AMY GOODMAN: You are listening to Democracy Now!, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, as we go directly to Amman, where Kathy Kelly is standing by, founder of Voices in the Wilderness. She has just come out of Iraq, has been there for — how long, Kathy?

KATHY KELLY: I first traveled over in October, Amy. I took a couple of weeks back in the States in late December, but I was in Iraq from January through to a couple of days ago.

AMY GOODMAN: So you’ve been there for around eight months. We haven’t spoken to you since the invasion began, since the phone lines went down, since you didn’t have a satellite phone. Can you simply start by describing what it was like during the bombing?

KATHY KELLY: Well, Amy, I suppose what I’m most reminded of are the children that were in the hotel that we shared with several families. And in a way, they were very, very courageous. But if you can imagine a 3-year-old and a 1-and-a-half-year-old as the nights wore on, and day and night there were huge explosions, they started to grit their teeth. And one little girl, Milad, her only way of coping was to constantly enact in her play an airplane hitting her, and she would fall over dead, or she’d take a flashlight, when it was pitch black because we didn’t have any electricity, and pretend to shoot her mother or shoot me. And this was how she coped. And the floors would shutter. The windows would shake. And we began to realize that there really was no place that was safe. Maybe some of your listeners read about a birthday party that we went outside and held on the riverbank. And it was our way of saying normalcy in defiance of what has to be utterly abnormal, this war. And we never, never, never would have placed the children we knew in greater danger, but there was no place that was safe. So, we had barbecued chicken and Pepsis and party favors and held a birthday party under skies that were filled with black clouds, because oil fires had been set all around the city to try to create greater density that might have perhaps made it a bit safer from laser-propelled weapons.

I suppose the pent-up anxiety and fear then gave way to a concern about looters and thieves that were roaming around through the city immediately after the government fell. And, in fact, we had word that they were at the bridge, which was, oh, maybe about a 10-minute walk away from where we were. And we, off in our hotel, began to think, “Oh, maybe we’re going to be the cause of this hotel being looted,” because we were the only Westerners there, Iraq Peace Team members, and people would presume that we had some funding. And so, we were then quite nervous. We didn’t want to see the hotel windows smashed. We didn’t want to see anybody trying to protect us with guns.

And then we heard the huge roar of APCs and tanks and Humvees, and the U.S. military came in to occupy the exact intersection where we stayed. And from that time on, we certainly got a taste of occupation. There was no freedom of movement. And, in fact, when I left, we were specifically banned from going over to the place where media people are, mainly dwelling in the Palestine Hotel, because we had issued a press release that, I think, in a very understated way, listed the ongoing suffering and death-dealing consequences that were happening because this occupation came with no plan, with no means to do the minimal to try to preserve life and human rights in Baghdad. And so that’s sort of a thumbnail sketch.

I suppose I could also mention that driving out of the city, when I and Cathy Breen and a few others left, we came to a neighborhood on the outskirts called Abu Ghraib. And we had heard rumors that the corpses of cattle and human beings were strewn in that area and that there was — this is rumor, but that there was bulldozing going on to bury these corpses. Well, anyway, the stench was just overwhelming. It wasn’t the stench of a farming area, that’s manure. It was a horrible, sick smell. And it was just at that point that the long, long convoy of U.S. military vehicles from the Army, olive green vehicles, with their headlights on, like a funeral procession, were coming in to replace the U.S. Marines, who had been the fighting force. And I felt that that was actually a sad and a terrible symbol of what we’ve seen in this terrible, naked aggression that has to be characterized as state terrorism.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Kathy Kelly. She has just come out of Iraq. We’ll go to break and then come back with her. She is the founder of Voices in the Wilderness. Stay with us.

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AMY GOODMAN: You’re listening to Democracy Now!, The War and Peace Report, breaking the sound barrier with Kathy Kelly of Voices in the Wilderness, twice nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize, has spent the majority of the past year in Iraq, has just come out of the country, is speaking to us from Amman.

Let’s talk about the latest situation in Baghdad right now. Hundreds of thousands of Shiite Muslims have converged in Karbala. In Baghdad, hundreds of Shiites staged demonstrations outside the Palestine Hotel for the second straight day. They demanded the release of a Shiite cleric. Though the U.S. didn’t admit they held him, he was then released. We also have reports of gun fairs springing up all over. Can you talk about what it is like right now and the attitude of the people in Baghdad since Saddam Hussein is no longer in control?

KATHY KELLY: Well, of course, there’s a whole marketplace of identities and attitudes. But I can tell you a little bit of what I’ve heard. One man said to me that Iraqis are beginning to realize that the U.S. occupation will liberate them — from the illusion that the United States ever wanted to save Iraq. There is seething resentment over the U.S. decision to protect the oil fields and the Oil Ministry and not to protect the hospitals and the National Museum and the libraries and the schools, great grief over the loss of history of records, of, in a sense, dignity and of pride, that was something that belonged to all of Iraq. People say, “The buildings didn’t belong to Saddam Hussein; they belong to all of us.” So there’s bewilderment and despair and a great deal of fear. Many people in their neighborhoods are taking turns posting people outside overnight, holding Kalashnikovs to guard houses. And these are people who never wanted to pick up guns before. I know one man who paid 2 million Iraqi dinar, 2,000 American, to avoid going into the army. And now he sits out in front of his house at night, and his house had already been hit by U.S. bombs.

