Human Shields

The Human Shield Movement Stefan Simanowitz reports on the evolution of a new form of peaceful protest that emerged before the 2003 invasion of Iraq Contemporary Review, June 2003, Vol.282, No.1649 WAR changes many things. Global politics shift, military hardware and strategies are tried and tested and new forms of protest emerge. One such protest, the human shield movement, caught the attention of the world and, although limited in effectiveness, its impact might yet prove significant. On a bright afternoon in January a convoy of three double-decker buses left London bound for Baghdad in a blaze of media coverage. On board were over fifty 'human shields'; the first of many hundreds of Western anti-war activists to travel to Iraq. None of them knew what the coming months would hold. All knew that they might not be coming back. It had all started just three weeks before with an article in The Observer newspaper in which a former American marine, Ken O'Keefe, outlined his intention to organise a human shield convoy to try and stop the seemingly inevitable rush to war. A small group of people who had read the article met with O'Keefe in London later that week and set about turning the idea into a reality. With troops already massing in the Gulf, it was clear that time was of the essence. A convoy would take at least two weeks to drive overland to Iraq and therefore a departure date was set for 25th January. It would be necessary to get funding, vehicles, publicity, visas and most importantly, volunteers willing to leave their homes and families at short notice and gatecrash the theatre of war. Remarkably all this was achieved. Buses were procured and painted, a website was set up and human shield volunteers started to come forward. There were press conferences and delegations to Downing Street and interviews with every major news network in the world. The departure of the convoy received global coverage and as a result, the human shields forced their way into the consciousness of public and policy-makers alike. As the buses crossed Europe picking up more shields en route, efforts were made to capitalise on the publicity and ensure that the human shield project was broadened. An office was set up in Amman and two more groups of shields flew from London to Iraq via Jordan. The week after the departure of the convoy saw over sixty-thousand hits on the human shield website and over a thousand enquiries about becoming shields. Human

shield organisations sprouted around the world; in France, Italy, Spain, Slovenia, America, Australia, India, South Africa, Mexico, Argentina, New Zealand, Korea and Japan. The movement had become a global initiative. The convoy itself encountered numerous difficulties; mechanical and logistical problems were compounded by stormy clashes of personality. But despite the difficulties and a week later than planned, the convoy rolled into Baghdad to a tumultuous welcome. Once in Baghdad however, further tensions arose, this time with their Iraqi hosts. Sites for the shields' deployment had not been determined prior to the shields' arrival and it soon became apparent that sites would be selected by Iraqi government officials wary of infiltration by Western spys. After two weeks of heated discussion, the shields were given a list of seven sites and an ultimatum to 'start shielding or start leaving'. The sites were all civilian infrastructure facilities including water treatment facilities, power stations and food silos, and were fully in keeping with the expressed objective of the shield group. Anyone who did not want to take residence in these sites would be helped with their passage out of Iraq. The need to work closely with the Iraqi government was not something many of the shield volunteers felt comfortable with. Some felt that the list delivered by the officials compromised their autonomy. Others felt that they would rather be deployed in schools, hospitals and orphanages. These shield volunteers left Iraq. The rest took residence in the sites, a list of which was sent to the Coalition Joint Chiefs of Staff together with a request that they recognize that the targeting of these sites would be in violation of Art. 54 Protocol Additional to the Geneva Convention. There was no response to the letters and in the early hours of 18th March, the first day of the war, the Al Durah power station, home to twenty-three shield volunteers, was hit by a bomb. By the time the convoy had reached Baghdad, there were some eighty shields on board. The flights from London carried a further sixty shields. Other groups also had people in Baghdad and more human shields flew in from around the world. At its peak the total of shield volunteers in Baghdad numbered about five hundred, but already some were starting to leave. The realisation that the thousands needed to have a chance of stopping a blitz on Baghdad had not materialised combined with the failure of the United Nations to forestall war, meant that bombing was imminent. Many of the shields chose to stay. Many chose to leave. Some out of cold fear. Some due to illness or financial constraints. Others like O'Keefe himself, were ordered out by the Iraqi government. As war drew nearer, news coverage of the shields in the British media started to become more critical and mendacious. The list of sites where the shields were to be deployed were frequently described as 'military installations' and, whilst stories of shields leaving Iraq were widely reported, the fact that a substantial number remained and that new shields were joining them daily, was ignored. On 3rd March BBC national news ran a story on the double-decker buses leaving Baghdad, 'filled with last disillusioned human shields'. In reality there were a total of four people on the buses and over one hundredand-fifty shields still in Baghdad. An impression was thereby created in the public mind that all the shields had left. Attempts to rectify this impression failed. Approached with a

