Cochabamba, Swoon
In 1999 the government of Bolivian sold off the water system to the multi-national Bechtel Corporation. This poster celebrates the people’s uprising that forced Bechtel to flee the country! The two-color offset printed poster, 11" x 17" (unsigned, unlimited edition) is available from the website of Justseeds/ Visual Resistance Artists’ Cooperative, a decentralized community of artists who believe in the power of personal expression in concert with collective action to transform society. www.justseeds.org

Report from Amman, Jordan:

Written by Cathy Breen
to friends around the world,
September 14, 2007

Dear Friends,
It is Friday, the second day of Ramadan. The last week and a half since my return to Amman has been full of visits, some more “formal” as with the UNHCR or colleagues from the states, but for the most part with Iraqi friends and families. Too many stories to recount. Too many emotions still churning within me. There has been a lot of movement in the four and a half months since I was here.

Several families have moved to other areas of the city, and I need to track them down. One 18 year old lad decided to return to his family in Baghdad. It seems he could no longer bear to be alone, and decided to go back into the fiery furnace. I had hoped we could find a way to get him to the states on a student visa, to live with a loving family and finish high school; something concrete to give his family in Baghdad hope. A father who lived down the street was forced to move to Syria with three of their young sons in order to be reunited with his wife and their youngest son. The mother and two year old child had gone to Baghdad earlier this year as her father suffered a heart attack. When they tried to return to Amman, they were refused entrance. I often wonder how they are faring in Syria? For some time now the border between Jordan and Iraq (by air and land) has only been open to Iraqis with residency or for important business people or officials. Since Sept 10th, we hear that Syria is requiring visas from Iraqis to enter.

Unable to work, families are running out of money for rent, food, medicines and other necessities. People are as apprehensive as ever to venture out of their apartments for fear of being picked up and detained, or possibly deported back to Iraq. Police raids continue in the search for Iraqis who have overstayed their visas, and there is a feeling of desperation and despair, especially among those who have family in other countries, families they are unable to reach because no country wants them. Even student visas to the U.S. are being refused with the words “We know you will never return if you go to the states.” I hope to go with friends in the next days to the U.S. Embassy to try and get information regarding student visas.

I was with a family today who has a two year old grandchild in Switzerland. One of their sons showed me the picture of this beautiful child. “I can’t look at her picture” the grandfather told me “or I will cry.” His wife, the grandmother, cries all of the time. Later I visited two brothers whose parents traveled recently to the states to their daughter in California. The young men are not allowed to travel because they are male, and over 21 years of age. One of them is suffering from a deep depression.

Another Iraqi family (they are Christian) related to me the other night that he had just heard from his sister in Baghdad. Flyers were being distributed to homes of Christians in different areas of the country, not only in Baghdad, demanding that the residents vacate their homes before Ramadan, or be killed. Now homeless, these "refugees" are going from house to house knocking on doors and begging to be taken in “for one night only.” Without and within, things are grim. There is little good news as the last doors are closing on Iraqis fleeing violence.
My first days were filled with seeing several Iraqi friends here in Amman before they returned to Baghdad or other parts of Iraq. It was with the hope of meeting them again that I had pushed my trip up a month. Their separate accounts of increasing violence and continued deterioration in Iraq were in sharp contrast to General Petraeus's reports last week which highlighted a fall in violence under Bush's “surge” of troops.

I found myself deeply troubled after our time together, unable to pass on to you essential contents of our conversations without putting our friends in even graver danger. To relate their accounts with credibility would be to identify them. To speak of their reality and needs does not seem possible. And so we parted with assurances of confidentiality. This has caused me more than a little distress and sleepless nights, as their voices need to be heard. It seems like the truth can no longer be told.

Of course I can write in broad strokes about what it is like for them to live in times of extremity for long periods of time. I can write what one friend said when I asked about the harshness of the summer heat and lack of water and electricity, “There are nights when no sleep was possible because of the sound of low-flying aircraft, of explosions and mortars.” Or the comment “Believe me when I tell you we did not feel the heat this summer as in years past. We had so many other problems to face.” And their desperateness was especially evident in the comment “Do you know what people are saying now? We don’t need to eat or drink or sleep anymore! We just want to be safe. That is all we want.”

In each of the encounters with friends returning to central and southern Iraq, I was reminded of the words of our dear Australian friend and mentor, Neville Watson, during the “Shock and Awe” campaign in Baghdad. “We cannot allow the bonds of human friendship and caring to be severed.” Tragically the occasions when we can be physically present to our brothers and sisters within Iraq are becoming rarer and rarer.
But there we were together once again, and there was something of a sense of the “miraculous” between us! How moving it was to witness how they received the verbal greetings and assurances that they are not alone in these terribly dark times; that they are not forgotten by you and thousands of others in the U.S. who struggle and pray for peace. Later by phone they told me how much hope they had drawn from our time together. They could not know how much their own courage, single-mindedness and faith in God's mercy and goodness serve to inspire us and give us strength and hope.

