Host: Today on Peace Talks Radio, people who choose to physically stand in the way of war. Some nights I remember leaning my back against the wall, hands over my ears, the sound of a missile dropping close to you, so loud that I felt my eardrums would explode and bleed. Volunteering to serve as a human shield in a combat zone is an intense act of self sacrifice, but those who've done it say it's saved many lives and feels like a necessary calling for them.
“A huge military about to attack a defenseless population, you know, or something like that, and if just being a human shield is gonna prevent it, well, great.” (clip from William Powers)
Host: We hear from two peace activists who dropped everything and traveled across the globe to use their bodies as tools against the violence of war. The decision to become a human shield today on peace talks radio.
This is peace talks radio the radio series and podcast on peacemaking and nonviolent conflict resolution I'm serious producer Paul Ingles today with correspondent Andrew Stelzer. For this episode we're profiling people who volunteered to serve as human shields using the privilege of their nationality and sometimes their skin color to try and save lives.
In recent years, we've become used to hearing the term human shields applied differently to one side in a conflict surrounding themselves with innocent civilians who may not even know that they are in harm's way. In hopes of discouraging the other warring side from mounting a strike at a key location.
But today, we'll focus on another type of human shield. People who willingly take on the interventionist role. Sometimes as a move to protest the warring choice of their own country or their country's allies. In part one, we'll hear author William Powers recount his journey to Chiapas, Mexico, where the Zapatista movement had issued a call out for international volunteers to protect them from state violence.
Powers has worked for more than two decades in development aid and conservation in Latin America, Africa, and North America. His essays and commentaries on global issues have appeared in The New York Times and The Atlantic and on National Public Radio's Fresh Air. William Power's most recent book is titled Dispatches from the Suite Life, one family, five acres, and a community's quest to reinvent the world.
In part two, coming up later, we'll continue on the human shield topic to hear the story of Donna Mulhern, a former journalist and political advisor, turned author and activist, who made a last minute decision to travel to Baghdad just as the country was preparing to be bombed by the United States led coalition at the start of the Iraqi war.
Here's correspondent Andrew Stelzer with author William Powers.
Andrew Stelzer: Many educators treasure their summer breaks. It can be a time to rest, pick up a hobby, relax. But back in 1996, William Powers decided to do something a little bit different with his time off. Travel to Chiapas to serve as a human shield.
William Powers: Every once in a while, if the opportunity comes up, I'll do it. I'm ready. I'm ready to do things that I'm called towards. Without making an ego identity out of it or something like that. Like, oh, I'm this big activist. I'm constantly being arrested. No, but it's just like I do 20 percent of my time trying to do things like this.
Andrew Stelzer: Powers isn't an old man yet, but he's already lived many lives. He spent two years as an aid worker in post Civil War Liberia, he worked for the World Bank, and he's written several books, including one about living in a 12x12 off the grid cabin in North Carolina. I asked him to bring us back to the mid 90s, to understand how he ended up protecting a small Mexican village in the jungle, and how that experience led him down this long and winding path.
William Powers: 1994 is when the North American Free Trade Agreement kicked in, and that was Under protest by civil society, NGOs, nonprofits all around. And one of the protests was this Apatista uprising, which is where in Chiapas in the far South of Mexico, the campesinos, the farmers, indigenous people, uh, mostly. Mayans rose up and took over San Cristobal de las Casas, the capital of Chiapas and also many of the towns.
So they set up like a parallel government and created a rebel force, but it was a largely symbolic effort because a lot of the guns they had actually were just wooden, although they did have some real guns, of course, and the idea was to stand up for, The rights of farmers like under NAFTA, of course, you'd have like cheap genetically modified corn grown on this huge plantations.
Everyone's seen in the US just shipped down freely into Mexico. And what would have happened was that would have put millions of people out of work who are growing corn in the traditional ways, you know, corn that has like 50 different varieties. Genetic diversity. So it was a big protest against that.
And you know, I heard that the Zapatistas were recruiting volunteers from Europe and the United States to come down and be human shields because the Mexican government was planning a big military offensive. Air strikes mostly against the Zapatista controlled villages in Chiapas.
Andrew Stelzer: And that term human shield, was that something you were familiar with?
Was that something that you had a prior interest in serving as? I think for some people, although you had, as you can probably mention some background in activism and an inclination to help some people would hear that term and run the other way as fast as they could, what did that mean to you at the time and how does that motivate you to say, Oh, they need a shield. There's a potential violent conflict going on, yeah, count me in.
William Powers: Well I was familiar with being a human shield and probably felt a little guilty because I had I seriously considered doing it in Iraq in 1990 when I was a sophomore at Brown University. There were volunteers going to Iraq to actually be stationed in different parts of the country right when the U.S. was about to have this massive attack. And you know, I was gonna go, but my parents, I was, you know, 18 or 19 at the time, and they, I think they pretty much said, look, you know, you can't go. And I honestly feel after the experience in Mexico that it's a powerful. I mean, I will tell you, if there had been university students stationed all over Iraq at that time, I really doubt the United States would have attacked.
And think about it all these years later, like the wasted billions of dollars and thousands of lives in Iraq that led to almost nothing in the end, and Afghanistan. If there had been like a thousand, say, Ivy League students and others, like, just privileged people or whoever, but especially if it's people that are considered to be like privileged class and, you know, untouchable, like that sort of thing.