story about shield volunteers taking up residence in a food storage facility, one journalist responded: 'Human shields? We're bored of them. Call me when one of them gets killed'. Fortunately none of the eighty shields who stayed in Baghdad throughout the war were killed or injured. None of the sites where they were residing were destroyed. They were afforded freedom of movement by the government and treated with great warmth by the Iraqi people but largely ignored by the media. This impression that all the shields had fled not only undermined the effectiveness of the action but led to a widespread ridicule. Rather than being portrayed as brave and selfless, a beacon to the world, the shields were instead caricatured as naive and cowardly peaceniks. So what, if anything, went wrong with the human shield action to Iraq? The media can be blamed for the perception that the movement had failed but cannot be held responsible for actual failures. That the war took place at all could be seen as evidence of failure but since the prevention of war had never been a 'realistic objective' it is not an adequate touchstone to assess the success of the movement. Whilst preventing war was the raison d'etre of the human shield movement, the numbers necessary to achieve this within the time available made such a goal impossible. Just as the ability of a State to wage a popular war rests on their ability to keep casualties to a minimum, so the ability of the human shield movement to prevent war also relies on numbers. The shield volunteers were under no illusions. They knew that it would take more than a few hundred Western human shields to stop a war. However, they felt that the longer war was averted and the borders remained open, the number of shield volunteers would grow. With numbers would come greater safety and more people would be emboldened to join. A critical mass might thereby be reached. If there were thousands rather than hundreds of human shields, then the coalition generals would be forced to factor a new type of 'collateral damage' into their calculations. The reason this did not happen had much less to do with the paucity of the idea than it did to do with the lack of time in which to organise and mobilise. Although the human shields failed to prevent the bombing of Baghdad, the evidence suggests that they did have some success in shielding the sites at which they were deployed. All seven sites where the shields were deployed were bombed early in the first Gulf War. This time round, only one of the sites was mildly damaged. Indeed on the day after human shields left the telecommunications centre in Baghdad it was bombed. In Basra where there were no human shields, water and power were hit in the first days of the war. Coincidence or an indication that the human shields had some effect? The speed and ferocity with which the human shields were condemned by the governments of Britain and America and by the right-wing media is another indicator of the impact of the movement. On the day after the departure of the convoy, the White House Chief of Staff, Andrew Card, was minded to issue a press release condemning the action and Fox News reported that US leaders were considering prosecuting US human shields for war crimes. Indeed were the Domestic Security Enhancement Bill 2003 to be passed, any US citizens acting as human shields in Iraq could be stripped of their

citizenship, held indefinitely, and tried secretly as 'enemy combatants' based on the allegedly treasonous 'intent' of their actions as 'aiding and abetting the enemy'. It is yet to be seen how American human shields will be treated when they finally return home. To attract such vitriolic criticism from governments and the right-wing press suggests that the human shield movement is seen as a threat. The huge demonstrations and campaigns that preceded this war politicised large numbers of people. They also showed traditional forms of protest to be ineffective; a fact that left many angry and disaffected. It is in this climate that new forms of protest evolve and flourish and that governments intent on war begin to get nervous. Whilst human shields are not a new concept, the scale and impact of the recent movement was unprecedented. Combining the idealism and solidarity of the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War with the principles of non-violent direct action espoused by Gandhi, the human shield movement is the latest in a long tradition of protest. Whilst the impact of the human shields on this conflict may be questioned, their significance in the history of war and protest can not. Whether an one-off act of defiance or the birth of a wider movement remains to be seen, but in the words of Margaret Mead: 'Never doubt the power of a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens to change the world: indeed, it's the only thing that ever has'. Stefan Simanowitz is a writer an analyst. He co-founded and coordinated the Human Shield Action to Iraq.