Americans held hostage in Iraq in the months before the Gulf War have an urgent message for a group of peace activists in Baghdad offering themselves as human shields: Get out while you can.
As the countdown to war shifts from weeks to days, Americans who were kidnapped and used to protect Iraqi targets from attack are appealing to the peaceniks to leave the volatile country before their protest backfires.
“I think they’re being totally naive,” said Apostolos Eliopoulos, a computer consultant who was held hostage for several weeks before the Gulf War began in 1990.
“We have many means to oppose war rather than to get on the side of the enemy.
“I was called a human shield, but what I was was a hostage. They don’t understand what Iraq is all about. They don’t understand the violence and degradation we went through.”
Dozen of activists from the United States and Europe are already in Iraq with about 60 more scheduled to follow, said a spokesman for Voices in the Wilderness, an American anti-war organization.
Last week, members of a contingent from the peace group in Iraq wrapped their arms around posts on a bridge over the Tigris River, a potential target, symbolizing their intent to act as human shields in any U.S. war on Iraq.
“You can imagine what this city would be like if it were cut off – when some people need desperately to get to a hospital,” Iraq Peace Team leader Kathy Kelly of Chicago said as she stood on the bridge.
Bert Sacks, a Voices spokesman, said his group was not there to act as shields, but to educate Americans on the consequences of war.
But their actions are not sitting well with those who really were shields.
“I consider it an act of treason,” said Deborah Saloom, an Alabama interior designer whose husband, George, was used as a human shield at a chemical plant outside Baghdad. “What they are doing makes a mockery of those of us who went through it. I do not appreciate it.”
Deborah, George and their son, Preston, had flown into Kuwait, where George was to begin a bank job the day the Iraq army invaded Kuwait. Deborah and Preston got out, but George was kept captive.
“I didn’t know if I’d ever see him again,” Deborah said.
Saddam Hussein called George and the others “guests.” He herded the prisoners in a room before photographers for a staged Thanksgiving dinner. He even tried to pat the head of an English boy, who rebuffed him before the world.
Charles Joseph Kolb of San Francisco was held captive from August to December 1990, and has horrible memories of being sexually assaulted and being forced to use a hose for a shower and a hole in the ground for a toilet.
“They came for me at my house and transported me to an oil refinery,” said Kolb, who was teaching at a university. “I have a hard time understanding why [today’s human shields] would do this. I admire their conviction. I just feel they’re misguided.”
So does the U.S. government. A State Department official said the group faces serious risks.
“Conditions throughout Iraq remain unsettled and dangerous,” a department travel advisory warns. “There are credible reports that foreigners may face the risk of kidnapping in Iraq.”