Like, can you imagine the United States government attacking? What happened in Mexico was similar. They invited people from the European countries, from United States. Like really it's unfortunate, but the Mexican government didn't care about killing Mexican campesinos, but they did care about the publicity and the impact of having foreigners there.
So it prevented the attack. It actually worked.
Andrew Stelzer: Take us back to 1996, just before your trip to Mexico. What was your life like back then? Who were you and what were you doing?
William Powers: I was teaching at a Native American school in Santa Fe, New Mexico for 50 tribes and working summers on an organic farm. And I felt very inspired by what was going on in Chiapas, a little south of us, you know, in Mexico with the Zapatistas and Subcomandante Marcos and all of that.
Andrew Stelzer: How was the opportunity? I don't know if that's the right word. How was the experience presented to you and, and how was it different in reality from what you expected?
William Powers: You know, I didn't really have too much of a expectation of what it would be. We arrived in the capital of San Cristobal, and we were trained on, you know, how to interact with military.
Like, we were not actually legally there as human shields. Like, in other words, we were not official in any way. So, if we're stopped, and I think we were stopped a couple times, we just had to say we were tourists. Until we got to the village and then once there, there were, I guess what maybe surprised me was the number of women, like there were women Zapatistas that were coming in and out with real weapons and, you know, their face covered.
And I guess what else surprised me was like how friendly and it is how like, you know, really. Cheerful and generous. The people were, you know, just offering us food and so grateful that we were there because they were afraid of losing their entire, like, houses and lives from an attack.
Andrew Stelzer: Were there times when they said, quick, we need you over at this intersection or, or we need you to stand down in the open at the top of this road the Mexican military is on its way. Were there moments when you were sort of felt explicitly like you were a shield between two parties, or was it more abstract in that, you know, word got through to the military that there were gringos, they are internationals there.
William Powers: And so that's what it was. Yeah. It was the fact that there was such a large presence and there were hundreds of Italians that came that answered that call.
As you know, in Italy, there's a big. Sort of communist party and socialist movements and so forth. And they had those networks of solidarity with Chiapas and, and, you know, Germans. Um, there were some other Americans that we met that came down, I think from the West coast that I remember meeting, but, um, mostly Europeans because of the strong tradition of socialist parties there.
Andrew Stelzer: And you did have some involvement in activism already, so I'm sure you had some deeper analysis in the mass media, although the Zapatistas were not receiving a lot of coverage when they did, they were often being described as terrorists or, you know, violent guerrillas as a peace activist? Were you at all hesitant to involve yourself in what some could see as a violent conflict? Was there any sort of, uh, discordance with your values or did you feel conflicted at all in participating even in this very non, uh, violent way in, in this conflict?
William Powers: I mean, not really because, you know, my whole background, like liberation theology and my parents were former priest and nun that were very liberal.
They left the church, got married to have kids, but continued in those circles of peace and activism. So we were, we grew up, like my middle name is Daniel after Daniel Berrigan. I don't know if you know Daniel Berrigan, he's, um, a famous Jesuit priest who was arrested so many times and his brother Philip Berrigan and they would protest nuclear weapons by like actually breaking into pentagon facilities and hammering on these nuclear warheads and stuff like that.
So This was just another example, I think, in, like, my family tradition of, like, kind of liberal Catholics and peace activists of just getting involved in something which is a nonviolent form of resistance. You know, it goes back to Gandhi and those types of ways of, you know, using nonviolent tools to stop conflict.
Andrew Stelzer: Yet the earlier Iraq war was a bridge too far. How come you think your parents…?
William Powers: Yeah, that's a, that's a really good question. I think that it was, that was just such an obvious case where they were just about to attack and Bush had said, we're attacking, you know, in two weeks and it was just like, it was going to happen.
And I think it just seemed a little bit over the top to go there at that time when it was almost no chance. But I still think, looking back, I really feel like if like hundreds and hundreds and thousands of us had done it, it would have prevented the conflict, would have prevented the attack. But yeah, I think it was also me.
I don't think they would have opposed me from going if I'd really felt the call and the desire to go.
Host: This is Peace Talks Radio. I'm series producer Paul Ingles today with correspondent Andrew Stelzer who's speaking with author and activist William Powers who volunteered to serve as a human shield in Mexico's Chiapas region in 1996.
The village was under threat from the Mexican government. Because the people were in support of and part of a social movement known as the Zapatista uprising against the North American Free Trade Movement, known as NAFTA, supported by the U. S. government. Our topic today is human shields in conflict zones.
Looking at individuals whose conviction to protect the innocents in war torn areas of the world moves them to make themselves human shields in strategic locations of the conflict, hoping to mitigate the violence and maybe save some innocent lives. Back now to correspondent Andrew Stelzer's conversation with William Powers.
Andrew Stelzer: Obviously, the whole idea of being a human shield is reliant on the notion that your body is more valuable to media, the U S government, the Mexican military, whoever, whoever the aggressor is, um, decides your body is more valuable than that of the local villager. And that's why you can protect them. How did that. feel, how was that discussed, um, in the training and the recruitment? Uh, I guess you only had your one friend there, but among the other volunteers, how did you all wrestle with this? And, and this is of course, at a time when pre internet those discussions were more person to person, they weren't blasting around the, uh, Twitter sphere at 1 billion miles a second.
