Four anti-war activists have been kidnapped by an unknown group in Iraq. The activists are members of the Christian Peacemaker Teams, whose mission statement is 'to get in the way' of militarism and oppression. They travel to 'hotspots' where oppressed people are resisting imperialism, and through their presence provide safety to those people and record events for the outside world. Their politics are spot-on: they support the Grassy Narrows blockade to stop logging on First Nations land in Canada. Like the International Solidarity Movement, they support the struggle of Palestinians against the Zionist occupation, putting their lives on the line to stop Israeli bulldozers. And they've gone to Iraq to advocate for those imprisoned by the American occupation. In Christian parlance this is called providing 'witness', I think. Speaking as a Marxist atheist, this is religious activism I wholly approve of.

James Loney, one of the kidnapped activists, protesting the imprisonment of Iraqis, in Baghdad, 2003

The obvious question is why an Iraqi resistance group would kidnap one of their allies. According to the article above, they've got specific demands for the release of prisoners. This, at least, puts paid to my burgeoning paranoia that this is the work of a U.S.-trained death squad acting at 'arm's length' from the government to accomplish a shared agenda. This is precisely what Colombian paramilitaries do, and ZMag has noted the same strategy being applied to Iraq by the U.S.

So what's going on? It may be a simple pragmatic strategy on the part of this group (whom no one's apparently heard of before now) to get its members released; they may be 'criminal' (i.e. private, with economic goals), not political. If they are political, I doubt they misunderstand the activists' goals. The Resistance fighters aren't stupid, they know they need allies wherever they can find them; even Hamas has called for the activists' release (which debunks this being a Christian vs. Muslim thing, too.)

There's probably a whole other layer to this story we don't know yet. I just hope that the activists are released in time for us to learn it. Please visit the online petition for their release, sign it and send it to your friends. Petitions may not do much, but these people are one of our own, and this is a tragedy that needs to be avoided.

It's all about stopping terrorism, of course - an Israeli soldier prevents Palestinian schoolgirls from getting to school. Photo taken by the CPT.