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Weeping for Iraq

by Don Kazak

The country of Iraq is "dilapidated" and on its knees, according to Kathleen Namphy, a Palo Alto resident who just spent six weeks in Iraq as part of Christian peace mission.

The Palo Alto resident fears for the future of the country if war is declared. She has a unique perspective on the Middle East, having lived there for 12 years, including teaching at the American University in Beirut before she began working as an English instructor at Stanford in 1970.

Namphy, 67, traveled to Iraq with a pacifist group, Christian Peacemaker Teams, which is affiliated with the Church of the Brethren, one of three of the nation's "peace" churches, along with the Quakers and Mennonites.

"When you see it up close and personal, it gives you nightmares," Namphy said. "And we were complicit in this," she said of conditions in Iraq after 12 years of economic sanctions against the country by the United States and United Nations following the Gulf War.

Namphy spent her time in Iraq visiting foreign embassies to deliver a letter favoring weapons inspections instead of an American military attack, visiting U.N. agencies, and meeting Iraqi people, although under limited conditions.

She was with a group of 15 people, only nine of whom were initially allowed into Iraq. There were delays in obtaining entry visas because of the Iraqi fear of visitors being American spies. "We were told we were being closely watched," she said.

The restrictions included not being able to visit people in their homes, not being allowed to take photographs, and having an Iraqi "minder" with them most of the time monitoring their movements.

But even with those restrictions, Namphy and others in her group got an eyeful.

"It's a dilapidated, on-your-knees country," she said, because of all the Gulf War destruction, much of which has not been rebuilt.

The people, she said, are preparing for war. "It was clear that Iraq was hunkering down, getting ready for an expansion of the war."

Whenever possible, she asked people how they felt about the possibility of war with the United States. She received a wide range of responses. Mostly, Iraqis said they have already been living in post-war destruction for 12 years. "People are used to it, but afraid of it coming again," she said.

There is also a mixture, she said, of "huge, huge anger towards the (American) government," and the "deeply ingrained Arab hospitality" to treat visitors graciously. Still, she said, the anger sometimes came through. "We're being treated like savages," one Iraqi told Namphy.

In addition to visiting foreign embassies and U.N. agencies, Namphy spent part of her time volunteering at an orphanage run by a Catholic relief agency, the Sisters of Mercy. The one she worked at had 25 children. "We assisted the Sisters of Mercy in the care, feeding, cuddling and playing with the children," who were all six years old or younger, she said.

She also visited the University of Baghdad and talked with graduate students there, although the visitors had been told to stay away from political subjects during their discussions.

Namphy has a deep affinity for the region, having spent so much time there before coming to Stanford to teach. Now mostly retired from teaching modern poetry, she continues her activism for peace, having spent six weeks earlier in the year in the Israeli cities of Bethlehem and Genin on the West Bank.

While things were grim on the West Bank -- she met with a United Nations official who was recently killed there -- she came away from Iraq feeling horrified by what she saw.

A native of Washington state, Namphy came early to peace issues because both of her parents were pacifists. Part of the reason she returned to the United States in 1970 was to raise her family of five children free from the turmoil she felt was ahead for the region, which proved to be painfully borne out, and still is.

"It's horrific," she said of conditions in Iraq. "I wept so often at what had become of Iraq and out of helplessness." E-mail Don Kazak at dkazak@paweekly.com