How did that come up?
Yeah. And also that was pre, you know, privilege awareness and all that discussion like it wasn't really so much in the discourse as much it was more like just such an obvious thing that of course your body is more valuable to these big institutions of power than the average cappuccino because it's going to create a huge international issue and huge pushback and so it was just kind of like taken for granted.
Andrew Stelzer: Did that feel okay? How did it feel?
William Powers: I looked at it more from my own point of view, which is like, okay, I'm, I've got this summer break from teaching and I could either go and do one thing or I could be a human shield and I'd like to help this apothesis by being a human shield. That's it. You know? And yeah, I mean, we thought about it. In terms of even just being there in the village and also seeing like the real marginalization of the people there, the people in the community. There was no electricity, of course, in this hamlet and no running water, but there was plentiful rivers and nature and healthy foods that they were growing themselves and so forth.
But from our kind of colonized Western point of view or mindset, like, Oh, they're poor. They're extremely poor. They're destitute. I've come to not see it that way because of all these years of living, so called developing countries and subsistence living is a sustainable way of living. They're often networks of extended family and clan and connection to nature that like actually take the place of.
The ones that we buy through insurance policies and so forth, you know, and the therapists we hire that's built into the communities. It's sort of not monetized any of that. So like, you know, when I look at it now, so like that village that we were settled in for that time, it's actually people living subsistence economy living with enough what they were fighting for, I think, was this resistance of this big trade treaty, NAFTA, which was going to wreck their income and wreck their kind of way of life.
By creating a monoculture by creating, you know, just cheap corn everywhere, making theirs not valuable. So anyway, those are some of the ways we were looking at it at the time. In terms of any interactions you had with I guess there were Mexican trainers, perhaps, and then the folks in the village.
Andrew Stelzer: I'm wondering what people thought of you. Were there people who thought, Wow, I can't believe these people are crazy enough to come here and put their bodies on the line? Were there people who said, Oh, well, you know, you guys are the ones that started NAFTA. You better be here. Like, it's the least you could do. Or were there You know, what was the sort of range of reaction to your presence and what you were doing amongst the Mexican people?
William Powers: I think you identified the range of reactions, right? There were some that thought we were totally crazy to be doing this and couldn't believe that people would put their lives at stake for this. There were others who were real activists that said, yeah, this is the least that you can do because you guys have caused these problems.
And then there was a lot of gratitude, tons of gratitude from the Zapatista communities. That we felt every day, just how grateful they were that we were there.
Andrew Stelzer: And officially there was a truce signed earlier that year, the San Andres Accords. So officially there shouldn't have been a need for anyone like you. Was that totally on paper only? Was it for real at all? Was it honored at all?
William Powers: I mean, from what we were trained when we went to San Cristobal, that was not being honored. It was just a piece of paper. And my history is a little bit rusty of what happened afterwards, but I know that they definitely broke that treaty in different ways.
And it was not respected, especially in that time before there was any social media or any like cameras or anything back in those towns, they would have just gone back and massacred people. And that did happen on a smaller scale at other times, but not while we were there.
Andrew Stelzer: So it sounds like you think it really worked.
William Powers: Yeah, absolutely. I'm a hundred percent convinced that like having those delegations there prevented it. But it's a lot of intensive labor. If you think about a thousand people all over Chiapas, you know, coming in from different countries. And I mean, how long can you sustain that? I think that's also what happened was at a certain point, they couldn't sustain that level of volunteers coming in and being human shields. So it's like, you have to come up with other strategies.
Andrew Stelzer: Would you do it again?
William Powers: Absolutely. Yes, I would do it again. Um, I mean, now I've got kids and other responsibilities and so forth. At that time I was single and I would do it if I had the time. You know, I just think it's one of like a hundred different tools.
When I look also, like, I spent two and a half years in Liberia, two years of which were during the Civil War. I was an aid worker. And in charge of a large staff bringing food across rebel lines into like dangerous areas. We need to cross checkpoints. And I think there was also a certain sense that like during the civil war in Liberia, which by the way, was fueled by diamonds and consumption of diamonds in Europe and United States for wedding rings and so forth.
Conflict diamonds. And secondly, conflict timber. The wood, the wood that we buy, uh, was coming out of Liberia and that they were bringing arms in in exchange for wood. That conflict was very much fueled by Western consumption. And just by the fact that, like, there were a lot of us there, a lot of aid workers.
This was in, uh, 1999 to 2001, during the middle of the Civil War. You know, I think that also has just a huge impact, the fact that just there's that presence there. Like, I just think any time that you put yourself into a dangerous situation, even in a conflict, wherever it is, it's just giving more visibility to the situation.
And people can't, like, in that case, the warlords like Charles Taylor and and the other rebel groups and so forth. If there was nobody there doing humanitarian distribution and Just generally being a witness, I mean, the slaughter is worse.
