Diary ­ Saturday February 1
Baghdad, Iraq
By Manmohan (Mick) Panesar

Although we got off to a slow start with an uncertain itinerary, we have been busy with meetings, events, interviews, media calls and socializing. With all that is going on I sometimes find it difficult to carve out some time to write about it all. Email access is spordic as the server is often down. The fellow working there tells me that the U.S. Government regularly spams Iraqi servers to cause disruption.

For the first time since arriving here I sleep in. After a leisurely breakfast with some nice strong Iraqi tea I spend a couple of hours writing an op-ed piece for a newspaper back home. The afternoon is a busy one with an Iraq Peace Team event scheduled at the Al Ameriyah shelter.

This is the sight of the massacre of 408 Iraqi women and children. On February 13, 1991 two U.S. bombs tore through the roof of a bomb shelter. The shelter has since been turned into a memorial.

The event was organized to respond to George W. Bushıs State of the Union address earlier in the week. In many ways I think it is quite fitting that this was the place chosen to hold the event. Undoubtedly many more civilians will be killed if the State of the Union address is a harbinger of what is to come.

Al Ameriyah is not an easy place to see. A gaping hole draws my eyes upward and the twisted metal rods and beams downward to the two large impact craters in the gray concrete floor.

Just in front of the larger crater we set up our banner ³NO WAR ON IRAQ² and we station ourselves on either side of it. By now the media contingent is swelling in size and many of them are jockeying for position. One camera crew cuts into our IPT contingent as if it were their event. I feel like knocking over their camera and giving them a piece of my mind. But I remain silent, holding my lit candle.

The event goes ahead as planned and flashes click, microphones stab their way towards the words of resistance to war. After the event I am approached for two interviews, including one in French with an Italian news service. The questions are quite thoughtful and even suppportive, but with the many interviews I have done in past weeks I hope that I donıt sound stale like a tape recorder. Many of the media linger and most IPT members conduct multiple interviews.

I move away from the action to the quiet side of the shelter, perhaps to see the unimaginable. In one section there are black shadowy figures on the floor, each covered with glass. A person nearby tells me that they are the Œfossilizedı remains of human bodies. I find myself unable to take a closer look. I imagine what these people were doing at the time of attack.

Later I would find out that one of our Iraqi government liaisons, Zaid, was present at the shelter just minutes before the bombs impacted. He told us that he had dropped by to deliver blankets to friends of his who were taking shelter at Al Ameriyah. The children were engaged in a game of soccer, perhaps momentarily oblivious of the situation outside. The adults were sipping tea and talking. Back in his car and hundreds of metres away, Zaid felt the shock of the impact.

On the far side, I see the faces of some of those never to be soccer stars. Leaning against the wall, are a series of portraits - some of the 408 people present on that dark day. Some of them are smiling while others remain expressionless. Their eyes gaze back at mine - another affirmation of why I choose to be here in Iraq.