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This was sent by the Iraq Peace Team today. Yesterday, the Iraq Peace Team was banned from entering the Palestine Hotel, where international journalists are and the US military has set up its headquarters. Was it for sending out reports like this one? Was it for criticising the ineptitude of US army in re-establishing social services.

How is war ever won?
By Haider Hamza

My dear friends, I'm your wounded friend Haider Hamza from Iraq... not physically wounded but emotionally wounded: to see my people dying and my country being destroyed; to see my country falling down with a broken heart into an unknown future and destiny.

I'm a university student in my second year. I left college in the mid-year because of the war, not knowing if I had passed to the third year or stayed in the second, not knowing when I'm going back to study.

Three days ago I went to my college. Do you know how I found it? It was completely destroyed and burning. I went to my class and I saw the desks already burned, as well as the books. On the blackboard there was the last lecture that we took. I can still remember it just like it was yesterday. Actually, I hated this professor and I couldn't stand his lecture, but when I saw that blackboard I was ready to give everything I have just to attend one of his lectures: just to sit with my classmates, just to meet my friends--to talk loudly in the class and be dismissed from it--just to live one single day as a normal student. Is that to much for me to ask?

Don't I have the right to have a normal life with dreams and hopes for the future? Before, I used to dream of many things and build many plans for the future. But now I'm not even allowed to dream because my destiny, my future, is not in my hands. It is unknown.

Do you know how it feels to see your people, friends, buildings, and your whole country falling down and you just stand helpless!?

Do you want me to tell you about the innocent children that lost their lives, or the tears that even grown men shed? What purpose would that serve? Would it cause you to weep in bed at night? You and I know that sleepless nights are no solution to the lives under threat, no solution to the lives already lost, no solution to the blood that has been shed. But just because the blood has dried up should our tears too dry up?

I may not have the power to control a nation. I may not have the physical strength to fight a war. But I do have a heart, and as it beats so does it feel.

Don't think of the babies born deformed due to depleted uranium. Don't hear the silent screams--those of pain, those of fear. Don't feel the silent cry for help. Don't do any of that... it may awaken in you things you didn't even know you had.

What exactly is the trophy earned by the winning nation of a war? Is it the loss of the lives of both nations--or has human life lost its value?

How is war ever won?

----- Haider Hamza is a 19 year old Iraqi poet and college student living in Baghdad. Someday, he would like to work for the Iraqi Ministry of Foreign Affairs and represent Iraq to the world.