Andrew Stelzer: That's subsistence living, a focus on simple living that has sort of become part of, certainly part of your life, but also part of your activism, part of what you've written about, um, among some of your adventures living in a 12 by 12 cabin in North Carolina, trying to live simply in New York City, connecting with the land in Bolivia. And I'm wondering, this could be a stretch, but during your time in Mexico as a human shield, you talked about sort of pushing through that boredom and being okay with doing nothing and realizing you were doing something by doing nothing, just being there. And I'm wondering if that was at all formative in terms of your later focus on simple living and sort of doing by not doing.
William Powers: That's a great point. And yeah, my book 12 by 12 that you just mentioned, it was another moment. And when I was living in the tiny house off grid in North Carolina and reflecting on simplicity, that's when I was also in that book, thinking back to Chiapas and the Zapatistas and being a human shield. And I think that's probably why it resonated to me because there was that similar feeling of being in nature and doing nothing, doing something by doing nothing is a great way of putting it.
You know, sometimes that I found, and this is maybe just a wisdom that's come later, now this, that all happened a long time ago, Chiapas and so forth, but like just that idea of slowing down and living more simply and observing with your senses and being more in the present moment. All of that has a powerful impact on your own psychology and the way that you relate to others.
You know, when you're fully listening. to people that you're with when you're engaged with your kids in the moment and you're not constantly rushing from one thing to the next or trying to fight this issue or do that issue. Like there's a certain like beauty to, you know, Wu Wei, like the sort of action through awareness that just comes naturally, you know, like the Taoist tradition is really big on looking around, you know, the CBD, you see the problem.
Whatever it is, or the issue or the crisis, you know, climate change or the Mexican military is about to attack these villages or whatever the thing is, then you be, so you don't, there's no doing yet. So CB, you kind of come into awareness and then do is doing that's coming out of that simple awareness.
And it may not be something that you would have planned in the mind, because oftentimes our minds has been programmed in ways that we're not even aware of. That goes back to when we were babies and how we're. Rays and so forth, but if you just come into that universal awareness. The Dow or whatever you want to call it, the action that you take, I find is just so, so much more powerful.
So I think probably, you know, being in Chiapas for that time and getting to know the people and seeing how they were able to grow their own food, create their own fuel from what they could find, hunt and fish and how happy they were. Even during a conflict like how there was this sense of like a extended family and happiness and connection with others So that influenced me and I began to see that like oftentimes we have the equation reversed We think that somehow, you know more and more wealth leads to more and more well being but actually happiness peaks at like 10, 000 of GDP and then it starts to plateau and even go down because Yes, if you have total destitution and insecurity and so forth, there's levels of unhappiness But then you get to a certain point of enough All the studies show that you have the maximum well being.
So I think I took that out of the experience big time above and beyond the whole thing about the human shield and the Mexican conflict. Just the very fact of just being there with, I don't think I'd actually spent a full month living in a subsistence Hamlet. Without electricity or anything before that.
So it gave me that experience, which is like absolutely affected the way that my life path went.
Andrew Stelzer: For someone listening who may have never heard of this type of activism and peacemaking being a human shield, they may be inspired by your story, but they don't feel like they have the time or money or resources or life situation where they can travel to another part of the world. What kind of advice or guidance could you give them about how to sort of insert their themselves into this type of, uh, activism or peacemaking? How can they sort of personify this in, in their local, in their town or their city?
William Poweres: I mean, for me, it begins with the inner change, you know, there's two sides to it. One, I mean, like the most important is developing a philosophy of life and a coherent way of being happy with little, with what's there and not always striving for more and this idea that we're always unhappy and always searching for more. First of all, find inner peace. That can be through gardening, through meditation, through Tai Chi, through hiking, through a million different ways.
It also just depends upon what kind of you like doing. But finding those spaces outside of media, outside of control, mind control, to cultivate your own authentic philosophy of life where you feel peaceful and good, both by yourself and with others. You know, in tribe, in tribe of other people who also embrace that.
And then secondly, I think that the activism comes naturally. It's like what we talked about at the beginning, Andrew, you know, about how if you're just in the present moment and in the doubt and you just see what's going on, you see that you will automatically know the solution from a deeper place than the mind.
It's just like being available, being right there to let the spirit come through you and it will tell you what to do. I'm just saying there's no formula. It's like coming into your own sense of peace and then resonating with the ways that you can be helpful with the time that you have. And then passing down that ethos through the generations as much as you can.
Host: That was correspondent Andrew Stelzer, speaking with William Powers. Powers has written many books. His most recent is entitled, Dispatches from the Suite Life, One Family, Five Acres, and a Community's Quest to Reinvent the World. You'll find a link to his books at our website. And you can learn more about all of our guests on today's program by visiting us at peacetalksradio. com. That's peacetalksradio. com. Look for Season 23, Episode 3. You can also donate there to help us continue our non profit work on this program. at peacetalksradio. com. Still to come in part two of our program, an Australian peace activist talks about being one of 800 human shields in Iraq, as the U. S.and several other countries were planning to invade in 2003. As the war quickly approached, most of the volunteers left. Find out what happened when Donna Mulhearn stayed put. That's coming up shortly today on Peace Talks Radio. Support for Peace Talks Radio does come from listeners like you. There's a donate button at peacetalksradio. com. Also from the Albuquerque Community Foundation Ties Fund and Southwest Roots Music, a non profit organization promoting and encouraging music, arts, and culture, through public performances and educational activities. A full schedule of upcoming performances is at southwestrootsmusic. org. For correspondent Andrew Stelzer, I'm series producer Paul Ingles.
