August 25, 2008 9:58 AM
Hooping for peace

If you're trying to promote an event, you could do worse - and so many have - than an attractive young woman twirling a hoop around her midsection.

Melody Moezzi is an attorney, author, hooper and activist who, along with her husband Matt Lenard, will be Hooping for Peace on Tuesday and Wednesday at Driscoll Green, 2055 E. Evans Ave., on the University of Denver campus.

Hooping for Peace is a two-day long outdoor event (rain or shine) uniting people--across race, gender, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, ethnic or national origin, age, disability, culture and religion--to promote world peace, as well as to support Barack Obama's call for peace and his ultimate election as the next President of the United States of America. HFP opposes and denounces all acts of aggression that are not in imminent and genuine self-defense, including the proliferation of weapons worldwide (particularly nuclear weapons), as well as the invasion or occupation of Iran, or any other country not presenting an immediate threat inside our borders. To view HFP's extended mission statement, scroll down or click on the "Mission Statement" link to the right.

Apart from hula-hooping to the beats of lively and diverse tunes, HFP will also be hosting several speakers and panel discussions with leading progressive thinkers and activists, including co-founder of the Iraq Veterans' Refugee Aid Association (IVRAA) and former Army Captain, Luis Montalvan; author, scholar and professor of Islamic studies, Dr. Liyakat Takim; CODEPINK co-founders, Jodie Evans and Medea Benjamin, and many others.


For more information check out hoopingforpeace.com

~posted by Luis

Activist veterans seek help for displaced Iraqis
By jlowe
Created 08/13/2008 - 10:05

local news northampton
NORTHAMPTON - Back from a weeklong trip to Jordan, Leeds resident Tyler Boudreau now hopes to enlist congressional help for Iraqi refugees there.

A former captain in the Marines who fought in Iraq in 2004 and 2005, Boudreau conceived the idea for the trip with another former military officer, Luis Montalvan, of Brooklyn, N.Y.

Their purpose, in Montalvan's words, was to gain a "wide and narrow view of the humanitarian crisis" sparked by the estimated 500,000 to 750,000 refugees entering Jordan since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.

"What's most compelling about this investigation we've done is there's total consensus," Boudreau said Tuesday. "Everyone agrees we should help the Iraqi people and the Iraqi refugees."

With their own take on the refugee situation, Boudreau and Montalvan now plan to draft a report and present it to U.S. Reps. John Olver, D-Amherst, and Richard Neal, D-Springfield, and Sens. Edward Kennedy and John Kerry, both D-Mass. They hope this, in turn, will lead to a congressional hearing on the issue. The Massachusetts legislators previously sent letters supporting the Jordan trip, Boudreau said.

An estimated 4.7 million Iraqis have been forced out of their homes because of violence since the American invasion. About 2 million people have fled Iraq altogether to neighboring countries like Jordan and Syria.

Boudreau and Montalvan formed the Iraq Veterans' Refugees Aid Association (www.firstgiving.com/iraqveteransrefugeeaidassociation [1]) earlier this year to raise awareness about the refugee crisis.

The former soldiers traveled with photographer Paul Park and Agence France-Presse reporter Karin Zeitvogel. They were in Amman, Jordan's capital, Aug. 3 through Sunday. Boudreau writes about his experiences on his blog, deeperthanwars.blogspot.com.

Refugee brothers named Ali and Hamza served as their hosts and translators. Montalvan said he struck up a friendship with Ali after he volunteered as a translator for his Army unit in the early years of the war.

"He wanted to see Iraq prosper," Montalvan said. "At that time, people were optimistic."

But Ali later fled his home in Baghdad, Montalvan said, because his cooperation with American forces provoked death threats. Today his lives with his brother, father, sister and her children in a small apartment. Montalvan hopes the State Department will soon give Ali special immigrant status, allowing him and his extended family to resettle in the U.S.

Boudreau said the living conditions of other refugees he visited varied. One family, devastated by various medical problems, could only afford to live in a two-room apartment with no windows. Another had come to Amman with a fair amount of money saved, and were sending their children to private school.

But even for those relatively well off, Boudreau said, the future doesn't hold much in store. Refugees can't legally get jobs in Jordan.

"How would you feel if you had no future?" Boudreau asked. "How would you feel if you had no future for your kids?"

Though his mission is to advocate for the refugees, he said he feels conflicted about publicizing the often heart-rending stories they shared with him in confidence.

"You don't want to have to convince people," he said. "You don't want to have to sell it."

In addition to visiting displaced Iraqi individuals and families living in Amman, Boudreau and Montalvan also met with officials at the U.S. and Iraqi embassies there, the directors of the Jordanian ministries of the Interior and Foreign Affairs, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees and some nongovernmental aid organizations.

