Dear Friends,
for some of you it is going to be the first e-mail of this kind from me, for some not. Receiving it means that at some point of time you were a part of my life and that I consider you as someone who may occasionally think of me, pray for me, write to me, as someone who is interested in my life and my current work with the Christian Peacemaker Teams and as someone who may be supporting me perhaps in other ways.
It's been a long time since I wanted to create this mailing list and put you on it, and for too long did I keep on postponing it feeling overwhelmed with my life here in Kurdistan and on the team. I am not sure anymore if you would (still) like to be part of this virtual community of mine, but one that to me feels very important. Please, let me know. I can't promise I will write often and that I will be able to answer all the e-mails at once, but there may also be times when I write toyou more, if the situation calls for your higher attention. In case you felt you prefered to NOT get any more e-mails like this from me, please let me know. And also, if you knew someone who could be on the list, who would like to get these updates on my life, I would like to encourage you to share this letter or let me know too.
As you know, I left my "normal" life in the Czech republic in the first days of the year of 2011. I participated in the Christian Peacemaker Teams training in Chicago, U.S.A, got accepted as a full-time worker and after visiting some of dear old friends and a short return to CZ at the end of February, I left for Kurdistan, a semi-autonomous region in the northern part of Iraq. I arrived in the rush of newly started non-violent anti-government protests that lasted till the 18th of April when they were violently crushed by the armed forces. During the protests, 10 people were killed (including several teenage boys) and hundreds injured, some tortured. CPT was able to witness to a (for the most part) spontaneous rise of a non-violent movement of thousands, meeting daily at the main square of Suleimani asking for the governmental reforms. We participated in the white group - a group of local peacemakers, standing between the armed military and the protesters trying to de-escalate the tensions and possible violence. Later on, we attempted to document what was happening and trying to get the word out as the world media were preoccupied with the "Arab spring" and Kurdistan - "haven of democracy in the worn-torn Iraq" - rhetorics. We built close friendships with some of the organizers, did some accompaniment work, some building of bridges. After the protests, we maintained our contacts with the activists witnessing to some of them being harassed and shot, but also to the beauty of the Cultural Cafe (a grass-roots meeting place and library for activists, artists, thinkers, etc.) as it has grown and continues to grow.
In April, I co-led a delegation, which was a really good experience, helping me to gain some self confidence in the much more experienced team working under high-stress conditions due to the everyday contact with the protesters and omnipresence of violence and harassment targetting them.
You can watch a nice video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehrqUwm5Zac&list=UUIOpLfSD5m3b45al27F2nEw&index=5&feature=plcp
and read some more information here:
http://cpt.org/cptnet/2011/05/10/iraq-reflection-state-peoples-uprising
http://cpt.org/cptnet/2011/05/06/iraq-reflection-kerosene-wound
http://cpt.org/cptnet/2011/06/29/iraq-lawyer-shot-and-injured-suleimaniya-iraq
and look at some pictures:
https://picasaweb.google.com/cptiraq.team/DemonstrationsSuleymania
https://picasaweb.google.com/cptiraq.team/SulaymaniyaProtestFeb25DayOfRage
https://picasaweb.google.com/cptiraq.team/SulaymaniyaProtestFeb24
https://picasaweb.google.com/cptiraq.team/SulaymaniyaProtestFeb23
https://picasaweb.google.com/cptiraq.team/SulaymaniyaProtestFebruary22
At the end of April, I spent a little over a week in Turkey, occupying my mind with some nice things at that time.
In May, I did my first three week long intense course in Sorani - a version of Kurdish language spoken in the parts of Kurdistan where I currently live and work most.
As the planting season in the mountain villages started at the end of May, the cross-border bombardment by Iran and Turkey began to resume.
My team mate Peggy and I were blessed to experience beautiful and intense eight days in Kani Spi - a mountain village situated in stunning mountains just a few km far from the Iranian border. We were accepted as members of one of the family and could experience part of the lives that the villagers shared with us as we worked together and planted tomatoes, cucumbers and wheat next to the mine-fields, as we ate meals and drank tea together, as we played with children and with them listened to the Iranian artillery firing at, luckily, not our village at that time.