I think that it’s very telling that maybe a few hundred Iraqi people came to the statue of Saddam Hussein to topple it. Now, we knew that neighborhood quite well, and it didn’t seem to us that the people who came came from the neighborhood. But at any rate, I think we should compare that figure with the over a million people that went to Karbala to commemorate the deaths of Shia leaders who died, were murdered some 14 centuries ago. I think that’s something we should all take into consideration, that the energy behind the Shia sect of Islam, which represents Iran and close to three-fourths of the Muslims in Iraq, is quite high and that that’s likely to move in and fill a power void in the vacuum. You know, one has to hope that there won’t be great infighting both between the Shias and then between the Shias and other entities such as the Kurds. And yet, a smooth transition to democracy seems like a pretty fanciful idea, particularly as it’s coming out of the barrels of Anglo-U.K.-American guns.

I think that quite a number of people are wishing they could get out now, because they are afraid of what the future will bring. And it’s also, to me, a very sad irony that some of the people whom I’d identify as very genuine and authentic voices of deep concern for their society, for their civilization, for the next months, who speak English, need, just because of how else can they bring income into their families, to take jobs not serving the interests of somehow developing governance in Iraq, but serving the interests of journalists who need translators. And you see an influx of Western media, an influx of Western NGOs. And it’s hard. It’s hard for people who’ve just wanted to preserve a very simple lifestyle, a very simple faith, a very simple culture, to now see the harbingers of Western influence, that they don’t particularly want for their children,
being able to have free rein, running all over their city, and taking on the responsibility to describe Iraq and rebuild Iraq. I know one builder who said, “Do you think they would ever hire me to accomplish these tasks?” There’s a sense that much of the rebuilding of Iraq will be handed out in contracts to ultimately serve the interests of America and rebuild the American economy.

AMY GOODMAN: Kathy, there’s a front-page story in The Washington Post today, Bush administration officials saying they underestimated the organizational strength of the Shiites. They’re concerned they could establish a fundamentalist Islamic, anti-American government in Iraq, and are unprepared to prevent that.

KATHY KELLY: Well, you know, at the moment, I bless the organization of the mosques, which at a time when it looked like utter chaos could overtake people in a lethal and a very, very frightening way, the mosques were able to, without electricity, and over microphones and through distribution of leaflets, get the word to many, many neighborhoods to settle down, to stop the killing, to stop attacking hospitals, to restore a lot of the looted goods, which actually did start to happen. And that was a good thing. Now, I don’t know if the Sunni neighborhoods are really trusting the Shia announcement that “We are not Sunni; we are not Shia; we are all together.” But in a situation where there was a total void of any kind of plan to restore some kind of order, it seems to me that the mosque networks were very, very important.

Now, what does this portend for the future, if there is an Islamic theocracy? Will there be acceptance and tolerance of the Christians, of the Sunnis, of the Kurds? These could be very, very grave and dangerous realities developing. And yet, you know, it seems to me that the governance of Iraq should be left to the Iraqis to sort out and figure out. If the United States picks out puppet leaders that they could then spit out when they’re through using them, as the United States tends to identify with wealthy people who control commercial interests and powerful elites and who have a disproportionate representation in Iraq’s population, then I think it will sow the seeds for more material destruction and great resentment. And who will be left holding the bag in the future? A generation of Iraqi youngsters who have been betrayed and badly failed by every entity since they were born.

AMY GOODMAN: Were you in Baghdad when Zubaidi, one of Ahmed Chalabi men, announced that he had been elected mayor?

KATHY KELLY: Well, yes, I mean, people look at pictures on TV of fellows like him, and they say, you know, “Who is this person?” And, you know, to be a traitor in Iraqi society is a very, very grave crime. And it seems to me that almost anyone who takes on the role of governance now in cooperation with U.S. occupation runs a great risk of being labeled a traitor, and both not listened to and possibly eliminated — I mean, assassinated.

AMY GOODMAN: Kathy Kelly, you are known for spending much of your time in Iraq in hospitals. What about the hospitals now? In fact, when General Jay Garner, the new ruler of Iraq, from the United States, came to Baghdad, apparently he first came to a hospital and addressed the doctors?

KATHY KELLY: Well, I think that the doctors, once again, have been very heroic, as they have been all throughout the years when hundreds and thousands of children lost their lives because doctors couldn’t save them because of the economic sanctions. It’s a very complicated situation in the hospitals, because they’ve relied on protection, and sometimes the protection has been provided by sheikhs and imams and people with guns. I think there’s not a high level of trust, even within the hospitals, between some of the senior doctors and some of the younger ones, because a lot of the senior doctors were appointed by the Baath Party.

It seems that there’s more control coming in. But what’s not coming in are adequate anesthetics, medicines that are needed and perhaps are not being adequately tested, like blood serums and diabetes medicine. And there certainly is remaining a kind of a triage setting, from what I’m told, most of the hospitals. I had visited the al-Kindi Hospital just before it was badly looted, and saw doctors who have been working 'round the clock, who had been seeing hundreds of patients. They were exhausted. They say this is nothing new to them, because they've been going through war after war. And I think you have to characterize the economic sanctions as having been an ongoing war. One doctor said to me, “You know, if you ever brought me to the United States, and if you ever had invited me to a dancing party, I could not accept.” And I thought that was a telling remark in terms of the sadness that’s been inflicted on those who try to cure people and would have wanted to cure their country.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Kathy Kelly, who’s just come out of Iraq, out of Baghdad. She has spent a majority of the past year in Iraq and was there through the bombing.