Thanks for listening to and for supporting Peace Talks Radio. Stay tuned for more after this break.
This is Peace Talks Radio, the radio series and podcast on peacemaking and nonviolent conflict resolution. I'm series producer Paul Ingles, today with correspondent Andrew Stelzer. And this is part two of our program about voluntary human shields. In part one, we heard from American activist William Powers, recounted his journey to Chiapas, Mexico.
to volunteer as a human shield with the Zapatista movement to protect people from state violence in 1996. On today's program we hear from Donna Mulhearn, an Australian activist who traveled to Iraq in 2003 to protect a water treatment plant and other vital infrastructure from being bombed and destroyed during the U.S. led invasion. She was part of a group of hundreds of volunteers who used their bodies to try and shield the Iraqi people from becoming collateral damage in the battle between the U.S. led coalition surging to defeat Saddam Hussein's regime. Again, correspondent Andrew Stelzer.
Andrew Stelzer: When the United States and its international allies invaded Iraq back in 2003, I was working an early morning shift for a community radio network scrambling to provide voices from the ground to our listeners across the U.S. I got word of a group of international activists who were in Iraq. Camping out at a water treatment plant in order to protect it from being bombed. They called themselves Human Shields. I did a quick interview with one of them over a scratchy phone line, and I always wondered what became of those folks and their campaign.
So, I tracked down Donna Mulhern. She was one of hundreds of people who willingly entered Iraq before the U. S. led invasion began, hoping to use their bodies to prevent the war from happening, or at the very least protect vital infrastructure. Mulhern has written two books about her time in Iraq. One's called, Ordinary Courage, My Journey to Baghdad as a Human Shield.
Donna Mulhearn: Growing up in Australia, Mulhern says her family lived on the edge, and she became politically conscious at a very young age. My mother was widowed when I was six years old. She was left with, um, four children under twelve. So I was then thrust under the poverty line for the next, uh, decades of my life.
And My mother made some comments about which certain political parties would be more likely to be looking out for us and caring for us, and which wouldn't. And as a little girl, I listened very carefully. To those, um, comments my mother made offhand, she thought it was offhand, but I was, uh, listening very closely because my life depended upon it.
So, when a moment of life transition coincided with a global surge of political activism, Mulhern felt compelled to answer the call. What were you hearing about the war in Iraq, and then where were you when you heard I guess a call out on the radio or on the television from somebody with an idea of what to do about it.
Well, I was hearing what everybody else was hearing, uh, on, in the media, George Bush talking tough and saying that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction and he must be disarmed. And unfortunately, my prime minister at the time in Australia, John Howard, called himself the deputy sheriff, which was very embarrassing for Australia.
And he would just go along with whatever. The President of the United States wanted to do, regardless of what Australians thought. Australia had no conflict with Iraq. There was no reason to go to war in Iraq. You know, I believe in the philosophy of non violence and um, wondered what I could do, how I could make a difference in all of this and And then I heard, yeah, I heard the call on the radio one day as I was packing my bag to go to Egypt.
Um, I heard literally a call to be involved from, um, an interview I was listening to with Ken O'Keefe, a former U. S. Marine, uh, who'd became an anti war advocate. And he had an idea. And his idea was based on the fact that our governments in our media Uh, kind of, I think it's okay or it's acceptable if a lot, you know, Iraqi people are killed as collateral damage in an invasion of Iraq, but Ken said, but what would happen if we went there too?
White, Western lives, privileged lives. Educated. Wealthy. And so if I were killed or others from Western countries, then well, questions would be asked and it would be a public relations disaster. And perhaps the war, you know, it would be able to disrupt the war project. And I thought it was an amazing idea, you know, based on a very sad premise of white privilege and of white Western lives having more value, but a reality.
And then Ken, after he explained the idea, he said, well, who wants to come? Come and join us, come to Iraq and be part of this human shield mission. He said we could place ourselves at important places of infrastructure that are important to the Iraqi people during war, such as water plants, power stations, etc.
And he said we could, you know, station ourselves on their sites, let George Bush and the Pentagon know where we are, and say to them, if you bomb these sites, you will kill us. And he said, hopefully our bodies will make a difference. And again, I was just amazed at the idea. My, you know, my hands started to shake and my heart was beating and, and I just knew as soon as I heard his words, the call, I knew that I had to go.
And within, uh, two weeks of hearing that on the radio, I was in Baghdad.
Andrew Stelzer: Did you have people in your life, family, friends, who tried to talk you out of it? It sounds like this was not something you had thought of or even thought was possible and all of a sudden you're saying, Oh yeah, this place where the whole world is worried they're gonna bomb and kill tens of thousands of people, I'm gonna go there, uh, next week.
What was the reaction of the people around you and did you have second thoughts?
Donna Mulheard: I guess the reaction was mixed. Um, it was a little bit expected because I had gone to various other places in the world of conflict. For many, the human shield movement was political and ideology. For me, it was very much about showing love and solidarity with the Iraqi people and standing by them.
