Baghdad's Human Shields
31-minutes, 2003
Ref: 007tvc

At the end of January, Ken Nichols O'Keefe, a former US marine who fought in the First Gulf War, got a brainwave on how to stop an attack on Iraq. His idea was to persuade thousands of Western citizens to go to Baghdad. He reasoned that the United States and Britain would not dare attack the city under such circumstances. The idea of human shields had been born. O'Keefe, who lives in London, persuaded a hundred or so people that his plan would work. The group made the journey to Baghdad in a couple of double-decker buses. The volunteers planned to stake out the power and water plants bombed during the First Gulf War, protecting them with their bodies. Bernat Carreras, a 19-year old youngster from Barcelona, was taken by the idea. Bernat had already taken part in the Florence Social Forum and was one of the many of the hordes of young people who helped clean up Galicia's oiled beaches after the "Prestige" sinking. He'd been toying with the idea of opposing the war in a more active way than just attending demonstrations. Bernat finally decided to put together a group of Catalans who were willing to act as human shields. Just two weeks after the first meetings, they were in Baghdad. Some 300 would-be "human shields" from 50 countries met there, where the Iraqi authorities met them with open arms. The volunteers witnessed the aftermath of the First Gulf War and the harm wrought by twelve years of the international embargo. Children have largely borne the brunt of food shortages and lack of medicines. But the warm relations with the regime quickly cooled. The Iraqi civil servants charged with keeping the volunteers under control were used to working under a dictatorship. The foreigner's free-form assemblies to take decisions were an anathema. There were also differences of opinion on which places should be protected. The Iraqi bureaucrats, never the most trusting of souls, began to suspect that the group of volunteers was a hotbed of spies and journalists. The Catalan group spent days in Amman, kicking their heels as they waited for permission to enter Iraq. Meanwhile, Saddam's government gave no explanation of its refusal to issue entry visas. Finally, the human shields were politely but firmly asked to go home. A young journalist took his video camera and filmed the Catalan group's adventure. For three weeks, he was just another "human shield", covering the story from the inside.