Washington Report, March 2006, page 68

Waging Peace

CPT Fasts to Meet with Bush

LAFAYETTE Park, located directly across from the White House in Washington, DC, was the scene of a Jan. 6 to 8 “Follow the Light” Epiphany fast organized by the Christian Peacemaker Teams. CPT members, who wanted to arrange a meeting with George W. Bush to talk about the situation in Iraq, focusing especially on the situation of detainees, held the vigil in hopes of getting the president’s attention.

Cliff Kindy, a full-timer with CPT and a member of the steering committee, said CPT was there to ask President Bush to meet with a delegation from Christian Peacemaker Teams, “because we think our three years of experience in Iraq can bring some wisdom from the East—maybe like the three Wise Men who came from the East—to the wise decisions that President Bush needs to be making about the war in Iraq.”

Kindy, along with Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, a pastor from North Carolina who volunteers with CPT, both have been to Iraq. Kindy has been going for the last three years, staying for five months at a time. The first time CPT went to Iraq, Kindy said, the team “asked themselves, ‘what would it take to stop a war?’ and ‘could we bring about the energy to stop a war?’ We didn’t succeed,” he stated.  

What Kindy and other CPT members found was that Iraqis were desperate to find out what had happened to their family members who were being held in detention. Families also wondered what detainees were charged with and where they could visit them. CPT then produced a report based on 72 Iraqi detainees and their treatment by U.S. military. Kindy says the report was “pretty damning,” but when they questioned high-ranking U.S. military or civilian officials, they were told that it would take a long time for the bureaucracy to change. The report came four months “before the story broke in The New Yorker about what was happening in Abu Gharib,” Kindy noted. 

Since that time, CPT teams have been involved in helping Iraqi detainees by documenting abuses and helping family members find their loved ones. They wanted to discuss what they’d learned with President Bush. 

“For me, there is not a whole lot of hope in Iraq right now,” stated Kindy. “When I was in Baghdad last winter, for one 10-day period, the whole city of Baghdad—five million people—were without public water,” he said. “Every time I go back, the infrastructure is worse and the security situation is worse.” 

CPT wants to be able to tell President Bush not only about these negative types of experiences, but also about the positive steps they see being taken in Iraq.

“If I look back on the three years, the most exciting thing CPT has been able to be a part of is the training of the Muslim Peacemaker team,” said Kindy. The team unites Iraqi Muslims, he explained, and it is especially their work in Falluja which can provide some hope for the future. “They are building bridges instead of barriers,” Kindy said.   

If Kindy and Wilson-Hartgrove met with President Bush, they said they would share stories about the ways Iraqis have helped Americans, Kindy said, and “share the stories of hope from things like the Muslim Peacemaker Teams.”

“We would also talk about the detainee issue,” Wilson-Hartgrove added, “the need to have due process of justice for them.”

“I would also mention the steps that could be taken right now to move toward ending the U.S. presence that wouldn’t impact security,” said Kindy. Americans could start paying the Iraqis some of the billions of dollars promised to rebuild their own infrastructure. “This will make the appeal of the money offered by the resistance groups less appealing to a country that has such high unemployment,” Kindy stated. “Once the Iraqis see their own infrastructure coming back, it will give them some hope for the future.”

         —Banafsheh Saifollahi

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