As I bring this letter to a finish, it is after 10pm and the phone rings. It is someone I don't know, a young Iraqi who is in Amman for medical treatment. Seems he was wounded while working for our troops, and has lost the use of one of his arms. He hopes to be allowed to travel to the states, and would like to meet. His whole family is in Baghdad. We will try and get together in the next days.

And so it goes, on and on and on.
Know that you are all with me.

—Cathy Breen

EDITOR’S NOTE:
Cathy Breen is a social justice advocate from Mary House Catholic Worker in New York City. She is active with Voices for Creative Nonviolence and Christian Peacemaker Teams. She is currently in Amman, Jordan helping Iraqi refugees.

Comments will be reviewed and
posted on a daily basis.

U.S. Responsibility for Iraqi Translators and Others.

Written by Cathy Breen
to friends around the world,
September 19, 2007

Dear Friends,
We are almost a week into Ramadan. All around me I see how visibly tired those observing Ramadan are as they adjust to the rigorous fasting. I am aware of the rhythm change, of how things slow down during the holy month of Ramadan.

It is a time of doing good deeds, of giving alms, of feeling something of the hunger of those less fortunate. Although I am not fasting, the time of Ramadan always helps me to try and live more mindfully.

Friends are coming from Damascus to Amman this weekend. They’ve been working hard these last months on a project to help young Iraqis to study in the U.S. We want to meet with someone from the U.S. Embassy-Amman who can advise us on current U.S. policy regarding student visas. My attempts to set up a meeting with the appropriate person or unit at the U.S. Embassy have thus far been unsuccessful, despite numerous telephone calls and emails.
Like Godot, I am waiting.

I have another question for the U.S. Embassy. Could they push up an October 8th interview date for a young Iraqi girl, a refugee, who
needs a student visa? She has been granted a full scholarship to a high school in Oregon, and classes are already in session. We fear that she will lose this rare opportunity. This is a matter of great urgency for our young friend and her family. Can someone help us?

And there is a third question I have forwarded to the U.S. Embassy-Amman and to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) Protection Unit. My communication to them reads in part as follows:

“Over the last years I have met a number of Iraqis who have served as translators, and/or worked in some capacity to assist my country, and had to flee as a result of their collaboration with U.S. forces or companies. Recently several have approached me to ask if I, as a U.S. citizen living presently in Amman, could get some information from them as to how translators are being processed by the U.S. Embassy and the UNHCR? .... Some of them have been in Amman for more than a year or two .... They have all overstayed their visas and feel vulnerable, liable for pick-up, detention and possible deportation. They are understandably anxious as to what has happened to their ‘old files’?

Are they stuck in some office in a stack of files, we wonder? Are they being passed over, while others more recently arrived and also needing protection are being given preference? You understand, I am sure, the desperateness of their situation as in most cases their money has run out and they are unable to work to support themselves or their families .... If you could help us understand the process, we would be appreciative.”

“US EXAMINES IRAQI REFUGEES BACKLOG AFTER ENVOY'S COMPLAINT” is the title of an article in yesterday’s paper, The Jordan Times. According to the piece “... the Baghdad ambassador complained that red tape is holding up 10,000 Iraqis from entering the country." Ambassador Crocker, the account states, said it would take two years to admit refugees referred by the U.N. for resettlement to the U.S.” State Department spokesperson Sean McCormack told reporters that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was “keen to appoint a refugee czar to handle the thousands of Iraqi applicants, many of whom are said to have worked for the US government and fear reprisals by insurgents...and she’'s taking a look at how we might designate somebody who can be a bureaucratic brick-breaker ... somebody who’s going to get rid of any bureaucratic logjams or misunderstandings that might occur.”

Ambassador Crocker reportedly complained in a recent unclassified cable said to be entitled: IRAQI REFUGEE PROCESSING: CAN WE SPEED IT UP?, that “the Department of Homeland Security has only a handful of officers in Jordan to vet refugees wanting to head to the U.S. ... Applicants must wait eight to ten months from the time they are referred to US authorities by the UN refugee agency before they can set foot in the United States.”

Last night I received a telephone call from a colleague here in Amman about an Iraqi woman, a former translator for U.S. forces. She is alone and feels very vulnerable and frightened. She is in desperate need of work. Did I know of anything?

In Samuel Beckett’s famous 1952 absurdist drama “Waiting for Godot”, we find Estragon sitting under a tree struggling to pull off his boot. Vladimir asks him “Hope deferred maketh the something sick, who said that?” Like Vladimir and Estragon, Iraqis are sitting and waiting. Waiting for help from the US Embassy and the UNHCR? Waiting for help from anywhere. Until now their hope has been deferred. Perhaps it is also displaced?

—Cathy Breen

EDITOR’S NOTE:
Cathy Breen is a social justice advocate from Mary House Catholic Worker in New York City. She is active with Voices for Creative Nonviolence and Christian Peacemaker Teams. She is currently in Amman, Jordan helping Iraqi refugees.

Comments will be reviewed and
posted on a daily basis.