The Human Shield Movement

Stefan Simanowitz reports on the evolution of a new form of peaceful

protest that emerged before the 2003 invasion of Iraq

Contemporary Review, June 2003, Vol.282, No.1649

WAR changes many things. Global politics shift, military hardware and strategies are
tried and tested and new forms of protest emerge. One such protest, the human shield
movement, caught the attention of the world and, although limited in effectiveness, its
impact might yet prove significant.

On a bright afternoon in January a convoy of three double-decker buses left London

bound for Baghdad in a blaze of media coverage. On board were over fifty 'human
shields'; the first of many hundreds of Western anti-war activists to travel to Iraq. None of
them knew what the coming months would hold. All knew that they might not be coming
back.

It had all started just three weeks before with an article in The Observer newspaper in
which a former American marine, Ken O'Keefe, outlined his intention to organise a
human shield convoy to try and stop the seemingly inevitable rush to war. A small group
of people who had read the article met with O'Keefe in London later that week and set
about turning the idea into a reality. With troops already massing in the Gulf, it was clear
that time was of the essence. A convoy would take at least two weeks to drive overland to
Iraq and therefore a departure date was set for 25th January. It would be necessary to get
funding, vehicles, publicity, visas and most importantly, volunteers willing to leave their
homes and families at short notice and gatecrash the theatre of war.

Remarkably all this was achieved. Buses were procured and painted, a website was set up
and human shield volunteers started to come forward. There were press conferences and
delegations to Downing Street and interviews with every major news network in the
world. The departure of the convoy received global coverage and as a result, the human
shields forced their way into the consciousness of public and policy-makers alike.

As the buses crossed Europe picking up more shields en route, efforts were made to
capitalise on the publicity and ensure that the human shield project was broadened. An
office was set up in Amman and two more groups of shields flew from London to Iraq via
Jordan. The week after the departure of the convoy saw over sixty-thousand hits on the
human shield website and over a thousand enquiries about becoming shields. Human
shield organisations sprouted around the world; in France, Italy, Spain, Slovenia,
America, Australia, India, South Africa, Mexico, Argentina, New Zealand, Korea and
Japan. The movement had become a global initiative.

The convoy itself encountered numerous difficulties; mechanical and logistical problems
were compounded by stormy clashes of personality. But despite the difficulties and a
week later than planned, the convoy rolled into Baghdad to a tumultuous welcome. Once
in Baghdad however, further tensions arose, this time with their Iraqi hosts. Sites for the
shields' deployment had not been determined prior to the shields' arrival and it soon
became apparent that sites would be selected by Iraqi government officials wary of
infiltration by Western spys. After two weeks of heated discussion, the shields were given
a list of seven sites and an ultimatum to 'start shielding or start leaving'. The sites were all
civilian infrastructure facilities including water treatment facilities, power stations and
food silos, and were fully in keeping with the expressed objective of the shield group.
Anyone who did not want to take residence in these sites would be helped with their
passage out of Iraq.

The need to work closely with the Iraqi government was not something many of the
shield volunteers felt comfortable with. Some felt that the list delivered by the officials
compromised their autonomy. Others felt that they would rather be deployed in schools,
hospitals and orphanages. These shield volunteers left Iraq. The rest took residence in the
sites, a list of which was sent to the Coalition Joint Chiefs of Staff together with a request
that they recognize that the targeting of these sites would be in violation of Art. 54
Protocol Additional to the Geneva Convention. There was no response to the letters and
in the early hours of 18th March, the first day of the war, the Al Durah power station,
home to twenty-three shield volunteers, was hit by a bomb.

By the time the convoy had reached Baghdad, there were some eighty shields on board.
The flights from London carried a further sixty shields. Other groups also had people in
Baghdad and more human shields flew in from around the world. At its peak the total of
shield volunteers in Baghdad numbered about five hundred, but already some were
starting to leave. The realisation that the thousands needed to have a chance of stopping a
blitz on Baghdad had not materialised combined with the failure of the United Nations to
forestall war, meant that bombing was imminent. Many of the shields chose to stay. Many
chose to leave. Some out of cold fear. Some due to illness or financial constraints. Others
like O'Keefe himself, were ordered out by the Iraqi government.

