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Of torturers, victims and the ease of being both

By James Rupert | Staff Correspondent

May 16, 2004

Baghdad, Iraq - In about 1998, she recalls, as a student at Notre Dame, Sheila Provencher happened upon a magazine article about how millions of Iraqis were sliding into poverty and then misery under Saddam Hussein's rule and U.S.-driven economic sanctions.

The condition of 24 million Iraqis was a fact too distant to be seen from South Bend, Indiana. But some of us do better than others at seeing and seizing what may be important even if obscure. Provencher -- a Roman Catholic studying for her masters in divinity and looking for a mission in life -- did better than most of us ever do. She clipped a photo of Amar, an Iraqi infant stunted by malnutrition, and has since kept it where she sees it in her daily prayers.

Attuning ourselves to distant sufferings can be a dangerously human step, of course, because once we pay attention, we start to feel that we should DO something to help. "I began by doing what I could where I was" Provencher says, which for her meant prayer and fasting. Later, Provencher, who normally makes time in a day for both prayer or meditation and running (many of us do well to manage just one of those), raised money for an aid project in Iraq by finding sponsors for her finishes in marathons.

Now a Catholic lay minister, Provencher works in Baghdad as a human rights monitor for the Christian Peacemaking Teams, a Chicago-based humanitarian group that includes many Mennonites, Quakers and others.

The other day, at her team's quiet apartment in Baghdad, Provencher startled me by explaining that the scandal of U.S. human rights abuses in Iraq is similar to the sex-abuse crisis in the Catholic Church. Provencher, having worked on both issues, explains this well enough that I want to pass it on. (I think it's not necessary, by the way, to agree with all of her conclusions in order to appreciate the way she approaches these issues.)

"The sex abuse scandal in the church is rooted in three things," she said..

"One is a hierarchical structure that encourages fierce loyalty among its members to the point of enforcing silence" when fellow members of the hierarchy commit crimes. "Two is an unhealthy approach to sexuality," she said. "And three is the enormous pressure of being a priest, overloaded with work and isolated by their lives in rectories. Life as a diocesan priest is unhealthily stressful."

And stress is a human seedbed for abuse of others.

America's human rights violations in Iraq go far beyond the sexual humiliation of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, Provencher notes. They include the detention of thousands of Iraqis on the basis of little or no evidence, and treatment that the Red Cross says amount to torture, even if Pentagon lawyers can split hairs well enough to declare otherwise.

"The military is another intensely hierarchical structure that requires its members to have fierce loyalty to their superiors," she said. "Soldiers tell me that the worst thing they can do in their culture is to make their superior officers look bad." For the military, "the unhealthy idea is that the way to bring peace is to use force." The U.S. military's approach, she said, is that "there is a certain number of 'bad' Iraqis" sprinkled out there in the cities and villages, and the way bring peace and democracy is to to just go out every night and kick down the doors of suspects' houses until you finally round them all up.

"Where the military sees 'bad guys,' I see frustrated people," she said. In her view, the military's tactics -- midnight house raids and thousands in prison -- actually feed the insurgency that they aim to extinguish.

The final building block for the U.S. military's human rights abuses is "the incredible stress being put on these soldiers. They are out here on extended tours, far longer than they ever imagined they would serve, isolated from their families" and their real lives. "After these months, here I jump at any loud noise, because I've been too close to too many explosions. For them, it's worse. They're sitting in the bases being hit by the mortars. They're paying a terrible price."

"I feel compassion for these soldiers," said Provencher, who is both a pacifist and the daughter of a retired Army colonel. "I read in military publications that there are not enough counselors or psychological services for them. And it's easy to let your stress out on some helpless Iraqi that you see as a 'bad guy.' "

In the end, Provencher's shorthand explanation is an oversimplification, of course, as all shorthand explanations are. But as I near the end of my third month in Iraq in the past year, trying to get my own grip on the big picture here, I find that her simplified version of truth reflects far better the evidence I see around me than does the government line as voiced in briefings I hear each day from the U.S. military and civilian spokesmen here.