The path we have chosen: renouncing violence

Zaid Al-Wardi  - Co-founder of Al Mesalla, an Iraqi organization working on a nonviolent transformation of the Iraqi conflict

April 9th, 2003 not only represents the day in which the United States armed forces invaded Iraq, nor is it the day that Bagdad and the rest of the country fell.  That April 9th is significant in a variety of other ways that we couldn’t just understand with a mere article or with a singular viewpoint.  The first that comes to mind are the divisions and contradictions that before this date had been hidden under the terror of the dictatorship.  But there are also the many doubts that extend from what to call that day—the day of liberation or occupation—to what form the new State should take when building itself over the ruins of the previous one. Thousands of cracks can be counted.  And added together they have provoked a big enough change on the social and political map to draw up a new social reality entrenched in groups that are different from the Iraqi society that tried to implant a modern state. 

As the divisions became even more pronounced, the violence continued to increase, especially the violence that different opposing fractions have used in order to consolidate their own existence and new emirates and to change the social and political borders.  Waves of violence and refugees have affected millions of the Iraqi people.  Civilians account for the majority of the conflict’s victims.  .

Throughout this last period our new point of view regarding how the Iraqi situation should be has begun to take shape.  If there are contradictions or ruptures we can’t ignore them or suppress them as was done before.  Another path will have to be built so that those conflicts can move and interaction between them can take place.  Solving conflicts this way gives us the nonviolent alternative that Mahatma Gandhi in India and Martin Luther King Jr. had already established through their experiences.

"Some would make it seem that the invitation to a nonviolent fight is an indirect invitation to give up"

Adopting the principles of nonviolence may seem easy but it is so only on paper.  The culture of fighting in the Iraqi society could be due to a combative nature closely tied to an imperial Iraqi past that grew in large part to victories in the battlefield or to a newer culture of national armed resistance experienced by the majority of third world countries like Iraq.  Furthermore, in our society, the stories of nonviolent experiences throughout history in the Arab and Islamic world that include nonviolent liberation movements are ignored and obscured.  That’s why for some it would seem like the invitation to a nonviolent fight is an indirect invitation to give up, given that they believe that a fight can’t be carried out without sticks and stones.  Therefore, they think that these nonviolent experiences are nothing but imported fad, irrelevant to our societies. 

The Iraqi Network of Nonviolence

From its creation at the start of 2006, the group has been conscious of the difficulties they would come across along the way and what would be necessary in dealing with the strict rigidness of cultures poised against us.  We also knew that the situation was extremely tense and still far from tolerant.  The group decided to only work on common aspects and began with a common objective, to renounce violence, so that the invitations were centered on the sentencing of violence.  There have always been contradictions and debates about almost every social and political topic, but the common denominator, renouncing violence, has continued to be active.  And this is why, going beyond ideologies, action and mobilization will be carried out through the channels of nonviolent fighting. 

"Soon this network will be able to have an influence over the complex structure of Iraq"

This is why education and rehabilitation are very important aspects of the group's work.  Nowadays we can see the fruit of our work in some political groups that were known for their violence, but now adopt nonviolent methods for their demands, independently of whether or not we share the same objectives.

We're finding out that the proselytism of nonviolence is an objective in itself and that we were obligated to temporarily postpone the argument as to what the objectives leading us to the fight were. We weren't obsessing over the foreign presence in Iraq or the Iraqi legislation regarding human rights nor did racial or sectarian questions divide us as they did in our society which consumed the efforts of the social and political leaders of our country.  As a consequence of this, the main objective in this phase was to spread the weapons of nonviolence out to the groups fighting each other with the hope that they change them for the ones that were killing us.

The experience that accompanied the establishment of the Iraqi Nonviolence Network was truly unique.  On one hand the Iraqi society and its diverse organizations, weakened by many years of war and by the future prospect of what would happen in the country if the spiral of violence continued, ushered in the hearing of the Nonviolence Network’s calls.  One the other hand, we saw a culture very set in its way of thinking, and the provoking of a cooperation and interaction with the Network's activities was limited and only lasted a few seasons.  We often find activists that abandon the journey half way into it and we understand why.

Despite all this, what allows us to be optimistic is that the extension of this network hasn’t stopped growing in three years and the organizations are spreading throughout Iraq, progressively becoming an organized structure.  Soon this network will be able to have an influence over the complex structure of Iraq.

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