So very much I was following my heart as well. And you can't argue with that really. And my friends knew that. They knew that they couldn't ask me to go against my conscience in a way. And so they didn't.
Andrew Stelzer: And what was that two weeks or so like in terms of planning, connecting with the group, and then the journey to Iraq, to the border, and then what took place over those next two weeks from when you heard this call to, you said, when you got to Baghdad?
Donna Mulhearn: Well, it was really, busy and crazy. Um, I ended up flying into Amman and then we organized from there. While we were organizing in Amman, there was a group of human shields who had rented double decker buses from London and were making their way through Europe on their way to Iraq. And they were picking up people along the way.
So when we arrived into Iraq in late January. Many of us still held out the hope that the war wouldn't actually happen. That it would not go ahead, that Bush would see the folly, and that the weapons inspectors would be allowed to do their job, and that common sense would prevail. And so, many were very optimistic about this, especially because of the massive outpouring of protest all over the world.
And so, we were in Iraq a good six to eight weeks, um, before the bombing started. And we had lots of goals during that time, that one of them was being part of this movement, as well as yeah, showing our solidarity with the Iraqi people. And like for me, sending a message from ordinary Australians saying, you know, my friends and my community, they don't support this because a lot of Iraqis would look at me as an Australian and say, why do Australians want to hurt us?
Like we like Australians. You know, we thought Australians were our friend. We, we think you're funny. You're good at sport. We get on well, like. Why is Australia involved in this? So I, I spent a lot of time trying to do this diplomacy and convince them that this was just a decision of our government, not, you know, the opinion of the population and let them know that most Australians were coming out in demonstrations every weekend, raising their voices against our government going to war in Iraq.
And of course that confused them very much because they were like, well, if your, your government. is making this decision and the people don't support it, then how could the government go ahead? They said, isn't it, isn't it that you want to bring us democracy? And yet, you're always clearly, it's not playing out in your own country.
And I was like, well, fair point, fair point. Because that's exactly what happened. Is our government decided to go to war with a country we have no conflict with, this, not, without even a vote in our parliament. Let alone any support from the community. And so, we spent this time in the six to eight weeks before the war, trying to stop the war.
And all the while, we were also, of course, planning the logistics of the mission. So, which was a huge challenge. No one had done anything like this before on this scale. And so, in conjunction with the United Nations Development Program and with Iraqi people. We chose five types of sites that we would put human shields on and those sites were ones that were all crucial to the life of Iraqis during war or necessary.
For example, water treatment plants, power stations, communication centers, etc. And we deployed to various sites in the weeks leading up to the invasion. And, um, we wrote to the Pentagon and we let them know exactly where we were. and the coordinates of where we were. And we said to them, if you bomb these sites, you will kill us.
You know, we wanted thousands and thousands to come of people to come to Iraq, um, Westerners to be part of the human shield movement. That was the original idea. We didn't get thousands and thousands, but we've got hundreds.
Andrew Stelzer: During that lead up planning period, I'm wondering if there was any debate about the decision to locate yourself at the site of Crucial infrastructure points as opposed to population centers. Was there any thought to, well, we should be with the people protecting human lives, of course, either way, your, your greater goal was to protect the society at large, but was there any debate about the tactic of locating at, uh, sites of infrastructure versus a hospital or even just a village all huddled in the community center, so to speak?
Donna Mulhearn: Uh, yeah. So there was, there was discussion, uh, about that and we kept referring to our Iraqi friends and advisors and, and we're really keen to get their opinion. We wanted this. to be them leading us in this decision rather than us imposing our opinion. And so, for example, some human shields came to Iraq saying, even before they'd arrived, saying, Oh, I'm going to be a human shield in a school, or I'm going to be a human shield in a hospital.
And the Iraqis looked at us and said, Well, thank you for the offer, that's fine, but the schools will be empty. And it's, it's just a building and that's not of great value to us in the bigger picture. That's actually not as helpful as another place. And in terms of hospitals, again, some human shield said, well, I'd like to be in a hospital and be human shield on hospital.
And again, we consulted with the Iraqis about that and Iraqi health officials. And they said, well, to be honest, the last thing that we need in a hospital in the middle of a war, which is going to be. A place of, you can imagine, just constant emergency to have to accommodate and show hospitality to a bunch of foreigners.
Where would you even sleep? Like, where would you even sleep?
Like, we don't, they said, I'm sorry, our healthcare system does not have the capacity to show hospitality and provide accommodation and food and safety to a bunch of foreigners. While we're dealing with a critical emergency in our hospitals. So again, they said would you please not interfere with our health system by coming into our hospitals except as of observers to report on the type of cases coming in though they very much wanted us to.
to do that and they felt that was a more helpful role to come in and bear witness each day to the hospitals to see what type of injuries, to keep note of the death toll, etc. Which is a role that was far more valuable in which we did do. We felt that the Iraqis had the experience, they'd experienced war before.
In the first Gulf War in 1991, a lot of the sites that were shielded. By us in 2003 were destroyed in 1991, they knew the sites that were realistic targets, the sites that had the greatest impact on the livelihood of the Iraqi people, and they had the experience. And so some human shields just had to swallow their pride and accept this advice and experience of, uh, of the Iraqi people who had endured war before.
