Activists Come to Baghdad as ‘Shields’

You might call him the canine shield.

Gustavo, a lumbering Saint Bernard, is a four-footed pioneer -- if not a volunteer -- among this city’s incipient human shield movement.

Accompanied by 15 humans, Gustavo has arrived in Baghdad from Italy -- where he is owned by a peace-minded elderly couple -- as part of what Canadian peace advocate Roberta Taman asserts is a growing grass-roots movement to raise voices of protest against the war.

The self-proclaimed “human shields” say they expect to be joined by scores more volunteers and peace activists from around the world in the next few days. At least some of them plan to ask to be put at key installations in an attempt to deter the United States and its allies from bombing them in a looming war.

Others will not go to that extreme, Taman said. Their purpose is to demonstrate their commitment to peace and to try to encourage people around the world to stand up and speak out, rather than go along passively with a war that she believes few people consider justified.

“What we are saying,” she said, “is we are focusing on stopping this war. With your help, your mother’s help, your brother’s help, and your neighbor’s help, we believe we can stop this war.”

The activists have drawn a measure of scorn from the Bush administration. On Wednesday, a State Department spokeswoman likened them to unthinking moths flying into a flame. When asked about the volunteer human shields, Jo-Anne Prokopowicz said, “While you’re at it you might as well ask me why moths fly into porch lights.”

Taman, who lives “in the woods” about 1 1/2 hours north of Toronto, said she is an ordinary person who was moved by her opposition to the war to travel to Baghdad. She flew to France with her son’s brother-in-law, and they traveled by car to Iraq, linking up with a group of Italian human shields en route.

Early Thursday, a group of U.S. and European peace activists who organized as the Iraq “peace team” locked arms around posts of Martyrs Bridge over the Tigris River and unfurled a banner that read: “Bombing This Bridge Is a War Crime.”

At a news conference here Thursday, Taman said that her group sent a letter to former South African President Nelson Mandela two days earlier asking the Nobel Peace Prize laureate to join them in Baghdad to dramatize his opposition to the war.

She said they had received no reply. A spokesman for Mandela in Johannesburg, however, said that the 84-year-old Mandela would not travel to Iraq without a clear mandate from U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

Taman encouraged people worldwide to show up for peace demonstrations planned in most countries Saturday, one day after the key meeting today of the U.N. Security Council at which chief weapons inspectors Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei are scheduled to present their latest findings.

A steady stream of peace activists has filtered into Iraq in recent weeks, united in a belief that inspections to control Baghdad’s weapons programs are a better solution than a U.S.-led war.

“A country that can hardly provide water for its citizens cannot be a threat to the world,” one activist, Ignacio Cano of Spain, told reporters here.

Taman said she had no desire to be a martyr, and may leave in a few days with some of her fellow activists. And no matter what happens, she said, “we’re not going to let Gustavo get hurt.... We love Gustavo.”