Report-15: difficult week here in Iraq
To: iptcanada@yahoogroups.com
Date: Sun, 02 Mar 2003 14:01:29 -0000
Subject: Iraq Peace Team (Canada) This has been a difficult week here in Iraq

Most of us here see very plainly that the Feb 15 global day of protest was by no means a grand finale in the effort to halt this war. The pace of war preparations has rapidly accelerated. Plans for invasion, occupation and post-war administration of Iraq are now leaked all over the place. An Iranian militia, Turkish soldiers, and U.S. special forces are already deploying in northern Iraq.

Iraqi forces are moving to more defensive locations. Civil militias (filled with reluctant and poorly trained men and boys who quite plainly would take a devastating blow from an invasion) have been mobilized for marches and emergency training all throughout the country.

The U.S. troop buildup in Kuwait and on ships in the Gulf has now reached near maximum deployment level. A few families with the resources are leaving Baghdad and other cities for Jordan or Syria or wherever they can go. The U.S. has achieved agreement from Turkey for deployment of around 40,000 troops for the northern front (this agreement at a reported cost of $10 billion(!) in outright grants and $20 billion in loan guarantees and a deal to allow Turkey to participate in the invasion of northern Iraq and the control of Kurdish interests there).

The UN has pulled out half of its remaining staff from Iraq in the past two weeks in preparation for a possible complete evacuation.

Bush and Blair have each conducted damage-control publicity campaigns diminishing the import of the Feb. 15 protests and have floated draft copies of a war resolution in the UN. And there is rapid-fire talk on both sides of the Atlantic of foregoing UN approval and launching the attack without any debate in the Security Council if the US and Britain suspect that they won't be able to get a majority or cannot avoid a veto from France or Russia.

It appears that those leading the war effort are taking advantage of post-Feb. 15 complacency to accelerate war activities. I am hoping that Feb 15 will not be remembered as the finale of the anti-war movement, but rather as the beginning.

The Iraq Peace Team is moving down to a tent in the demilitarized zone on the border with Kuwait this week. From there you can actually see the U.S. tanks moving in the Kuwaiti desert and the dust kicked up by the camps of the 90,000 American troops on the other side. The IPT will sit for four days in the path of what would be a U.S. invasion through the south and hold a water-only fast in hopes of reminding the world that the danger of war is as great or greater than ever and to urge the anti-war movement in the states not to rest but to similarly accellerate actions forpeace.

Perhaps you can see how a morale booster like the one you are providing Is sorely needed and much appreciated.

With respect and thanks,

Thorne Anderson