They said all agreed that aid groups need more resources to lift refugees out of poverty and resettle them outside an overburdened Jordan. There was also consensus that returning the refugees to Iraq, given continuing violence and structural and economic devastation, is not an option, Boudreau said.

James F. Lowe can be reached at jlowe@gazettenet.com [2].

Daily Hampshire Gazette © 2008 All rights reserved

From despair to hope via Google: US veterans help Iraqi refugees
by Karin Zeitvogel
Mon Aug 11, 12:56 AM ET

It has been more than two years since Ali Salah arrived in Jordan, one refugee among hundreds of thousands who have fled the violence in Iraq.

Salah was forced to flee Iraq as months after the US-led invasion of Iraq, he volunteered to work with US troops as an interpreter, earning himself the hatred of some Iraqis who branded him an enemy collaborator.

"I felt I wasn't safe, and that meant that my family wasn't safe," said Salah, who worked with the Americans at the Al Waleed border crossing, which sits at the point where Jordan, Iraq and Syria meet.

Once in Jordan, Salah should have been fast-tracked for a visa to resettle in the United States under US policies which are supposed to ease the immigration process for those who worked alongside Americans during the war.

But instead, he was stonewalled by international officials and was even told that he never worked with US troops because he was unable to produce a US-issued badge that would provide proof in the eyes of official.

"When I arrived here, I went to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and talked to them about my case, but I had no proof that I had worked with the US army," Salah, using an assumed name for security reasons, told AFP.

"A year later, I lost the hope to start over. Things weren't moving, and I wondered what I could do," he said.

According to Iraqi officials, there are up to 450,000 refugees from Iraq in Jordan, while Jordanian officials put the figure at 750,000.

"We don't have any statistics but we consider there are between 400,000 and 450,000 refugees from Iraq here," said Thamir Salman, a minister plenipotentiary at the Iraqi embassy in Amman.

"Jordan's population of five million has grown by 750,000 with the arrival of the Iraqi refugees," said Nasser al-Ramadan, director of the office of the Jordanian Interior Minister.

Salah is one of those Iraqi refugees who, in the words of one official, "will never, ever be able to go back."

"Most refugees want to go home. Most don't want to go somewhere new and restart their lives," said the diplomat, who asked not to be named.

"At this time, most Iraqis in Jordan don't see a situation where they can return. And some will never, ever be able to go back," he said.

In Jordan, Salah and his family were living off their savings and the money they had made selling both their cars before leaving Iraq. The former customs officer and interpreter was sinking deeper into despair.

Then, he was thrown a lifeline via the Internet.

"I put the name of the American commanding officer I worked with at Al Waleed in Google and I couldn't believe it when I found him and saw his picture. I screamed to my brother: 'Look! It's Luis,'" Salah said

This week, Salah was reunited in Amman with former US Army captain Luis Montalvan, who retired from the army last year after 17 years' service and recently set up an association to help Iraqi refugees.

"If it weren't for you, many of my soldiers would have died," Montalvan said to Salah as the two men embraced, four years after they last saw each other in Iraq.

Montalvan was in Jordan on a mission for Iraq Veterans' Refugee Aid Association (IVRAA), the non-profit he founded with fellow Iraq veteran, former Marine captain Tyler Boudreau.

"We feel it's our nation's responsibility to help; IVRAA is a way to correct some mistakes," Montalvan said.

"I feel a bit responsible as a former military officer for some of the displacement of Iraqis," Boudreau said.

"This is one way of trying to do something," he added.

In Amman, the two former officers met with Jordanian government officials, Iraqi and American diplomats, and representatives from UN agencies and non-governmental organisations.

During a meeting at the US embassy, a state department official told Boudreau and Montalvan that "based on the documents presented to them, they believe Salah qualifies for the Special Immigration Visa because it's been shown he served as an interpreter for coalition forces," Montalvan told AFP.

The Special Immigration Visa for interpreters would speed up the application process and allow Salah to take his entire family with him to America.

"Now in the streets of Jordan, I walk like this," Salah said, hoisting up his elbows and swaggering in his seat.

"But sometimes I'm still afraid I will be sent back to Iraq. I always think about this. Always."

The Huffington Post
August 10, 2008

Karin Zeitvogel



In Jabal al-Jofa, Iraq Vets Sow Seeds Of Hope
Posted August 9, 2008 04:24 PM (EST)

AMMAN, August 8, 2008 - Our taxicab was scaling a climb so precipitous that most taxi drivers in the Jordanian capital refuse to go up it.

But our cab driver, Omar, pressed the accelerator to the floor and urged his yellow taxi on. We crawled up the steep incline, struggled around a hairpin turn to the left and then continued to the left into a dead-end alleyway.

