Weapons of mass destruction

by

We know that we live today in a very violent world, where death from war and terror is a common feature of our daily life – we see it in our cities, attacking our friends and loved ones, or we may be far away and watched it on TV. We are in some way all linked to it, as our countries’ policies sometime manufacture death in far away places.

Few years ago in my country Iraq we were accused of building weapons of mass destruction, leading to war, changes and the death of millions of Iraqis and displacement of 7 millions. During this war, many people carried weapons and react to violence with violence, we fight US troops, then fought other Iraqi cause the worked with US troops, then we fought each other because we felt like the others want us out, death produced death, God roomed the empty streets with dead people lay for days, peace became a dream, violence produced violence, peaceful people hid scared.

Till we discover a cure, either you hide or stand, and we stood, we went to open clinics in the middle of desert for displace people camps without guns to protect us only our believe in the people will protect those who help them, we marched in 2003, 2004, 2005 in front of green zone asking the mangling council in Iraq for fair constitution with respect to human rights, we went to vote no to the constitution and we keep till today campaigning to change it sectarian soul, to remove articles 140 and 41 and separate religion from state.

We went to college to study in spit of snipers hunting any body enter the college, we went thorough the back door ,in 2007 when US troops surrounded alkarda distract looking for missing soldier kidnapped by almahdy army ,we walked 2-5 kilos every day dragging 20 child so they can study theaters and art and conflict resolution in our summer school , in 2007 peace day we preformed life play in Baghdad streets at night in memory of 400 killed in a bomb attack in Baghdad, in 2009 they tried to kill me for an article I published but I run and continue standing for them as all my brave peace activist in Iraq ,they marched after black Wednesday explosions in Baghdad and ask the government to stop corruption and build safe Iraq.

Today we are fighting through organizing conferences, workshops, exhibits to ask people to elect uncorrupted people for the government, to stop sectarian parties from dividing Iraq into 100 pieces, we post on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, WordPress, we blog, we shout we network and lobby and I know we will lose the elections cause the corruption has the law, the state and the guns with him, but we had weapons of mass destruction, not the ones Saddam built in CIA fairytales reports, but our faith in freedom, in living in our rich country in peace, we had pens to write, voices to shout, camera to document, we had our networks, and every day we grow in number, we win more people, and people will protect those who help them and this nonviolent movements will overcome all violence in the end, cause they gain power and money and loss people, we are weak but strong, we are unarmed but many, we had faith to change to dream to live and this is our weapons of mass destruction.

Change will happen in Iraq. Activists will win. Freedom will roll.

This is our vision, this is our faith…

This is our dream.

Wamith Alkssab
Co-Founder, Iraqi Streets.