Resisting Fear: the Iraqi Week of Nonviolence

by

Ismaeel Dawood and Martina Pignatti Morano of Centro Gandhi of Pisa
Un ponte per… Baghdad
27th April 2007

From April 29 to May 6 in Iraq not only the rumble of bombs will
be heard. A network of associations of the Iraqi civil society, belonging to
different political and religious affiliations, will carry on peace
initiatives on the whole national territory within the Iraqi Week of
Nonviolence.

This event will take place while the Iraqi government meets in
Sharm el-Sheikh (May 3-4) representative of the neighbouring countries, plus
the G5 and G8, in the ministerial meeting that aims to restore security in
Iraq. But is a top-down peace process feasible in a country traumatized by
violence and insulted by military occupation like today’s Iraq? The Iraqi
civil society asserts to have the duty and the capability to bring its own
contribution. Given the high danger faced by those who organize public
events in these times, this is a courageous venture that the international
community must know about, an act of civil resistance to terror and
militarism.

Tens of associations and more than a hundred activists have
agreed to hold initiatives in schools, theatres, public spaces of the main
cities in Iraq. Events are scheduled in Kut, Baghdad, Basra, Diwaniya,
Dohuq, Erbil, Faw, Kirkuk, Maysan, Mosul, Salaheddin, Sulaimaniya, Tikrit.
The organization is coordinated by the network LAONF (nonviolence, in
Arabic), created in 2006 by associations that participated in training
programmes on Active Nonviolence: a philosophy and a means of peoples’
liberation that envisages full respect for life, and rejection of any form
of oppression, exploitation and violence.

Many of the initiatives are managed with children and students,
that are now preparing paintings and banners to be fixed at the entrance of
their schools and universities to ask for an end to violence against
civilians. At Al-Mustansiriyya University in Baghdad – where in January 2007
the explosion of two car bombs killed 60 and wounded 110 among professors,
students and personnel – olive and palm trees will be planted to commemorate
the victims of violence. In front of school buildings people will bury
remnants of bullets and splinters, because the sons of Iraq should not grow
between symbols of violence. Instead, they must learn to bury its bitter
fruits and build another society with other means. In a village close to
Mosul people of different ethnic groups and sects will play together a
football game; in Kut teenagers of secondary schools will free white doves
and make white balloons fly; everywhere posters and calendars will be
distributed to be hanged at the walls of people’s houses and remind them
that violence is not the solution but the cause of their suffering.

Besides ceremonies, there will be seminars and conferences to
present to civil society and local authorities principles and methodologies
of nonviolent action for social and political change. The activists of LAONF
will not limit themselves to speaking in universities, indeed they will
participate in the events organized by trade unions on the 1st of May,
Workers Day. They will animate public debates on the strategy of nonviolent
action with the Syndicate Union of Workers in the Baghdad National Theatre,
with the unions that fight against privatization of Iraqi oil at the Oil
Union Centre of Basra, with fishermen’s unions in the Fao peninsula, the
first zone that opposed a fierce resistance to Anglo-American occupation in
2003.

Lastly, the associations involved in this event have chosen a
symbolic campaign that unites them all. At a time when the opinion of
anybody who takes a stand is distorted to be accused of sectarianism, the
network LAONF asks that all people commit themselves not to transfer the
thirst for vengeance and violence to Iraqi children. In every city they will
collect signatures and they will finally present a petition to the Iraqi
Parliament asking for a ban on imports of toys that push children to
violence. After a thirteen-years long embargo, Iraq needs medicine and
books, technology for development of its civilian economy, not toys that
induce children and teenagers to assign a positive connotation to violence.
It is necessary to protect the youngsters from the culture of death and
destruction that has already been imported in Iraq by foreign troops and
combatants.

According to the organizers, the Iraqi Week of Nonviolence
pursues three significant objectives. Firstly the Iraqi civil society proves
to its own people and to the international community that it is still able
to organize national unitary events unbounded by political and religious
powers. It is an important testimony of their willingness and capacity to
refuse the logic of civil war and carry on common initiatives defying the
overpower of armed groups and armies. Secondly, they aim to initiate a
process of conscientization of civil society on the possibility of
renouncing hatred and vengeance, in order to pursue the common objective of
peaceful coexistence. The constructive message is directed especially to
young generations that risk to forget how strong was till recently the
sentiment of unity of the Iraqi people. Fighting for self-determination and
for peoples’ rights is fair and dutiful, but there are other means than
weapons to promote a just society, nonviolent means that are coherent with
the ends assigned to them. They allow us to shape since the beginning,
during the fight, the model of society that we aim to promote, where women
and men, youngsters and elders, have the same dignity. Finally, during this
week the activists will encourage individuals and associations to join
LAONF, to increase the number of those who accept this commitment.

The Iraqi Week of Nonviolence takes place for the second year,
and hopes to begin a fixed appointment for cultural and political promotion
of nonviolent action, of making peace by peaceful means. Nonviolent means of
fight have been used in recent history by Iraqi trade unions and social
movements, but often without explicit and conscious adhesion to a reference
model. The network LAONF aims to articulate in the Iraqi culture the
universal values and methodologies of action that assigned political and
spiritual victories to the movements of Gandhi, Martin Luther King,
feminism, and many others. The training process of LAONF activists is
supported by the Catalan association NOVA – Centre for Social Innovation,
and by the Italian Un ponte per…, that have been organizing for two years
training programmes on the culture of nonviolence, by explicit request and
invitation of the Iraqi associations.

Information on the initiatives already undertaken are available on the
website HYPERLINK “http://www.launf.net/”www.launf.net managed by NOVA-CIS
and on the website HYPERLINK “http://www.laonf.org/”www.laonf.org managed by
members of the network LAONF from Baghdad.