After being massively disrupted by the war, Iraqi society shows some signs of recovery, with volunteers cleaning the streets and collecting rubbish in Baghdad.
After realising that neither the city service, nor the US administration, would do it, a group of young volunteers decided to remove the rubbish piled up in the streets themselves.
The amount of rubbish has dramatically grown in the streets since the beginning of the war, increasing the danger of disease and dirty…
This article is being written as another war comes to an end, the war in Iraq. It is clear by now that the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein vanished under the heavy bombing of the American and British forces. Many rejoiced at the day when a government that persecuted and discriminated against its own people disappeared. The big question is what comes next.
To us as women's rights activists, the big concern is what will happen to women in a post-war Iraq. And, as women's groups that…
In April the Croatian Multimedia Institute announced that they had reached a decision to end a contract through which they were granted US$100,000 by the US government for their work on the development of Croatian civil society.
In a public statement, the Institute made it clear that this decision was based on their belief that “the US government is disregarding international law, subverting international decision-making forums based on the international law, and disrespecting…
Over the past seven years, Voices in the Wilderness has been a nonviolent campaign to end the economic sanctions against the people of Iraq. Our focus has never been on political interests or the balance of power in international politics. Our concern has always been for the needs and interests of ordinary Iraqis, many of whom we have come to know.
From our presence in Iraq, we have seen no evidence that the lives of ordinary Iraqis are considered in US policy decisions. When…
Arrested for peace!
Iraq war resistance (plus the usual suspects...)
Hundreds of people were jailed from overnight to six months, and…
What are you? Some kind of apologist for Saddam? In our binary world it is not an unexpected question; apparently you are either “for” us or “against” us, things are always “right” or “wrong”. It is a way of thinking - indeed a lens through which to view the whole world - that has been vastly encouraged over the past 18 months, during the course of the “war on terror”. It is a very convenient way of approaching problems because it completely avoids dealing with any kind of context or…
The gang of lads asked my name, then dissolved in giggles, slapping each other's shoulders, when I told them mine and asked theirs. Overcoming their shyness, they asked where I was from, how old I was, what I thought of Baghdad, and we danced down the street together to the clatter of drums and hand clapping.
It was an anti-war march, organised by the students at the Non-Aligned Students and Youth Organisation (NASYO) conference. A Japanese group carried a banner saying “Japan - Iraq…
The demonstrations of 15 February are a milestone for peace. Never before have so many people taken to the streets to protest against war. Hundreds of cities, across five continents, were swallowed up by a tidal wave of people opposing the bombing of Iraq. More than ten million marched for peace in 603 cities around the world.
In Rome, Madrid, London, and Barcelona the number of demonstrators reached the millions. With 2.5 million pouring into the streets of Rome, two million in…
“The US military have taken a right hammering this year.” So said one activist, commenting on the plethora of ploughshares type actions that have taken place so far during 2003.
At the end of January, Mary Kelly damaged a US military plane at Shannon airport, Ireland using a hatchet. It has been suggested that the value of the damage could be in the region of half a million euro. These planes were used to transport troops, weapons, ammunition and explosives to Kuwait and Qatar in…
In 1985, at the height of the Iran-Iraq war, all-round American patriot Colonel Oliver North met with Iranian businessmen in a hotel room in Frankfurt: “...one of the things that we would like to do, okay, is we would like to become actively engaged in ending this war in such a way that it becomes very evident to everybody that the real problem in preventing peace in the region is Saddam Hussein, and we'll have to take care of that...“
With this introduction, images…
As war is becoming more and more of a reality, surrealism and madness characterise the pro-war lobby just as they continue to characterise the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. In the midst of heightened passion, political debates that have turned personal, not to forget the plagiarism by British officials, Milan Rai's Book War Plan Iraq: 10 Reasons Why We Shouldn't Launch Another War Against Iraq comes as a relief.
The book provides well-researched background information,…
For some time now the US government has threatened to expand the “war against terrorism” - suggesting that more “rogue states” will face war. On the US defined “axis of evil”, Iraq is the primary target, with a war being threatened since May 2002.
Activists from a variety of German peace groups wanted to organise against this war - a war which we believe is in breach of human rights and international law - and in autumn 2002 we came together to develop forms of resistance to the war…
The woman passed by, then came back and took a leaflet. She read it, and as a result came on her first political demonstration, in London, on 28 September 2002, with 400,000 others protesting against war on Iraq. She also brought her husband and her five-year-old son. She'd never been politically active before, but within weeks she'd set up a local anti-war group in her town.
This story was told to me by an anti-war activist in Northampton, who concluded by saying, “I used to wonder…
Hundreds of thousands of people have marched in peaceful demonstrations around the globe in the past few weeks, joining the growing protest against the US's impending war on Iraq.
More than 300,000 people took to the streets in the United States on 26 October in a day of national protest bolstered by simultaneous demonstrations in many other countries.
Thousands of people took part in 150 different protests in Britain on 31 October and an estimated 400,000 people from…
In October, the Kansai Antiwar Joint Action Group, a Japanese peace movement network, passed a “Resolution Against Aggressive War on Iraq by the Bush Government of US and Against Participation in the War by the Koizumi Government of Japan” and took to the streets of Osaka to show their opposition to proposed military action against Iraq.
They are specifically opposing the deployment of Japanese naval fleets in the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea, which they believe would be used to…
