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Irish Examiner 28 March 2003 Striking out for a world without military budgets People of all races and nationalities are coming together and that is the most effective way to halt the war, writes Maggie Ronayne A majority of Iraqis who have survived sanctions - war by other means - facing bombs and invasion, are under 14 years of age. In a camp near Mosul in Northern Iraq, most of the 10,000 refugees are Kurdish women and children who fled Turkey in the 1990s, trapped without food supplies, healthcare or UN protection. According to a recent Oireachtas Foreign Affairs Committee mission, women from rural Iraq were already walking miles to bring children ill from the effects of sanctions to hospitals while daughters did their mothers' work at home, never learning to read or write. As before, the bombers don't care about those who are the continuity of the rich heritage and culture of this ancient land of Mesopotamia. From Kurdistan to Palestine, Uganda to Northern Ireland, women have always been the backbone of anti-war movements. Sometimes this is explained by the peculiar idea that we women are naturally peace loving. This is the sort of 'natural' that justifies our always changing the nappies, cooking the dinner, getting less pay. However, we're not soft. Women oppose war because we are the first carers for people and planet, and because we pay the highest price, with our lives and with the lives of those in whom we have invested our time and care. UN statistics say that a majority of those killed in armed conflicts since World War Two are women and children. We are also 80% of refugees worldwide, the vast majority internally displaced or fleeing to countries close by. Behind these statistics is women's unbearable burden of work for the survival of families and communities. Survival, in Dublin and in Baghdad, is women's priority. We are appalled by the vast sums expended on war and its technology. Hundreds of thousands are already fleeing from America's war on Iraq or from fear of a Turkish invasion from the north. It is estimated that one and a half million may flee to refugee camps. When I spent time in Turkey and Kurdistan in 2001, Kurdish women and their organisations left me in no doubt about the effects of war on them and those in their care. Three million Kurdish people were forcibly displaced by the Turkish security forces in the 1990s. There are no reliable statistics on how many died - these families simply don't count. Women organised themselves to provide basic assistance to each other. Groups of mothers organise for peace and to find out where the bodies of their children, 'disappeared' by State agents, lie buried. Kurdish women, despite intimidation, testify to the torture of women, including rape and other sexual violence, in detention or during village raids, as a way to destroy the community's resistance. The region of Turkey that still has not recovered from this devastation, is the area to which many of the refugees from Northern Iraq may yet be forced to flee. Security forces that perpetrated such war crimes on Kurds in Southeast Turkey are now threatening full-scale invasion of Northern Iraq. It is far too late for feeble US and UK protestations to their NATO ally. A 'blood price' (Blair's words) aimed at strengthening this 'moral' war: Turkish support in exchange for allowing its military once again to invade Northern Iraq, slaughter Kurds, take control of the oilfields of Kirkuk and Mosul, and prevent the creation of a Kurdish state. That it may yet be prevented, is testimony to the power of the anti-war movement worldwide, including in Turkey and Kurdistan, exposing US indifference to such heinous crimes. The continued threat of this invasion spells out US imperial intentions: not only self-determination denied to Kurds and others, but ethnicities, nationalities and religions pitted against each other. Divide and rule. Who knows that strategy of conquest better than the Irish! The over $900 billion a year that goes into world military budgets (40% of that in the US) is diverted from essential services, benefits and resources for caring. After the Global Women's Strike on March 8 - protesting the refuelling of US planes at Shannon, and demanding that every society invest in caring not killing - the Strike has been holding anti-war actions around the world. In Galway, women have blocked traffic and picketed army barracks and the Garda station to call on the security forces to refuse to protect weapons of mass destruction from us. People are coming together - women and men, young and old of many races and nationalities, with disabilities, asylum seekers, travellers - because that is the most effective way to halt the war and because of the possibility of together making a world without military budgets. ***************************** Maggie Ronayne is the author of 'The Ilisu Dam: Displacement of Communities and Destruction of Culture', published by the Kurdish Human Rights Project in London. |