Current Index September Index Back Issues National AFSC NERO Office American Friends Service Committee Peacework Magazine Patrica Watson, Editor Sara Burke, Assistant Editor Pat Farren, Founding Editor 2161 Massachusetts Ave. Rooted in Quaker values and informed by AFSC experience and initiatives, Peacework offers a forum for organizers, fostering coalition-building and teaching the methods and strategies that work in the global and local community. Since the four-day bombing of Iraq in December, there have been almost daily attacks by British and American planes not at war with Iraq, with only two brief lulls in March and May.
Targets are often bizarre.
In a recent visit to Mosul in northern Iraq s no fly zone, we saw flocks of sheep which had been blasted to eternity with the small child shepherds who tended them. Theologians and historians believe Saint Matthew is buried at a unique sacred 4th century monastery. At dawn on Tuesday, August 10, people drove the steep winding road or climbed the near-sheer mountain path, worn by the steps of centuries of pilgrims, to St. Matti s, to vigil and await the last eclipse of the millennium the following day, from the highest point, at this holy place, in the land where Christianity, Judaism, and Islam evolved. Scientists, astronomers, and physicists traveled from Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Egypt, and Jordan to watch the spectacle and attend the subsequent three-day conference at the University of Mosul on the contributions of Arab scientists through the ages, to solar studies, astrophysics, and cosmology. It s difficult to asses exact damage or casualties.