A first wave of anti-war activists will leave London at the weekend on a convoy bound for Iraq to act as human shields at key areas across the country.
The group of 50 volunteers from Britain and other European countries will travel overland to Baghdad under the name Truth Justice Peace Human Shield Action in an attempt to prevent a US-led war from going ahead.
The convoy, which sets out on Saturday, will be the first of many to leave the capital, according to organisers who are expecting thousands to join their campaign.
”All of us believe that if this war is allowed to go ahead our world will be an eminently more dangerous place and we will increase the cycle of violence which is, according to the official story, the sort of violence that we are intending to prevent,” the group’s founder, Ken Nichols O’Keefe, said yesterday.
The former US Marine and Gulf war veteran, who renounced his citizenship in 1999 as a protest against US foreign policy, said he believed a big civilian presence in Iraq could create the pressure needed to stop western governments from pursuing a ”criminal war”.
”I am calling on 10 000 people to get to Iraq. I know if we get that many westerners there we can stop this war. If it goes ahead we will officially be stepping into world war three.
”I feel so deeply concerned that I will go on a hunger strike as of this Saturday and I will not eat until we have 10 000 westerners there. Even the US and the UK would not be willing to carry out a war where their own people would be bombed with their body parts flying all over the place,” he said.
The range in ages, nationalities and backgrounds of the volunteers who had already signed up to be shields indicated the breadth and depth of outrage about the prospect of war and the anger at the failure of governments to listen, he added.
The volunteers delivered a letter to Downing Street yesterday providing their names and listing the locations, such as hospitals and water treatment facilities, where they will be stationed.
Any attack on these sites by allied forces would now be made in the full knowledge that UK and US citizens could be killed, they said.
Sue Darling (60) from Surrey, who was part of the delegation, confirmed that the group was still waiting for their visas to come through and admitted they did not know what to expect on arrival in Baghdad.
”We understand that the Iraqi government will be happy to see us come in and there is a friendship organisation there that will probably help with arrangements.
”It is expected that people will pay their own way. We will be looking into taking supplies in and pooling them as is necessary when we are there,” she said.
”This isn’t a group bus tour where you go in, you stay so long and then you come out. The idea is to help those people who want to go get in. Then they will decide individually what they do. Some intend to stay for the duration, which may include war, some don’t,” she added.
The convoy is one of several such efforts around the world to mobilise activists in Iraq as a deterrent against military strikes.
The plans revive memories of the 1991 Gulf war when Saddam Hussein forcibly held thousands of western hostages after his invasion of Kuwait. – Guardian Unlimited Â