radiate throughout the Midwest Catholic Worker communities as they shared their ideas, their successes and their failures in creating the new community at this year's regional Catholic Worker gathering in Iowa. Like the vision of the Kurds, Peter's vision hasn't died in hopelessness and despair either.
So where am I in this circle of tearing down and building up? Where does the Divine Force want me? It's really the work of the Spirit and we are the vehicles out of which that work can be carried out. For now, I find myself called to the work of urban farming, of developing relationships between my city of Duluth and the city of Rania in Iraqi Kurdistan, of re-committing myself to the life of the Catholic Worker movement and of putting flesh on the bones of the “beloved community” in the face of the dragon. Greg, Rachel and I remain bound together as family and although we use our life skills differently, we remain committed to the common good. I guess until I hear differently, this is where I'll be. Thank you to all my sisters and brothers of the uprisings throughout the world for keeping hope alive and for counting me in the circle of life.
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| The circle of life: solider, peace wall, and demonstrators together. |
Michele Naar-Obed, husband Greg and daughter Rachel live at the Loaves and Fishes Catholic Worker in Duluth MN
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