A witness to war.

I've been in Baghdad with my colleagues from Voices in the Wilderness since October 24. We are members of what we call the Iraq Peace Team, and we are intent on staying here even if George Bush dispatches the bombers and the tanks and the troops. A few days ago, I traveled from Baghdad to Amman to meet three new members of our team. Our kind driver, Sattar, knew the road so well that he could warn me when we were approaching a bump. "Kathy, don't spill your coffee," he said.

During the drive, I told Sattar about the various news reports we'd heard following the U.N. decision to approve Resolution 1441 and the drastic disarmament terms set out by the U.N. Security Council. I was surprised that he knew so little about such an important development. He told me that he and most people he knows aren't following the news very closely. They feel responsible to maintain a semblance of ordinary life, to keep busy, so that they won't succumb to panic and the overwhelming frustrations caused by evolving news reports. "Kathy, really," he suddenly blurted, "I am so scared."

While in Amman, I watched incredulously as CNN aired a U.S. military tape showing a three-dimensional simulation of urban areas in Baghdad. Suddenly, I was seeing an accurate rendering of Abu Nuwas Street, and then the Al Fanar hotel, our home in Baghdad. The tape precisely depicts our immediate neighborhood, detailing the main intersection, walkways, buildings, and alleys. It didn't show any people. Military planners can prepare for war with precision, confidence, and an eerie certainty about "the neighborhood." But residents endure agonizing uncertainty with not a single realistic plan for survival should an attack occur.

Back in Baghdad, Lamia, an English professor at Baghdad University, didn't want to talk about impending war. She seemed relieved when I quickly changed the subject to shop talk about teaching English as a second language. We compared notes about methods, assignments that work well, predictable problems in course work. I could have been talking with any co-worker at the community college where I last taught E.S.L. courses--except that Lamia's classes may be suspended before the semester ends, disrupted by war.

Amal, on the other hand, doesn't hesitate to tell me what she has heard through the grapevine about U.S. war plans against Iraq. Amal has also been an English teacher at a secondary school, but she couldn't support her family on the meager salary. Now she tries futilely to dig her way out of debt by selling the paintings she creates after the children go to bed. She stays up through much of the night, depicting traditional scenes with dwindling supplies of oil paint. I timidly asked her what she anticipates if an attack comes. She is very definite. She will hire a taxi, pack what belongings she can, and flee to the north where she hopes to rent a home in the countryside, away from the many targets she believes the United States will bomb in her neighborhood.

What are the odds that an empty home awaits her, somewhere in the country? How many boxes of provisions can she load onto a taxi? How will she find water and fuel? It would be cruel and pointless to pummel her with these questions. Her imaginative drawings have sustained her family for over a year. Maybe, just maybe, her bold hopes will help them survive the coming months.

I wish some of Amal's determination could spark hope for Umm Zainab, a mother of nine living in an impoverished area of Iraq's southern port city, Basra. I've known Umm Zainab since the summer of 2000 when I lived near her home for seven weeks. Umm Zainab weeps readily, clinging to me as she trembles. "Where can we run?" she whispers. "How can we hide?" She and her neighbors fear being on the front lines of a future war.

One street to the east of Umm Zainab's home, I spotted an improvement since I'd last visited the neighborhood this June. Curbs are being built on both sides of the unpaved road. Almost every other aspect of Jumurriyah's infrastructure is in disrepair, but the curbs will help keep raw sewage from flowing into homes--a welcome change.

Not so far from Basra, on U.S. carriers and in U.S. bases under construction in nearby countries, the United States invests enormous sums building the infrastructures to support U.S. troop deployments in the region. Troops must be housed, fed, supplied with clean water and electricity, and equipped with state-of-the-art military gear. Sewage and sanitation systems must function properly to prevent outbreaks of disease amongst the troops.

We are building our team slowly, persuaded by a stubborn belief that where you stand determines what you see. We try to distance ourselves from both President Bush and President Hussein, believing that neither side is blameless. And we are encouraged--we feel blessed by--those who have joined us and by the steady flow of inquiries and applications, now exceeding 100, that have come into our Chicago office.

It's a challenge to orient new team members to the multiple uncertainties we face in Iraq. How long will the Iraqis allow our team members to remain in Iraq? How many new people can we bring into the country? If the United States launches an attack, if the government here is toppled, if U.S. troops invade and occupy city streets here or elsewhere in the country, how can we best accompany ordinary Iraqis whom we've met here? How can we communicate to the U.S. public the effects of warfare, should it occur?

