Human shield action to Iraq
On January 25, 2003 an international group of volunteers left London and headed for Baghdad to act as human shields, hoping to avert a U.S. invasion. The action's primary organiser was Kenneth O'Keefe, a former U.S. Marine who served in the 1991 Gulf War but who renounced his citizenship afterwards. The convoy travelled through Europe and Turkey by bus to pick up like-minded people along the way, which totalled about 70. It is estimated that 500-700 people eventually made their way to Iraq before the U.S. invasion in march.
Upon reaching Baghdad a strategy was formed on the assumption that there would not be enough people to avert an invasion. This was to involve the voluntary deployment of activists to humanitarian sites throughout Baghdad, and possibly Basra, in an effort to avert the bombing of such sites.
There was much internal debate about which sites were to be chosen. Some volunteers had travelled to Iraq on the assumption that they were deploying to schools, hospitals or archeological sites. It was eventually agreed that these sites were unsuitable. Schools would be closed, unqualified people were a potential hindrance in hospitals, and archeological sites—although potential targets—were thought to be of too lower priority in comparison to other potential targets.
Eventually volunteers deployed to Al Daura Electrical Plant, Baghdad South Electrical Plant, 7th April Water Treatment Plant, Al Daura Water Treatment Plant, Tejio Food Silo, Al Daura Oil Refinery and Al Mamun Telecommunications Facility. All these sites were targeted and bombed by U.S. bombers in the 1991 Gulf War as part of the U.N. coalition, in contravention of the Geneva Conventions.
During these deployments a small group of volunteers, lead by Gordon Sloan of New Zealand, took on the job of checking proposed sites to ensure they were not military sites or in close vicinity to such. This was to be the cause of some conflict with their Iraqi host, Dr. Abdul Hashimi, head of the Friendship, Peace and Solidarity organisation which was hosting the activists, under the authority of the Baathist government.
With an invasion imminent, and possibly unused to the idea of anarchic decision-making, Hashimi became frustrated by these explorations, called a meeting, and asked the activists to deploy to sites or leave Iraq. This single act is believed by some to have been a costly political mistake. It was the trigger of much anxiety among activists and negative reporting in the media, including mis-reports that activists were being forced to deploy to military sites.
It was also at this point that the contingent from England had decided to return to London with the two red buses, which were originally meant to have left soon after arrival. These acts and the paranoia that rose up around Hashimi's announcement was to slow the influx of activists and cause some of those already there to leave Iraq, believing they had lost the media fight. Many activists were to stay on, however, and continue to shield the chosen sites. Of all the sites only one was eventually bombed—the Al Mamun Telecommunications Facility—a day after the human shields pulled out of it after the coalition took care to warn them through the media that communication facilities were a legitimate military target.
It is incredibly difficult to say whether the human shield action to Iraq had any effect on the outcome of the U.S. bombing campaign. On February 26, 2003, Senior CNN Pentagon Correspondent, Jamie McIntyre commented that the "Pentagon says they will try to work around human shields" as long as they were not deployed to military sites [1]. It is possible that, had the human shield action not taken place, and had the world not had such a laser focus on Iraq at the time of invasion, the U.S. government might have bombed civilian infrastructure as they did in 1991.