As war drew nearer, news coverage of the shields in the British media started to become
more critical and mendacious. The list of sites where the shields were to be deployed
were frequently described as 'military installations' and, whilst stories of shields leaving
Iraq were widely reported, the fact that a substantial number remained and that new
shields were joining them daily, was ignored. On 3rd March BBC national news ran a
story on the double-decker buses leaving Baghdad, 'filled with last disillusioned human
shields'. In reality there were a total of four people on the buses and over one hundred-
and-fifty shields still in Baghdad. An impression was thereby created in the public mind
that all the shields had left. Attempts to rectify this impression failed. Approached with a
story about shield volunteers taking up residence in a food storage facility, one journalist
responded: 'Human shields? We're bored of them. Call me when one of them gets killed'.

Fortunately none of the eighty shields who stayed in Baghdad throughout the war were
killed or injured. None of the sites where they were residing were destroyed. They were
afforded freedom of movement by the government and treated with great warmth by the
Iraqi people but largely ignored by the media. This impression that all the shields had fled
not only undermined the effectiveness of the action but led to a widespread ridicule.
Rather than being portrayed as brave and selfless, a beacon to the world, the shields were
instead caricatured as naive and cowardly peaceniks.

So what, if anything, went wrong with the human shield action to Iraq? The media can be
blamed for the perception that the movement had failed but cannot be held responsible
for actual failures. That the war took place at all could be seen as evidence of failure but
since the prevention of war had never been a 'realistic objective' it is not an adequate
touchstone to assess the success of the movement. Whilst preventing war was the raison
d'etre of the human shield movement, the numbers necessary to achieve this within the
time available made such a goal impossible.

Just as the ability of a State to wage a popular war rests on their ability to keep casualties
to a minimum, so the ability of the human shield movement to prevent war also relies on
numbers. The shield volunteers were under no illusions. They knew that it would take
more than a few hundred Western human shields to stop a war. However, they felt that the
longer war was averted and the borders remained open, the number of shield volunteers
would grow. With numbers would come greater safety and more people would be
emboldened to join. A critical mass might thereby be reached. If there were thousands
rather than hundreds of human shields, then the coalition generals would be forced to
factor a new type of 'collateral damage' into their calculations. The reason this did not
happen had much less to do with the paucity of the idea than it did to do with the lack of
time in which to organise and mobilise.

Although the human shields failed to prevent the bombing of Baghdad, the evidence
suggests that they did have some success in shielding the sites at which they were
deployed. All seven sites where the shields were deployed were bombed early in the first
Gulf War. This time round, only one of the sites was mildly damaged. Indeed on the day
after human shields left the telecommunications centre in Baghdad it was bombed. In
Basra where there were no human shields, water and power were hit in the first days of
the war. Coincidence or an indication that the human shields had some effect?

The speed and ferocity with which the human shields were condemned by the
governments of Britain and America and by the right-wing media is another indicator of
the impact of the movement. On the day after the departure of the convoy, the White
House Chief of Staff, Andrew Card, was minded to issue a press release condemning the
action and Fox News reported that US leaders were considering prosecuting US human
shields for war crimes. Indeed were the Domestic Security Enhancement Bill 2003 to be
passed, any US citizens acting as human shields in Iraq could be stripped of their
citizenship, held indefinitely, and tried secretly as 'enemy combatants' based on the
allegedly treasonous 'intent' of their actions as 'aiding and abetting the enemy'. It is yet to
be seen how American human shields will be treated when they finally return home. To
attract such vitriolic criticism from governments and the right-wing press suggests that
the human shield movement is seen as a threat. The huge demonstrations and campaigns
that preceded this war politicised large numbers of people. They also showed traditional
forms of protest to be ineffective; a fact that left many angry and disaffected. It is in this
climate that new forms of protest evolve and flourish and that governments intent on war
begin to get nervous.

Whilst human shields are not a new concept, the scale and impact of the recent movement
was unprecedented. Combining the idealism and solidarity of the International Brigades
during the Spanish Civil War with the principles of non-violent direct action espoused by
Gandhi, the human shield movement is the latest in a long tradition of protest. Whilst the
impact of the human shields on this conflict may be questioned, their significance in the
history of war and protest can not. Whether an one-off act of defiance or the birth of a
wider movement remains to be seen, but in the words of Margaret Mead: 'Never doubt
the power of a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens to change the world: indeed,
it's the only thing that ever has'.

Stefan Simanowitz is a writer an analyst. He co-founded and coordinated

the Human Shield Action to Iraq.