Eager to show solidarity with demonstrations in Washington, D.C., San Francisco, and numerous other cities on October 26, our team set to work planning our own protest in Baghdad that day. We designed an enlarged blank check to hold in front of the U.N. headquarters along with signs that said, "End Sanctions Against Iraq," and "No Blank Check for War Against Iraq." We also held a life-size photo of an Iraqi child on a banner that asked, "Is She Our Enemy?" And we cited U.N. statistics about the numbers of Iraqi children who have died as a direct result of economic sanctions.

The press that came to the demonstration outnumbered us by about five to one, and we're still smarting from the stories they filed. The dismissive tone of the stories in The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and the Chicago Tribune have set us back considerably. Articles characterizing us as an ineffectual group of naive people in the thrall of a dictatorship belittle six years of hard work on the part of hundreds of people who've done their best to speak truthfully about their experiences in nonviolently resisting U.S.-led U.N. economic sanctions against Iraq.

One journalist called us an anemic group, referring to our small number, but failed to mention that the U.S. government threatens us with twelve years in prison for the "crime" of traveling to Iraq and for making any transaction (even buying a bottle of water) while here. In May of 2002, the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets began imposing $10,000 fines on people named in a pre-penalty notice issued by that office back in 1998.

A New York Times article by John Burns on October 27 bore this headline: "12 Americans Stage a Protest Hussein Is Happy to Allow." We joked that the article might just as easily have been entitled, "John Burns Writes an Article Bush Is Happy to Read." Worse, the caption accompanying the Times story stated that our demonstration was held "in support of Saddam Hussein." Our work has consistently been to support the Iraqi people, not Saddam, and our press release made clear that what we were doing was challenging the United Nations to uphold its own charter, which calls for protection of vulnerable civilian populations during times of war. People in the United States are seldom prompted to think about the cares and concerns of the twenty-four million people living in Iraq. It's as if there were only one person here, and his name was Saddam Hussein.

"Do you see yourselves as human shields?" journalists asked. We can't deter bombs or attacks any more than you can, we told them. But we can treat all human beings as equals. And we can serve as witnesses to our own government's war.

A few journalists were surprised at the negative slant toward Voices in the Wilderness and the Iraq Peace Team. "Why would someone want to smear you like that?" asked one reporter.

Members of the mainstream U.S. media insisted on asking us how we could avoid being used by the Iraqi government. But we will not let the media cast us as dupes. We reject the either-or, the with-us-or-against-us dichotomy that George W. Bush tries to impose on us all. And when I can, I try to point out to the mainstream journalists that they've succeeded enormously in informing the U.S. public about the horrors committed by the current regime in Iraq while for the most part neglecting the horrors the United States has committed. That the regime here has used chemical weapons, engaged in torture, and violated the political and civil rights of Iraqi civilians is repugnant to all who cherish human rights. And yet, what the U.S. public doesn't understand and will possibly never comprehend is that the greatest violations of human rights in Iraq since the Gulf War have happened as a result of U.S.-led U.N. economic sanctions against Iraq.

We have seen the truth of bombings and of economic sanctions, and that is why we passionately oppose the coming war against the families of Iraq.

Last night, friends working in our Chicago office (the three-bedroom apartment where I live on the city's north side) called to say that the U.S. Treasury Department has imposed a $20,000 fine on me and our campaign for the "crime" of delivering medicines and toys to Iraq. We don't believe that we've behaved as criminals. And we won't be paying any penalties. As long as the U.S. government approves big budgets for military planners, military suppliers, and military consultants, we'll claim our right to practice the works of mercy rather than support the works of war.

The road ahead is unknowable. But I find a calming inspiration in a bit of lore about Saint Francis of Assisi. During the bloody slaughter occasioned by "Christian" Crusades, Saint Francis traveled on foot for a year and risked his life to reach the sultans tent. The sultan begged Francis to accept expensive gifts. Francis refused them but carried forth a vision of peacemaking predicated on simplicity, service, sharing, and an obstinate refusal to kill.

Kathy Kelly is the founder of Voices in the Wilderness, a human rights group based in Chicago that works to lift the economic sanctions against Iraq. For more information, contact [e-mail], call [phone], or visit www.iraqpeaceteam.org or www.vitw.org.