Americans Sing for Peace in Baghdad

In a strong voice accompanying her own guitar, Kristina Olsen, a 44-year-old nurse whose sister died in the World Trade Center attack, sang for peace Wednesday at the site of a U.S. airstrike during the Persian Gulf War.

“One world, one heart, but yet so much we think sets us apart,” Olsen, of Newburyport, Mass., sang at the Amariya shelter memorial, where hundreds of Iraqi civilians reportedly died Feb. 13, 1991, in the rocket strike.

Olsen is one of four U.S. relatives of Sept. 11 victims who arrived in this Iraqi capital to say they don’t want more violence to follow in Iraq.

Surrounded by residents of the Amariya neighborhood on the western edge of Baghdad, Olsen performed while her colleagues held up a banner reading, in English and Arabic, “Peaceful Tomorrows for All.”

One of her listeners, a tall man with a red patterned scarf tied neatly around his face, watched with tears in his eyes.

Yousif Wais Abbas, a 52-year-old taxi driver, said he lost his wife, his mother and four of his children in the 1991 strike. And although he did not understand the words of Olsen’s song, he said he understood the feelings.

“I am very moved that this woman came here to express her condolences to me,” Abbas said. “I know that she also suffered the loss of a family member, and it is good for us to be together at the time when bombs from her country can hit this village again.”

Iraq has always portrayed the rocket attack as a deliberate strike meant to kill women and children, and it says that 408 civilians were killed.

The United States has said that the strike was intended for senior government and military officials believed to be hiding in the shelter and that the U.S. was unaware that civilians had taken refuge there as well.

Abbas said he thought that the shelter, with its 7-foot-thick walls and ceiling, was the safest place in the area during the allied air raids 12 years ago. His wife, mother, three daughters and two younger sons were terrified by the sound of bombs exploding, he said, and every night he took them to the shelter, while he and three older sons stayed in the house.

“This night, a particularly huge explosion was heard in our village,” Abbas recalled. “The sound came from the side of the shelter. It was 4:40 in the morning.

“We ran there but saw fire and smoke coming out from the middle of the roof. The doors were jammed, and we couldn’t open them at once. When we did, almost everybody was dead. Most of them were incinerated. My younger son was among very few survivors, but he was badly burned all over his body.”

Olsen and her colleagues toured the shattered shelter, which has been kept as it was as a monument. Inside, they exchanged stories of grief with the residents of Amariya.

“Understanding is the key. That is why we are here,” Olsen said. “In listening to them, I hope to find an understanding within myself and share it with others back home in the hope that we will realize again that more unites us than separates us.”

Olsen’s elder sister, Laurie Neira, a medical transcriber, died in the Sept. 11 attacks.

Terry Rockefeller, 52, a documentary filmmaker from Massachusetts, lost her sister Laura, 41, a singer and actress. After only one day in Iraq, she said, she already knew what message she would take back home.

“I feel that I will be going home with a sense of people who want to hear our stories and want to share their stories,” said Rockefeller, her voice trembling with emotion.

A steady stream of American and European peace activists has been pouring into Iraq for weeks to express disapproval of what they see as U.S. war plans.

Iraqi authorities have welcomed the activists and in some cases helped with transportation, accommodations and, of course, visas. Some of the visitors have purely anti-American agendas. Among a European group that represented several countries was a young man who loudly called America a terrorist state and an assassin during a rally at the headquarters of U.N. weapons inspectors in Baghdad.

In an interview, he gave his name as Bahar Kimyongur and said he was a member of the Revolutionary People’s Liberation Front, an organization outlawed in Turkey and part of the U.S. blacklist of terrorist organizations.

Kimyongur boasted that in 1991 his group carried out attacks on U.S. military bases in Turkey.

“If America begins its aggression in Iraq, we will not stay peaceful again,” Kimyongur said. “We will open a second front in their rear. And they will pay a very dear price for their aggression.”

In southern Iraq, a Canadian member of a visiting group called Christian Peacemaker Teams died Monday when a vehicle flipped over on a road in Basrah. Killed was George Webber, 73. Two American colleagues were injured.

Cynthia Banas, 73, of a Chicago-based group called Voices in the Wilderness eulogized Webber. “All his life he worked for peace, and he died in this effort,” she said.