Sister of Social Service on Iraqi Refugees and ‘Revitalizing Citizenship’

Sister Simone Campbell, who will visit Iowa on Tuesday, met with Iraqi refugees earlier this year with a delegation of women religious. For 10 days in January, on a visit sponsored by Catholic Relief Services, she heard stories from families in Syria and Lebanon. The trip was her second to the region; in 2002, she was in Iraq before the start of the U.S. invasion.Campbell is the executive director of NETWORK (a national Catholic social justice lobby in Washington, D.C.) and a Sister of Social Service. She will give a talk on "Saving Democracy: Revitalizing Citizenship" at Loras College in Dubuque on Tuesday, April 8. The talk is scheduled from 7 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. in the college’s Alumni Center: Maria Graber Ballroom, located at the corner of Cox St. and Loras Blvd. in Dubuque.

Campbell discussed her Middle East fact-finding missions before and after the start of Iraq War in an interview with the Iowa Independent.

She visited Baghdad and Basra in December 2002, a few months before the start of the war.

Since then, she said, the perception of the U.S. in the Middle East has changed:

"When I went in 2002, people said to us in Iraq, "Well, why are you coming to invade us? Why are you coming to take away our freedom? Why are you coming to destroy us?"

But they made a distinction between us as people and our government …

Now in Syria and Lebanon, there is a fair amount of anger at what we have done, at how we have disturbed the Middle East, at our arrogance, at the control."

Campbell’s delegation asked one of their Syrian hosts about a message to take back to the U.S. about the refugee situation.

"When we said, 'Well, what message do we take back?' she said, 'We don't need any money. We don't need anything but peace. This war is a crime against humanity,' with a passion that — it touched me deeply.

I remember vividly what she said."

She also talked about her recent trip in January and her hosts, the Good Shepherd Sisters, in Syria. She described “heartbreaking” stories of Iraqi refugees and the “amazing” work being done by the Good Shepherd Sisters.

"A heartbreaking story is this Christian family in southern Iraq who was threatened by the militia and told to get out, to leave, because this is a Shia little town out near Basra. And they say, 'We're poor, we've lived here all our lives, we don't have any money to move, and besides, we've been here for generations.' 

The second or third time that they're threatened — they come back and the militia kidnaps the father, takes the mother out to the back yard, hands the baby the mother is holding to the oldest girl, who is 7 years old, and shoot and kill the mother, in front of the kids.

The oldest boy, the 14-year-old, who I guess was at school, comes back and finds his four siblings gathered around their mother's body.

And then the neighbors and this resourceful 14-year-old kid, who feels sort of guilty now, get the kids to Syria, where they meet up with the Good Shepherd sisters.

The Good Shepherd sisters find out that there is a grandmother who the kids don't know in Germany who had emigrated earlier. They get her to Damascus, and she thinks she's going to take the kids back quickly to Germany, but she's only a permanent resident. And in Germany, like in the United States, there's no provision for grandparents to petition for immigration or permanent residence for their grandchildren. And so she's now caught in Damascus with these kids. I mean, it's just — it's horrifying.  And the German Embassy says how do we know these are really your grandkids? They could be anybody.

Sister Marie-Claude and the Good Shepherd sisters are organizing DNA testing to prove their relationship and try to keep the pressure on … Those stories get repeated 2 million times; I mean, there are 2 million refugees. So it's HUGE. It's a HUGE problem.

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Another woman who just broke my heart is this 30-year-old nuclear engineer, she has her masters in nuclear engineering and did nuclear medicine with her father, and had a contract with Parson's to rehab a hospital outside of Baghdad. There, militia people — she didn't know who, what militia — came and threatened them for working with an American company and … we've got this commitment and so they stayed and kept working and she saw her father killed in front of her. But she kept working, and they came back and threatened her again, and finally her family said you have to flee, you have to flee.

Finally her husband went ahead to find a place in Lebanon — she had studied in Lebanon, so they knew some people there — with the last threat, she fled to Lebanon, but she is so traumatized by this whole experience that when she told us the story, we were in her little teeny one-room apartment in Lebanon, and she closes all the windows, and she closes the door, even though they were letting in the sunshine to warm the place up because it was so, so cold when we were there, and she brings us real close in the middle of the room and whispers to us her story because she's terrified she's being followed.

