Catching up with Kathy Kelly

Kathy Kelly is my kind of war hero. She has spent much of the past 12 years embedded in the Iraq-US conflict. Yet she has never carried artillery, driven a tank or worn a military uniform. Her weapons are a wealth of compassion and raw courage, and an unflagging devotion to justice that has won her two Nobel Peace Prize nominations.

Now that the Iraqi war has given way to an unsteady peace, Kelly has come home to share her story with the world and to embark on a new journey, connected to what she has left behind. She recently visited the Twin Cities to speak at a local church and spend some time with friends and supporters. I found her at the home of Marie and John Braun, local leaders of the campaign to lift Iraqi sanctions.

Kelly, long active in social causes, initially visited Iraq during the first Gulf War in the early 1990s. In response to what she witnessed, she and some friends formed the Iraq Peace Team. “We defined ourselves as a group that wanted to remain alongside the Iraqi people in hopes of protecting them to some degree from U.S. attacks,” she said. “The Iraqi people did not want that war. We needed to be there for them. In 1995 we realized that we weren’t doing anything about the economic war against Iraqi children due to the U.N. imposed sanctions. We later wrote a letter to Janet Reno challenging the U.S. government to support breaking the sanctions that were illegal and instead extend a hand of friendship to the Iraqi people. In January of ’96,we decided to form an official organization and give it a name—Voices in the Wilderness. We didn’t know we’d be around for the next seven years. Eventually, we had 90 people from 70 delegations on the Iraqi Peace Team. We have taken action to promote peace in the Middle East, Bosnia and Haiti, among others. I have been arrested 21 times, with or without my team members, and been put in prison five times for anti-military protests.” At the time of our interview, Kelly was about to begin a two-month prison term for crossing the line at a federal nuclear weapons facility in Clam Lake, Wis., and planting corn on the site.

In its relentless work in Iraq, the Peace Team has resorted to some risky nonviolent tactics to make a point about harm being done by the sanctions. One of the most severe of those has been to go on prolonged fasts, subsisting on water and juices in various strategic locations: Twenty-eight days in 1990; 30 in the summer of ’97; 40 days in the summer of 1999 and 30 in 2001, near the U.N. headquarters in New York City. Often the fasts would be broken by sharing a meal of cooked lentils and rice (about all the Iraqis get during a day) and Hudson River water. Kelly who weighs all of 105 pounds soaking wet admits she lost as many as 10 of those pounds during the fasts. But she brushes off the hardship. “After the first three days you don’t feel that hungry. And not eating frees up energy. But I wouldn’t do it without others in our [peace team] community.”

The Team spent the summer of 2000 in Iraq visiting the poorest neighborhoods in Basra. “The temperatures reached 140 degrees,” Kelly recalled. ”People didn’t have water or electricity. Their homes were hovels and they couldn’t get decent meals or medical care. We realized how much the sanctions were punishing civilians. The sanctions also helped build a smuggling trade. We fasted in Iraq in the summer of 2002, water only twice for 28 days, once for 20 days with juice and electrolytes.”

The Peace Team members were staying in the Al Rasheed Hotel in Bagdhad when the U.S. began bombing earlier this year. “Nothing prepared me for the intensity of that bombing,’ Kelly said. “There were four days of steady bombing, that shook the building, We were evacuated by bus onto a very dangerous route with no one to protect us. It was miracle we got out. Iraqi citizens were afraid to send their kids to the store. They guarded their homes with guns overnight. Their education ministries were burned and looted while The U.S. protected the ministry of oil and now Iraq is under occupation.” While Kelly welcomed the (then probable) lifting of the sanctions, she was concerned that the trade-off might be continued occupation of Iraqi and U.S. control of oil resources.

Even though the Peace Team has now left Iraq, they will continue to watch for and question any objectionable American policies that lead to domination and increasing military buildup. “We will continue to monitor the reconstruction of Iraq, including the distribution of oil money to make sure it is used for roads, schools and health care, not for international companies. We will follow the progress of U.S. relations with the United Nations and hold Bush accountable for his justification for the war. Voices in the Wilderness will be sponsoring bus tours across the country on a ‘remember Iraq’ campaign, distributing information that will tell the truth about the war and U.S. policy. We have a bus tour starting up north in the fall. We hope to get out into the neighborhoods, connect with Neighbors For Peace groups, keep on doing what we know how to do and create new resources. The main thing is not to give up.”

Volunteers interested in working on Iraqi summer can find out more information at www.elecroniciraq.net or by calling Voices in the Wilderness at 773-784-7085.