Two boys kicked a World Cup 2006 replica football back and forth between them at one end of the alley, and the skinniest of stray cats eyed our taxi, half with suspicion and half with hope that we might be bearers of scraps of food. Litter spilled from metal municipal bins and piles of sandstone rubble - ubiquitous in Jordan - clumped together at the sides of the alleyway.

Welcome to Jabal al-Jofa, one of Amman's poorest neighbourhoods, and home to Ahmed Thahir and his family, refugees from Iraq.

I had made the climb up the infamous hill that taxi drivers hate with Tyler Boudreau of Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVRAA) and Paul Park, IVRAA's official photographer on the new association's first-ever mission. We had chosen Amman, Jordan as the venue of the mission, and tonight's visit was aimed at giving us greater insight into how the most destitute of refugees live.

That's why we had come to Jabel al-Jofa to visit Thahir, who fled the southern port city of Basra shortly before the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, his wife and two sons in tow, hear his story and, we hoped, give him a glimmer of hope that things can and will get better.

"We left Basra because we sensed that something bad was going to happen," Thahir said, after he had welcomed us into the tiny apartment the family now calls home.

The only window to the room has been bricked shut. There is only a ceiling fan that clicks noisily on each revolution, for ventilation. The entire family sleeps in the only other room of the flat in a building perched atop the hillside that our taxi had struggled up.

The Thahirs live on hand-outs from acquaintances and charities, and on unquenchable hope that endures despite setbacks and difficulties beyond the imagination of your average American or European.

One of the two boys who fled with Ahmed and Lina from Basra died in Jordan "due to poverty," his anguished father said.

The other son, 12-year-old Arshad, is blind in one eye and hard of hearing. Lina believes that her two sons were born with congenital defects because she had been exposed to radioactive material left in Basra during the 1991 Gulf War.

The Thahir's five-year-old daughter Adian, who was born in Jordan, has had seven operations to correct an intestinal defect.

Several of the operations were botched: in one, surgical clips were left inside the little girl and had melded into the intestinal wall by the time she was cut back open to have them removed. In another, the doctors accidentally removed one of her ovaries. In another, they scratched her womb lining, her parents said.

In addition to the agony of seeing their children suffer, the Thahirs were lumbered with sizeable medical bills, which they could not pay.

"We are unable to afford medication and medical fees. We lost our other son due to extreme poverty. For our daughter's operation, we collected the money we needed through donations," Thahir said.

Their calls for help for their children have gone largely unheeded.

"When I sought treatment for my son here, I was told there's no treatment here, only abroad," said Lina.

"But it's been one year since I applied to the UNHCR to seek medical care abroad for him, but I've had no reply," she said.

Outside, a muezzin intoned the Muslim call to prayer. His call to the faithful wafted into the small room as the fan creaked and clicked on the ceiling.

I asked a question, putting it first through our interpreter: how did the Thahirs see Tyler, a veteran of the war they fled who was now in Amman to try to help them?

"Because he came here for this mission, we can forgive him," said Thahir.

Then, the questions began flowing in the other direction - towards Tyler - as Nadia, an Iraqi nurse who does volunteer work among refugees, asked whether Tyler had volunteered to fight in Iraq, or been pressured to go.

The former Marine captain spoke openly and candidly.

"I was in the Marine Corps for a very long time. I was a military career man. I had been in the Marine Corps for 10 years before the war in Iraq. And I did volunteer," Tyler replied.

There was a palpable silence. Even the muezzin outside had stopped. The only sound in the room was the clicking of the ceiling fan.

Nadia said: "Did you believe in the war?"

And Tyler responded: "When we left, our commanders and leaders told us that we were going to help the Iraqi people. That was the very clear message. And I believed in that message.

"When I discovered we were hurting more than we were helping, I got out. I left."

"Bless you," said Nadia. "We thank God that you came back safely from Iraq."

I dissolved into tears. Part of IVRAA's mission to heal the wounds of war had been accomplished.

by Karin Zeitvogel

US Vets Return to Middle East to Help Iraqi Refugees
huffington_post:http://www.huffingtonpost.com/karin-zeitvogel/us-vets-return-to-middle_b_117144.html

Posted August 5, 2008 06:40 PM (EST)

Amman, August 5, 2008 -- The journey to Jordan is long and arduous enough when you set out from the United States: traveling robs you of an entire day, and you forgo the creature comforts of life during 12 hours spent on a plane.

But it would be exponentially longer and infinitely more perilous if you were to set out to cover the much shorter distance from neighboring Iraq, fleeing a devastating war and leaving behind a lifetime that has been stolen from you by violence.

I'm on the first day of a rapid-fire visit to Jordan, the kingdom in the Middle East which has provided a safe haven for an estimated 750,000 refugees from Iraq who have traveled the shorter but more dangerous route to get here.

