Iraq CPTer’s Taken Hostage Twenty Years Ago

 

By Ryan James, reprinted with permission; first printed for CPT (Community Peacemaker Teams) weekly email, the Friday Bulletin Nov. 28; see cpt.org  for more information on CPT.

 

This week marks twenty years since four CPTers were taken captive in Iraq. On 26 November 2005, Norman Kember, Jim Loney, Harmeet Sooden and Tom Fox were abducted by an armed group calling itself the Swords of Righteousness Brigade. Kember, Loney and Sooden were held for 118 days. Tom Fox was killed by his captors.

The four were part of a CPT delegation to visit the team in Iraq, which worked to expose the abuses of detainees and denounce the illegal occupation of Iraq by multinational forces. Their groundwork helped to expose the torture of Iraqi prisoners in US custody at Abu Ghraib, and they were credited with sounding the alarm by Seymour Hersh, the journalist who broke the story. They knew the risks and confronted them. Tom had asked to go to Iraq following the bombing of Fallujah, in a climate in which foreign contractors were being abducted by armed groups. Reflecting before he was taken, Tom wrote: “If I am ever called upon to make the ultimate sacrifice in love of enemy, I trust that God will give me the grace to do so.”

In the days that followed, CPT “endured uncertainty, hope, fear, grief” and finally joy at their release. Actions took place around the globe, with thousands calling for their freedom. CPTers took to the streets, organizing daily processions in Washington and Toronto outside key US institutions responsible for the war on Iraq. They were determined to “continue the work” that their missing colleagues were doing. As CPT’s then-Canada Coordinator said at the time, “they would want us to continue calling for an end to the occupation and to the abuse of Iraqi detainees, even as we wait for their safe release.”

As we reflect twenty years on, we honour the fact that, throughout, those taken captive put their principles into practice, maintaining a commitment to non-violence throughout, and never failing to call out the root causes of war. We remember Norman Kember, who passed away in September this year. Upon release he told the media: “you are interviewing the wrong person. It is the ordinary people of Iraq that you should be talking to.”

The US invasion of Iraq brought death and destruction to the Iraqi people. The people of Iraq need to remain our focus. The story of the Iraqi people is one of resistance, resilience, occupation, forced starvation through sanctions, community building, and imposed divide and conquer politics at the hands of imperial powers. The CPT hostage crisis is a story within a larger story. Even as we remember the hostage crisis, there are countless stories and perspectives within the organization as well. We recognize that every time we tell a single story, there are voices missing – and we acknowledge that the voices of the Iraqi people have not been included within this telling. It is something we hope to remedy in the future. However we do believe it is also important to remember and honour peacemakers and the collective trauma CPT experienced.

The captives' release on 23 March 2006 was bittersweet. Tom Fox didn’t make it home. But he left us with words that still guide CPT’s work today – twenty years later. “We are here to root out all aspects of dehumanization that exist within us,” he wrote. “We are here to stop people, including ourselves, from dehumanizing any of God’s children, no matter how much they dehumanize their own souls.”

 

Ryan James is Communications Associate for Community Peacemaker Teams. He has been active in migrant solidarity work in Lesvos, Greece, and now lives in Athens.