"We have dreams, too!"  This was the tearful cry of a high school student in
Baghdad in February when our delegation of Dominican sisters and brothers
visited.  "We are not animals."  That cry was repeated, sometimes angrily,
sometimes despairingly, sometimes silently beneath the welcoming hospitality
that voices true humanity.

In the maternity hospital in Basra (the southern dstrict seeded with the
depleted uranium used to harden shells during the Gulf War) a woman
pediatrician described the anxiety of mothers giving birth, not in joyful
anticipation but in fear:  "Is my baby whole?" - not one of those born
without brain, without eyes or other organs, disfigured, doomed.  This in a
country once exemplatory for universal access to skilled medical services.
Now cancer multiplies and diseases unseen before grow from contaminated
water and soil.

Two days later, in a Mosul elementary school in the northern "no- fly" zone,
an air-raid siren transformed smiles to terror on the faces of
second-graders. Previously a missile strike on the house next door had
sprayed broken glass into the school, wounding eight children.  The almost
daily sirens send schoolchildren running home, thinking that they will find
safety there, especially if parents "cover" them.

The sanctions are about food, medicine and the physical infrastructure
necessary to refrigerate and transport them, as well as to pump enough oil
to pay for them from oil fields being destroyed by poor equipment and
techniques.  But there is another infrastructure: social, educational,
spiritual, familial.  One of the Iraqi sisters commented: "You kill our
bodies and steal our brains," those of the emigrated professionals and
teachers.  Children congregrate on the streets to shine shoes, sell gum, or
just beg.

School graduates see no point in going on to university to study out-of-date
used books and attempt science without lab materials. Many families are
broken.  We were told that two generations are already lost and that the
result of the sanctions is that "your children will have to deal with our
children."

But there was another message in the stones repairing a Mosul church.  The
architect had created a sense of "brokenness" - pieces omitted - and yet one
of rising strength. The "living stones," committed young people, gather as
Lay Dominicans to pray, reflect, and act with courage and self-sacrifice to
help others.  One spoke not of birth and death, but of death and birth: the
necessity of accepting the Cross to come to new life. The Gospel tells us to
pray for a miracle that will move mountains.  It calls us to pray, speak
truth to power, act on that truth, and expect miracles for the beautiful
people of Mesopotamia, the cradle of civilization, waiting to hold life.

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CPT Hebron has maintained a violence reduction presence in Hebron since June
of 1995 at the invitation of the Hebron Municipality.
Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) is an initiative among
Mennonite and Brethren congregations, and Friends meetings who support
violence reduction Teams around the world.   Contact CPT at P.O. Box 6508
Chicago, IL 60680 USA; Tel: 312-455-1199; Fax: 312-432-1213; e-mail:
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