I'm traveling with a small delegation from the newly founded Iraq Veterans' Refugee Aid Association (IVRAA) -- co-founders of the organization, Luis Montalvan, a former US Army captain, and former US Marine captain Tyler Boudreau, plus photographer Paul Park -- on a mission to try to assess the situation faced by Iraqi refugees, and the burden that hosting those refugees has placed on the Hashemite kingdom.

We also hope to work out what, if anything, we can do to help provide relief to either or both.
That may seem a tall order for three or four people, but in the first 12 hours of the trip we've achieved far more than any of us would probably have dared to imagine six weeks ago when IVRAA germinated.

Tuesday was our first full day in Jordan. People kept moving the goalposts or adding new obstacles, but we kept ducking and diving and taking up the challenges. From when we woke at 6:00 am -- 9 pm Monday on the east coast of the US -- after having slept something like four hours, we went into rounds of meetings, one bang after the other, with Iraqi refugees, Jordanian officials and leaders of NGOs.

Each painted a different picture of the situation faced by Iraqi refugees in Jordan. Each taught us a different lesson. And each called for the people and government of the United States to open their eyes, recognize that the refugee crisis is real and present, and do more to resolve a problem that the United States created, in large part.

The day started with a meeting with two brothers, Hamza and Ali, who left Iraq just over two years ago with nothing more than their savings and the irreplaceable treasure of their family: their father, sister and her two sons, Ali's wife, and themselves.

Both brothers have been kicking their heels in Amman ever since, awaiting word about whether or not they will be given leave to emigrate to the United States. Ali should have been fast-tracked and given priority under the US policy of direct access, which eases the application process for those who worked for the Americans during the war. But he hasn't been, partly because he stepped up to the plate before there were official badges and IDs that identified someone as having worked with the Americans. Those badges are like gold dust these days, giving the bearer the right to a new life, far away from the country they loved and still love, Iraq, but to which they cannot return since they have been branded enemy collaborators by some of their compatriots.

So Ali simply whiles away the days, staying at home so he isn't picked up by the Jordanian police, watching what's left of his life slink away but never really giving up on the idea that he will, one day, make it to the US.

Hamza, on the other hand, learned recently that his application to emigrate to the United States has been accepted by the International Organization for Migration (IOM), and he is simply waiting for the date when he can fly out to start his new life in America.

He wasn't fast-tracked -- how can anyone call a two-year wait fast-tracking? -- but was given a visa as an urgent humanitarian case after being detained while walking on the streets of Amman.
"I was walking alone in and a policeman stopped me and asked for my resident's card. I didn't have one but I gave him my United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) paper. He didn't care. He took me to the police station," Hamza said.

"This happened around February. I called the UNHCR and told them I had been jailed. I got jailed about 8 o'clock in the morning and spent about 4-5 hours in the cell with a couple of Egyptians and a Syrian man, all of whom had also overstayed their visas -- like me. I think the Jordanians wanted to deport me the day after.

"I was released because a Jordanian friend got me out. I got out by using clout.

"The UN called me days later, and I was interviewed by an American man. I explained everything about my case, and he understood. I told him I can't even go back to my house now. I can't tell what will happen with me. I told him it was an emergency."

Hamza was issued with a coveted blue card bearing a stamp from the Jordanian Interior Ministry and the signature of Imran Riza, head of the UNHCR in Jordan, which indicates that he is a bona fide refugee. He was also told he will be heading to the United States, possibly by the early autumn.

But when he heads stateside, he will leave behind him his brother and sister-in-law, a sister and two small nephews, his elderly father. It's almost like the Sophie's Choice of the Iraq war. And it's our creation, and we are perpetuating it.

As Hamza spoke, you could hear the hope in his voice and see the optimism in his eyes. Ali fixed his haunted gaze on a distant point and listened to his younger brother's tale of goals to be fulfilled and dreams to realize. There was no bitterness between them, no rivalry, just hope that their lives could be put back on track and their dreams would not be snuffed out.

Hamza was headed in the right direction to achieve his goals; a big part of IVRAA's mission is to help the likes of Ali to never lose sight of theirs.

It's just six weeks, buckets of sweat, sleepless nights, wells of tears on my part, and more emails than a chain letter generates since IVRAA was formally created. But today, we took a huge step down the path to getting this fledgling organization with a big heart to truly soar. We met with Jordanian government officials -- I was told that was nigh-on impossible --; with UN officials, with refugees. Tomorrow the cycle continues, with talks not only with US diplomats but also the Iraqi ambassador to Jordan and at least one humanitarian aid worker.

If that's what just three people can achieve, working tirelessly for a cause, think what 300, 3,000 or a few more zeros at the end could achieve.

Time to wake up and smell the Iraqi chai that we've brewed, America.