Andrew Stelzer: What was your interaction with the, in your case, the Australian government? And I'm also wondering the Iraqi government, which at the time was still that of Saddam Hussein and the literature and the. Public statements on behalf of the Human Shields project was that we are not here on behalf of Saddam Hussein, we are here on behalf of the Iraqi people, yet Saddam's government had to permit you to enter.
So, what was sort of the Diplomatic, international, uh, angles you were having to play. It seems like a, a, a challenging spot.
Donna Mulhearn: Uh, yeah, well, I'll start with the Iraqi question. So that was a fine line that we had to walk and were conscious of every day. I don't know anyone in the human shield movement that I met and spoke to who was in support of the Saddam Hussein regime.
Not one. And we made statements continually about that. Um, because some of us, ironically, had been involved in criticizing Saddam Hussein's regime for decades. You know, we were aware of the crimes of Saddam and et cetera, his human, bad human rights record, all of this, at a time when, for example, the U. S.government was supporting him. You know, so we had to give history lessons to a lot of American journalists in particular who wanted to criticize us and go, well, hang on a minute. You know, we've been consistently opposing the violence in the regime of Saddam Hussein. So I was very conscious of critics who might've said we were puppets of the regime or something like that.
So I was very sensitive. I was always aware of that. So we didn't have any official dealings with the government, for example. The highest level would have been. mid level public servants, for example, in maybe the systems that we were dealing with, the health system, et cetera. Um, so we dealt mostly with community groups and NGOs.
Um, regarding the Australian government, well, obviously they didn't like what I did and they talked about it. And I was mentioned in the parliament, um, the, those who call themselves human shields could, should come home immediately. It's not safe for them to be in Iraq. And I wrote an open letter to the prime minister and And the foreign minister, I said, well, actually here I am in Iraq, I, I don't feel unsafe at all.
Like it's a very vibrant community full of life and full of, um, culture, very sophisticated, very cosmopolitan place, highly educated people offering me tea and cake all the time. Like that's really the only thing I had to be afraid of was the overwhelming hospitality. And I said, the only moment that I will be unsafe in this country is if you prime minister Decide to enter an invasion of this country and then my life will be in danger.
You will put us in danger if you start to bomb this country and then the story changes.
Host: You're listening to Peace Talks Radio. I'm series producer Paul Ingles and today we're hearing the story of someone who willingly took up the role of human shield to help protect the innocents in a war zone from harm.
Correspondent Andrew Stelzer is speaking with Donna Mulhearn, who volunteered to serve as a human shield in Iraq as the U. S. and several other countries were planning to invade in 2003. Initially, Mulhern says there were about 800 human shields, but as the days ticked down towards the start of the war, Most of the volunteers left, but Donna stayed put.
Back now to the conversation, Andrew Stelzer with Donna Mulhern.
Donna Mulhearn: The crucial time was, um, Bush's ultimatum. So he gave an ultimatum 48 hours before, and he said, you know, I'll give Saddam 48 hours to leave Iraq or to disarm, blah, blah, blah. And it was at that time that we had to accept that this, was going to happen, that the war was going to go ahead.
And so then we really pared down and, um, we ended up being, oh, about a hundred, maybe 120 people, but we were covering these five sites. And so we had to collect, um, perishable food, non perishable food, sorry, water and, um, prepare for war. We spent the couple of days beforehand taping up. Glass windows that would probably smash and implode when missiles struck.
Spending time contacting our families, getting emergency numbers. Like, it was quite surreal to be honest. Telling each other what our blood type was, you know, quite sobering. We didn't know what was going to happen. I decided, alright, if I'm, I'm gonna be here, I'm gonna document everything I see. I'm gonna document everything.
I carried a notebook everywhere. I wrote in it profusely. I took a lot of photos, took a lot of video. We're interviewing Iraqis all the time. And while we endured the bombings at night, if we could get out during the day, that's when we went to the hospitals, we documented the injuries, the stories, the cases.
What I wanted to do is give voice and give humanity to the people who were just being written off as collateral damage. I wanted to give them a name, Ahmed, the young boy who came in to hospital with severe internal injuries. The nurses pulled us aside and whispered to us and they said, we don't know if he's going to make it.
And then they said, Oh, and he's on his own now. And we said, what do you mean? They said, well, in the bombings last night, he lost his mother, his father, and his little brother. That's his entire family. And they said, but he doesn't know it yet. We haven't told him because we fear the shock will kill him. Um, Ahmed, a little boy, giving him a voice.
And so my role then, in many other human shields, came to be to document this. And the media from Australia rang up to interview me, and the media from Japan rang up to interview the Japanese human shields who were at my site, and the other, et cetera, et cetera. And we just I don't remember sleeping, to be honest, the first few days, and probably within, within the, the weeks of the war, I would only get two, three hours sleep a night.
But we were committed to doing those interviews with our croaky voices, we were sleep deprived, but we just wanted to get the story out. We wanted to share what we'd seen, what we'd witnessed, and give names to those lives that were written off as collateral damage.
Andrew Stelzer: And while you were doing this, uh, larger work to humanize Iraqis and make clear the costs of war, was the human shield part being effective? Did you feel like you were successfully protecting the sites? And which sites were you, uh, personally at?