Our plan was to stay in the village throughout the whole summer until the end of the planting season. We had verbal permissions from the mayor of the district and the local Asaish (intelligence service), and the door seemed to be fully open. Upon our return to Suleimani for a couple of days, an Iranian military vehicle crossed the border near Kani Spi and went on a landmine that exploded and killed all the soldiers in the vehicle. Media were full of that incident and as the higher positioned Asaish became interested in the region, we were never able to return, apart from retrieving our stuff and tents with an Asaish escort :( It was a sad good-bye. Our attempts to get a permission in the capital of the governorate and the Kurdistan region - Hawler - which would "beat" the rejection of the mid-level Asaish never worked out. Kani Spi, apart from occasional short visits, stays for us out of reach up to this day.
This stay was a highlight of my first stint on the team as a full-timer. Already on my CPT delegation to Kurdistan (April 2009) I fell in love with this beautiful village with such a powerful history.
You can read about the village here:
http://cpt-iraq.blogspot.com/2010/01/what-can-you-do-when-you-find-yourself.html
http://cpt.org/cptnet/2011/08/05/iraq-iranian-attacks-kurdish-villages-intensify
and watch a video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bmz6Bi6ojGw&list=UUIOpLfSD5m3b45al27F2nEw&index=8&feature=plcp
My three-year-long full-time engagement to the CPT commits me to spending each year nine months on the team, which for me is the one in Kurdistan, and to one and a half months of doing other CPT related work like: outreach, speaking, writing, fundraising etc.
I left Kurdistan for two incredibly hot and arid summer months. I spent about three weeks in the CZ with my beloved family and friends processing my past four months on the team and together with Darek and TentWork crew and some fellow CPTers went to Slot Art festival in Poland, Freakstock in Germany and Frizon in Sweden to talk, run worskhops, and spread the news about the Kurdish people's struggle for peace, CPT and Jesus and non-violence.
After Frizon, I spent five days in in Riga, Latvia with Francois - a close friend of mine. And from Riga, I flew with Magda, another friend of mine to Istanbul to continue together back to Kurdistan. Before rejoining my team in Suleimani by the end of August, I wanted to experience a little more of the northern - occupied by Turkey - part of Kurdistan. We got as far as Van - beautiful lake - but not so beautiful city, met some really beautiful people and experienced the almost limitless Kurdish hospitality.
* one story for all: we wanted to stay overnight on the hill overlooking the lake Van and an island with a 11th century Armenian church. When the sun was setting a 15year old Kurdish shepherd came by with his 300 or so headed flock. He insisted we came with him. We spent a lovely time with his family. Magda and I got served an amazing dinner and then breakfast in the morning, the latter of which we ate alone, becuase it was Ramadan and the family fasted since sunrise. Before leaving the house, we found out that our stinky socks that we left on the porch with our shoes got washed.
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This summer and autumn were very bad for the villagers in the border regions. Besides the Iranian artillery bombardments of the villages that continued till mid-October and Turkish jet-fighter bombings that hadn't ceased up to this day, the Iranian military ventured an overland incursion in July (on the day of my 30th birthday) and the Turkish military in October. Around 800 hundred of families got displaced. Some of our friends spent three months in the IDP tent camps, dependent on humanitarian assistence and self-sustainance while having their crops, houses, livestock, fields killed, damaged and deteriorate.
https://picasaweb.google.com/cptiraq.team/DisplacedPeopleInPrdeHazwaAug32011
http://cpt.org/index.php?q=gallery&g2_itemId=24664
Most people from the Iranian borders were able to return to their damaged villages, some people close to the Turkish border are still in the camps due to the on-going bombings. Bombardments killed several villagers and shepherds. On the 21st of August a car with seven family members (incl. two children and a baby) got smashed to pieces by a Turkish jet-fighter bomb. This act drew a lot of media interest and sparked a wave of civilian non-violent demonstrations. We joined some of these and also organized our own in front of the embassies and the Kurdistan Parliament. The parliament, because, not only didn't the Kurdistan Regional Government condemn the attacks, at one point of time it seemed, that they may even help the Turkish/Iranian coalition. Out of this fear and also for some other reasons, we ventured with the team into a survey project, that would amplify the voices and opinions of the regular people about the cross-border attacks to the government. It took us two months to conduct the whole survey. We will see (?) what results it may bring but so far the reception was very good and it got covered in a very positive way by the main Kurdish media.
