'Human shields' ready in Iraq

www.hindustantimes.com Agence France-Presse London, January 24

Opposed to what they call the "tyrant" Saddam Hussein and an Anglo-American "dictatorship," a dedicated group of 60 volunteers say they are ready to put their lives on the line to save Iraqi civilians.

The group leaves London on Saturday, heading overland for Iraq's capital Baghdad where they intend to act as "human shields" against possible military strikes.

Steven Alan, 31, from Edinburgh, said he is going because he would rather die striving for a peaceful cause than "to have a long life without any purpose at all, centred around fear."

Two double-decker buses, a taxi-cab and another bus will leave London's City Hall mid-afternoon on Saturday, and are due to arrive in Baghdad on February 8, according to the HumanShield organization, which has been planning the operation for a month.

"I think most people are getting tired of British and American leaders whose agenda is all about imposing their superiority and their dictatorship," Alan, a computer programmer, told AFP.

Convinced that the risk is worth taking, he asks: "If not you, who? If not now, when?"

It's a point of view shared by Grace Trevett, 45, who lives with her 21-year-old daughter in Stroud, central England.

"I'm doing this to drive home the point that my life is equal to that of an Iraqi civilian," said Trevett.

"In order to make that point properly, I have to be prepared to die for my principles," she said.

Ube Evans, 50, employed by the Welshpool theatre in Wales, said that, like the others, he made his decision after listening to the man who launched the human shield operation, Ken O'Keefe, a former US Marine who fought in the 1991 Gulf War.

"I believe the proposed war is more to do with oil and America's need for oil," said Evans. Iraq has the world's second largest known oil reserves after Saudi Arabia.

O'Keefe, who has renounced his US citizenship in protest of US foreign policy, said: "The aim is to stop that war which is going to kill thousands of innocent people."

Sue Darling, a 60-year-old pensioner living in south London, served as a British diplomat in numerous countries from 1965 till 1988.

"I was appalled at the policy the British government is following which is for me illegal, immoral and irrational," she said. "A pre-emptive strike against someone you consider might be a threat is not acceptable."

All the potential human shields took pains to stress that they do not support president Saddam who, in Evans's words, is a "tyrant."

On January 8, Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz indicated that the door was opened for human shields -- a move immediately denounced by the Pentagon as deliberate recruitment.

A third of those wanting to be human shields are British, organiser Stefan Simanowitz told AFP. The others come from Australia, New Zealand, the United States, Spain, Belgium, even Brazil.

Organisers hope to recruit other volunteers on their route which takes them on Sunday to Paris and then Geneva, Zurich, Milan, Belgrade, Sofia, Istanbul, Ankara, Damascus, Amman before arriving in Baghdad.

The human shields would then be distributed to schools, hospitals and health centres in the Iraqi capital.

According to Simanowitz, the US is set on war, whether or not the UN agrees: "We anticipate a war and want to put pressure on the US administration before the war", he said.