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2008-01-08 issue:

Support increases for Iraqi peacemakers

Mennonite Central Committee places first worker in Iraq since 2003.

by Tim Shenk

Print Article

Amid changing conflicts in Iraq, Mennonite Central Committee is finding more opportunities to help Iraqi peacemakers bring healing to their divided and traumatized society. Last November, MCC placed its first worker in Iraq since 2003. John Filson of Laguna Niguel, Calif., moved to the northern Iraqi city of Erbil to teach English and conflict transformation at a Chaldean Catholic college and seminary.



Father Bashar Warda, the president of Babel Seminary, shows John Filson the grounds of a seminary building under construction near Erbil, Iraq. Filson is a Mennonite Central Committee worker who is teaching at the seminary. Photo by Daryl Byler.

MCC usually had one or two workers in Iraq from 1998 to 2003 but withdrew its personnel after the U.S.-led invasion. MCC’s partner organizations asked MCC not to place workers in the country because they considered it unsafe to be closely associated with foreigners at the time, according to Daryl Byler, an MCC regional representative.

The seminary’s openness to hosting Filson is one sign of the new possibilities for MCC to work in Iraq, Byler says. He and his wife, Cindy Byler, who is also a regional representative, traveled to northern Iraq in late November 2007 to connect with community organizations and churches.

MCC has committed $400,000 to fund projects in Iraq over the next two years, including workshops on conflict resolution and aid for communities where people have been displaced by violence. Additionally, MCC has shipped relief supplies worth more than $1.2 million to Iraq since March 1, 2007, including more than 30,000 blankets. MCC partner organizations are currently distributing many of these items in northern Iraq.

While reports of violence have decreased in Iraq over the last three to six months, the country remains deeply divided. Conflicts have displaced an estimated 2.4 million people within Iraq, and many more have fled the country. Byler says one reason for the decrease in violence is that many Iraqis have fled conflict areas.

Iraq’s historic Christian communities, which are mostly Catholic and Orthodox, are struggling to maintain their presence, Byler adds. An estimated 350,000 of Iraq’s 800,000 Christians have fled the country since 2003 because of inter-religious tensions and violence. MCC is looking for ways to support Iraqi churches through conflict resolution training and job creation projects.

“There is an openness and receptivity to peace-building principles, and the sense is that now is the time,” Cindy Byler says.

Since 2000, MCC has sponsored about 15 Iraqi men and women to attend Summer Peacebuilding Institute, a peace and conflict studies program at Eastern Mennonite University, Harrisonburg, Va. Daryl Byler says that MCC staff members are currently reconnecting with Iraqi SPI participants, most of whom are Muslims, in order to find new ways to support conflict resolution in Iraq.

According to Byler, SPI participants say that Iraqis need peace-building skills, especially in the current climate of religious and ethnic tension.

“The thing that stands out to them about peace-building concepts is that we don’t need to see our identity as a source of being superior to others but rather as a lens for how we see the world,” he says. “As Sunni or Shia or Christian, we each bring something wonderful to the table.”

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