A link to the survey and some pictures from our press conference 10 days ago>
http://www.cpt.org/files/iraq/Kurdistan-public-opinion-poll-crossborder-military-operations.pdf
http://cpt.org/cptnet/2011/12/12/iraq-cpt-iraq-releases-survey-results-kurdish-civilian-opinions-toward-cross-borde
http://cpt.org/index.php?q=gallery&g2_itemId=24797
some pictures from the demonstrations:
https://picasaweb.google.com/cptiraq.team/ProtestAgainstTurkishAndIranianBombingAtUnitedNation
http://cpt.org/index.php?q=gallery&g2_itemId=24731
https://picasaweb.google.com/cptiraq.team/ActionAtUSConsulate
The last four months felt to me very rushed and busy. Upon my return after summer, I got a sweet-bitter "priviledge" of becoming a coordinator for our team. The CPT teams work on a consensus based decision-making and the coordinator's role means more responsibilities on staying focused on all that needs to be done and bringing these things into team's attention, facilitating meetings and checking-in with the team members about their roles on the team and maintaining regular contacts with the support team coordinator from our CPT support team. Only in the situations of emergency and the inability of the team to make decisions, the decisions for the team may be made by a coordinator. This role gave me an extra share of needed self-confidence for my work here and helped me to realize a number of important things mostly about myself and the way I deal with things like fear, trust, power and control. I learned more about the team dynamics and was able to engage a very new long-term team into a successful quest for a common vision/direction and ways of accomplishing and following it. Passing on this role to my other team mate after over two and half months, relieved me of quite an amount of stress and gave me more freedom to follow my share of the chosen goals and to finally learn more Kurdish language in another town.
As I wrote, our team went through some changes. Chihchun who was a core member of the team for over three years and for most of the time the only full-timer, left the team in October. During her last month and a half, I was the only other long-term worker and still relatively new. I felt a lot of burden on my shoulders to preserve what the team has learned and built in the past 5 years of its existence. Later on, Kathy, my half-time team-mate and Garland, full-timer rejoined the team after their breaks. And in November, a completely new full-time CPTer came from the UK to join the team. All of us met as a new team and will, insha'allah, work together for several years. We spent a couple of weeks on team-building activities and forming our shared vision-direction and a common set of goals. In October, we also had Milena, our brand new support coordinator visiting us and getting to know us and the country and we were getting to know her. She has served for several years a support team coordinator for the Colombian team and since October became one for us too.
Apart from that in October, I coordinated another delegation, which was exhausting but also incredibly fulfilling in the way it went in what all others and I could experience. This delegation was one of the best times for me, especially our two day stay in a magical Assyrian/Kurdish village of Merkegia.
I am sending you a link to a report from the delegation and some pictures:
http://cpt.org/participate/join-delegation/delegation-reports/iraq-2011
http://www.dropbox.com/gallery/43798169/1/Finished%20delegation%20pictures?h=9c8502
and a story from our stay in Merkegia>
http://cpt.org/cptnet/2011/11/14/iraq-reflection-apple-day%E2%80%A6
My hope is that you will understand a little more of my procrastination regarding writing this e-mail (and others) to you keeping my blog in such a long limbo. These past months have been very full and busy. In a very fulfilling way. They made me become much more grounded here in this work, in this place and this team. Much more present here. As my roots here become slowly stronger, my ties with you grow somewhat weaker. Please help me maintain them, your support is needed so much. Not only for me, but also for the cause that we all share, of the free and peaceful, not only Kurdistan and Iraq, but the whole world.
As a bright star led the magi/wise men all the way from Kurdistan just to greet the newly born Jesus, let yourself also be led in your pursuit of your heart and beliefs by your bright star to wherever it may take you to.
And let us witness together to the realization of God's kingdom of freedom in our hearts and minds and "on the whole earth as it is in heaven".
Thank you for being part of this.
Lukasz / Jumper
my blog (that needs revitalization)> http://nanautzin.blogspot.com
and links to our work, articles, videos and pictures>
http://cpt.org/work/iraq
http://cpt-iraq.blogspot.com/
http://www.youtube.com/user/cptiraq
http://picasaweb.google.com/cptiraq.team
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Christian-Peacemaker-Teams-Kurdistan-of-Iraq/184158475000732?sk=wall&filter=12
Sunday, December 18, 2011
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