Boulder couple working to avoid war with Iraqis

By Sandra Fish, Boulder Daily Camera Staff Writer

January 3, 2003

For two months, Elias Amidon and Elizabeth Roberts wondered daily if the bombs would drop.

The couple returned to Boulder on Sunday safe and sound.

But they'll decide within the week whether to return to Iraq as part of an effort to prevent war in that country.

Roberts and Amidon, both 58, traveled to Iraq at the end of October as part of the Iraq Peace Team. During their two months they visited with Iraqi people, hosted other peace visitors on shorter missions and volunteered at an orphanage for children with cerebral palsy operated by the Missionary Charity of Mother Teresa. Visiting Iraq was a continuation of a lifetime of activism for the couple.

"We were in the civil rights movement, we were both in Nicaragua and we had done peace missions in the Middle East," Roberts said.

About 50 people affiliated with the peace team are in Iraq at any one time, most of them on 10- to 14-day tours. Boulder activist Dan Winters is in Iraq now, along with a few other Coloradans.

The effort is part of a trend toward non-violent peace-keeping forces, said John Paul Lederach, a peace negotiator affiliated with Notre Dame University who lives in Nederland.

"There's been a lot of evolution in the whole notion of peace-making in the last five or six years," Lederach said. "It provides people-to-people contact that is increasingly important in our world today."

Supported at a distance by a crew of volunteers in Colorado, Amidon and Roberts sent periodic e-mails about their visits that probably reached several thousand people. They talked to KGNU radio almost weekly and wrote op-ed pieces for newspapers. A large part of their mission was to get the words of the Iraqi people back to America.

"There's a feeling that Americans are good people," Roberts said. "People would take my hand and say, 'What is your president doing? Has he no blood in his veins?'"

The economic sanctions on Iraq in place since 1990 have taken a toll on the country's more than 22 million people.

"We met primarily with the poor," Roberts said. "There not much of a middle class there and a small wealthy class."

The government rations food monthly, but often families must sell their food.

"They'll go with bread and tea for a whole month, an entire family, in order to buy a blanket to stay warm through the winter," Roberts said.

Iraq's difficulties go beyond food.

"This is a technological society that's broken down," Roberts said. "It's like 'Blade Runner.' It's a little spooky."

Hospitals have equipment, but it doesn't work anymore, Amidon said. Medicine is non-existent, and doctors earn so little they must work other jobs.

"It's an absolutely cash-poor society," he said.

Then there's the threat of war with the United States.

"They could see negotiating an oil deal with which America could be placated and (it) takes out Saddam Hussein," Roberts said. "There's no doubt that a major attack and invasion will result in a major humanitarian catastrophe. People are so worn out, there's no juice left in them anymore."

Amidon and Roberts will either return to the country by Jan. 18 or travel to Washington, D.C., for an anti-war protest planned that day. They think if they can generate enough participation in anti-war events, it will get the attention of the Bush administration.

"It would take 500 to 1,000 Americans over there and 1 million in the streets of Washington," Roberts said.

Contact Sandra Fish at (303) 473-1356 or fishs@dailycamera.com.