They've already moved three times in Beirut because she heard an Iraqi accent.

So the trauma — it's one thing to see violence and to experience violence, but the trauma continues. The post-traumatic stress disorder — it's a whole nation of people with it.

We worry so much with our military folks coming back with it. It is a national tragedy in Iraq …

The Good Shepherd sisters have organized this whole big collection of Syrians to do a settlement house to meet the needs of Iraqis living in the northern part of Damascus, a shelter for women and children, women who have been abused, tortured or widowed or this kind of thing, and a hotline for domestic violence, for Syrians and Iraqis — it's the first hotline for domestic violence in Syria.

President Assad's wife is the honorary co-chair of it. They also are taking food out to people who are caught at the border who can't get into Syria right now. Food and water.

I mean, [they're] doing amazing work.

You need to know that it is across religious lines — not just for Christians but for everybody.

Iowa Independent: So are they in camps?

"No, they're not. Which makes it in some ways harder. They're — most of the refugees are just spread around Damascus. Damascus went from being a city of 4 million to being a city of 5 million in just three years. It's a huge change.

They've had to go to double school shifts, because they're giving the Iraqi kids free access to education, but it's hard for the Iraqi kids, because the Syrian education is in Arabic and French, and the Iraqis' was just in Arabic. They don't speak French. So that's a challenge, but they're working on that.

They also don't have a real strong medical system and so are now asking for help. The Syrians didn't think this problem would last this long. So they're now asking for international assistance in responding to this crisis. Everybody in Syria just kept saying, 'But they're our brothers and sisters, of course we would respond,' when we were amazed at their generosity.

And we as a nation have only taken in 5,000 refugees when they have taken 1.5 million. You can tell I'm a little outraged.
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The Good Shepherd sisters in Damascus have started with a huge network of Syrian people that they've organized … ordinary folks, all kinds of folks across all faith lines are working to meet the needs of the Iraqi refugees … the Syrian people have been so welcoming. I rode in a taxicab with Iraqis and the taxicab driver heard them speaking with an Iraqi accent and he would not take money from them for the fare …

He said, 'You people have had such a hard life, at least let me give you this ride. You don't have much money … '"

Since returning from their Middle East meetings with Iraqi families, U.N. officials and religious leaders, the Catholic contingent has recommended that resettlement applications be expedited so the U.S. can reach its goal of resettling 12,000 Iraqi people in fiscal year 2008. Five months into FY 2008, fewer than 2,000 Iraqi refugees have been admitted into the U.S.

The group presented its findings to Congress in February.

"And in addition to the refugees we saw, there's an additional 2 million people who are displaced within Iraq. It's a huge issue.

Congresswoman [Betty] McCollum [D-Minn.] says that she thinks the reason we aren't letting in more refugees is because if we let in more refugees, then the story of what is actually happening will get out. And the control of the message. That's her take on it.

I think this is a perfect reason why 'we the people' need to be on our toes and engaged. Because the politicians only can do what the people want and unless we make that really known people are nervous and are not likely to stick their necks out. But we the people can demand change. And that's the perfect example of where we need change.

`We the people,' as it says in the Constitution, need to wake up and take our responsibility seriously as citizens. And that all of the fear and apprehension and individualism that's been so ripe in our country has caused us to pull away from the actual engaging in our constitutional role as a people. And so my effort is to say that we need to make sure that our values and our commitment is expressed in the election.

Voting, voter education, voter turnout, but then more than that, that we stay awake after the election and hold our elected officials accountable."

Iowa Independent: And so how do we do that? How do we stay involved?

"Well, it's things such as being aware of the issues we care about in the election, but then making sure that they carry over into actual legislative agenda.

I always suggest that folks join Network. What we do is we track federal legislation from a values perspective, a common good perspective, and so that's one way to stay engaged.

But whatever people do, they need to remember that the Constitution says, 'We the people,' not 'We the politicians,' and to stay alert and engaged with policy after Nov. 4."

Campbell's "Saving Democracy" talk is part of a series on election year events organized by the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) of Iowa, Nebraska and Missouri.