SENTIENT TIMES Dec/Jan 2001

A Gift Given, A Gift Received
Water to Iraq
by Edilith Eckart

We were returning from Iraq, Fredy Champagne and I, in May of 1998. We had experienced first hand the horrors that war and sanctions had inflicted on the Iraqi people. The memories were impossible to erase-babies in the Baghdad hospital, sometimes three to a bed, with flies on their mouths and eyes; the sadness of the mothers who knew their infants were dying; the hopelessness.

Fredy and I were representatives of the Veterans for Peace, an organization with the slogan, "Abolish War." We had gone to Iraq with Ramsay Clark, bringing four million dollars worth of medicines to the doctors in the hospitals.
We sat with much silence, and some talk, and shared our grief. What would we report back, what could we do? Both of us are contemplative activists.

Out of our sharing, came an inspiration. The medicines we had brought on this trip were only a drop in the bucket, toward helping with the problem. Most of the babies and children were dying from diarrhea, dysentery, other diseases caused by contaminated water. VFP needed to help get clean water to the people.

At first we sought the help of contacts in the United Nations through our UN NGO representative Michael Carley. We sought help from an international church group. We kept gnawing away toward a way of developing a project where veterans could help get clean water to the people. We found no solutions, but we kept trying. Members of VFP came forth and wanted to go to help repair the water purification systems which had been damaged by our bombs, and not repaired due to sanction blockage.

After months of patiently working toward our goal, I attended an Iraq conference in Ann Arbor, Michigan attended by representatives of peace organizations, and concerned individuals. At the opening plenary, I spoke of our plan to help repair Iraq's water supply. I connected with Vicki Robb who was with the organization Life For Relief And Development. This was the miracle we were looking for. LIFE had been doing humanitarian work in Iraq for eight years, had Arabic-speaking engineers, and saw the merit of our project. They had permission for their work from both the Iraqi government and the US officials. LIFE and the Veterans for Peace Iraq Water Project became partners.

After a pre-trip information delegation went to Iraq and surveyed the possible sites for repair, our project went ahead. Final written approval from the Iraqi government came through, but the trip had to take place in only two months.

Arrangements were made, details were worked out, and funds were raised-another miracle-we raised the necessary $42,500 in one month! Team One participants raised money for their own expenses. A check for $13,000 was given for the project from a donor who heard a reported of the project on Pacifica Radio. On October 3, 2000 the VFPIWP work trip of 17 took off for Iraq.

The Labanni water purification plant is in southern Iraq in the Abul Khoseeb Valley. It is south of the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. Upstream, untreated sewage from Baghdad and Basrah contaminate the water supply of Labanni households.

Team One Veterans for Peace worked with the Iraqi laborers, initiating the repair work on the plant. The work of making the plant operative was completed in sixty days.

A water ceremony was conducted before the Team One left Labanni. A jar of water from a spring which is sacred to the Native Americans had been brought from Minnesota, from a point near the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi rivers. A circle was formed, prayers, spoken and unspoken, were offered. The sacred water was poured into the influx of the Labanni plant. A jar of water was dipped out and brought back to Minnesota, for a ceremony back home.

Veteran Frank Cocoran from Philadelphia expressed his thoughts following our return: "I say the trip fulfilled its purpose. We did it, we certainly did what we envisioned, and more. We built lasting and profound relationships at that plant. We stood in witness and solidarity with the people of Iraq, we experienced the reality of the sanctions: Innocent children condemned to this appalling nightmare. We now can bring this experience and the level of understanding it brings us (as awful, as frustrating, as overwhelmingly sad it may be) back home and do what we can do. In the words of Steve Mason, a poet, and combat veteran:

Therefore, let you and I continue to join
with our brothers and sisters
and speak today (and everyday)
for truth and humanity
(while there is still time)
And if any should ask "Why us?"
we shall give them this good reason:
We went to Vietnam as American fighting men
and came back
as human beings
(that's why we didn't feel at home right away).
And until we found each other
we didn't understand our responsibility
to that kind of citizenship,
and now that we do,
we have it to do!

· here we are back from Iraq. For myself, the numbness, the not feeling at home, the deep sadness-and under that the helplessness, anger, the heaviness of the "ignorance shattered forever," the awful knowledge of the reality of the senators, the oil men-all this has had me locked up. But today I feel the gift of our responsibility emerging-we have to do it. This project, this effort has provided us the opportunity, the gift, to connect to our responsibilities to speak out for truth and justice, gave us the truly awesome opportunity to stand, as veterans, with the Iraqi people and put it out there to the American people, to model reconciliation, to model life for God's sake. I believe in the power of those levels of this project. We connected people to people, we took respect, compassion, love, and solidarity with us to Iraq, and we left it there.
Now all we can do is do what we can do. Again from Steve Mason:

A man may fight for his life
on a personal level
but when he loves,
he does so for all mankind.
We've got it to do."

A "Team Two" work trip will be leaving to work on three more plants in the Spring. Over fifteen applicants are eager to go. Donations may be made to: Veterans for Peace Iraq Water Project, P.O. Box 532 Bayside, CA 95524.

Edilith Eckart of Veterans for Peace, is co-chair of the VFP Iraq Water Project and has been a peace activist for 20 years. Edilith received several national awards for her friendship-building in the Soviet Union, Palestine, Iraq , Hiroshima, Nagasaki as well as the VFP President's Award, and this year was awarded the Physicians for Social Responsibility Broad Street Pump Award. She is now 81 years old.

SENTIENT TIMES
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