Donna Mulhearn: I was at a water treatment plant, and so I guess the only way we could judge our success is if any of the sites were destroyed. And so, by the end of the war, no sites that human shields were present at were destroyed.
And many cynics would say, oh. Well, they wouldn't have bombed those sites anyway. That was unrealistic that you thought that they would bomb those sites. I was like, well, actually, all of the sites were bombed and destroyed in the first Gulf War in 1991. So they were all realistic targets. And the power of the mission comes from one example, one story, and that is that we had human shields based at the Al Mamoun Communication Center. So this was a telephone exchange, and it meant that Iraqis could phone their families and phone for an ambulance and for emergencies during the war, so that the phones were still working. A vital piece of infrastructure, a communication center.
In the first Gulf War, That was destroyed on the first day. And so we had human shields present there. After a while, I think a week and a half, some human shields had to leave, and there was only one woman there on her own. And so we didn't want her to be there on her own, so we pulled her out. And I think within eight hours of her evacuation out of that place, it was bombed to pieces.
It was destroyed. And We said to the Iraqis, we're sorry, we couldn't stay there longer, we didn't have enough people to send there, and they said, no, no, no, no, are you kidding, like, please, like, you saved, like, for that time, a week and a half, almost two weeks, we were able to call our family and friends, they said, we couldn't believe it, they said, we were just stunned, because we remember, In 1991, that was destroyed on the first day.
And yet for almost two weeks, we had telephone. They said, just thank you so much for being there. And they were convinced it was only protected because there were human shields present on that site. They could not think of any other reason of why that site was not destroyed earlier. I think that some of us might assume that, uh, by willingly choosing to enter a situation in which death is a real possibility, there's missiles raining down, that you'd have to sort of ready yourself to die or accepted death.
Andrew Stelzer: Uh, was this your experience? And in those around you, what, in terms of preparing for this mentally, emotionally, spiritually, did That happened in the lead up or during your time in Iraq, were you thinking about death?
Donna Mulhearn: Oh, yes. Yeah. So death was a constant topic of conversation amongst the human shields. It had to be, it was obvious that we were going into a war zone.
And we may not return. So we would have been naive not to discuss the implications and the possible loss of life. That would have been naive. And before I left home, that was the time that I needed to deal with that question, not when I was there. And so I dealt with that question before I left home and had to ask, am I willing to die?
And other human shields had to ask the same question. And for everyone, the answer was different. And that's why, for example, some people said, well, I want to go to Iraq and be part of this mission and support it up until the bombs start, and then I'll leave. And that was like, fantastic. That's an amazing contribution to the mission.
Others supported it from home. Others supported it in different ways. And others said, I'm able to stay. You know, I was lucky to be in a situation where I had no children. And I don't know, I, for myself, I had this feeling that even though I was part of a mission that was risking possible death, I'd never felt more alive.
And most of us had never felt more alive. The human shield movement was an amazing display of Humanity and love and solidarity that I've never experienced before. And because I personally was just feeling so alive and being, I felt, led by love and humanity, I didn't feel as if I was being called to die.
I felt in my gut that it would be okay. But that's not to say that it wasn't agonizing. It was agonizing, especially when the bombs were dropping, like, some nights. Yeah, I remember leaning my back against the wall, hands over my ears, the sound of a missile dropping close to you. I can't even describe the sound.
It's so loud that I felt my eardrums would explode and bleed. And the room shaking, the windows slamming. And I had a friend who sat next to me and he said, Donna, just breathe, just breathe, just breathe. And I didn't know if that next breath would be my last. And when the bombs finished and the sun rose, we were just grateful for another day.
And we didn't know if we'd make it through another day. And all you could do was just live in the moment and be grateful that you were still alive. That's all you could do was just moment by moment, minute by minute. Well, I'm still alive. So let's go to the hospital. We're still alive. So let's. Go and photograph this, um, bombing of residential area and document it.
That's all we could do was make the most of life while we were there, not really knowing what was going to happen the next day. And we were aware as well of, you know, the Iraqis around us just being in a situation probably more dangerous than us. But at no time was this question easy, the life and death question.
Many people were in tears at night. because their families were begging for them to come home. They were ringing up the human shield office saying, tell so and so they've got to come home now. And some people stopped taking calls from their families because it was too heartbreaking. It was too agonizing.
So it was never easy.
Host: That was correspondent Andrew Stelzer, speaking with Donna Mulhearn. After her work as a human shield, Mulhern spent a great deal of time in Iraq, working to support children and families there, and documenting the debilitating impact of the years long U. S. led occupation. She wrote a book called Ordinary Courage, My Journey to Baghdad as a Human Shield. And co-wrote another book titled The Sacking of Fallujah of People's History, and we'll link to her books at our website, peace Talks radio.com. You can find both parts of this program at our website. Again, that's peace talks radio.com, as well as here all the programs in our series dating back to 2003.
There's much more detail on all of our shows there, as well as a donate button too, where you can become a peace leader by supporting the nonprofit work that we're doing here at Peace Talks Radio. Support does come from listeners like you, as well as from the Albuquerque Community Foundation Ties Fund and KUNM at the University of New Mexico.
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