Recently Turkey bombed some targets in Kurdish Iraq in retaliation for a PKK attack that killed some Turkish soldiers. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44179345/ns/world_news-mideast_n_africa/ This article has some more info but I think its pretty biased towards Turkey. Multiple Kurdish civilians have died in the past few days as a result of Turkish bombings. I saw pictures of a family that was driving in a car that was bombed. The whole family died. It was gruesome. Today we will be traveling to the area where some of the bombings happened to attend a funeral and meet with some family of those who had died recently. What I find hard to understand is that a rebel group that is tagged as a "terrorist organization" attacks Turkish forces, kills some soldiers but doesn't harm civilians. Then Turkey retaliates, kills multiple civilians, but doesn't kill any members of the PKK. Which group sounds like a terrorist organization?

I'm not sure if anybody is reading this or not but for those of you that are unfamiliar with the organization I am working with in Northern Iraq, I would like to summarize what/who Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) is. Before discussing CPT, it helps to let you know that I am a member of a Mennonite church. I started attending Joy Mennonite Church about three years ago and it has been extremely influential in my life, if it wasn't for Joy Mennonite I probably wouldn't have gotten involved with CPT. If you are unfamiliar with the Mennonite Church, I would encourage you to check out this link. Generally speaking, Mennonites take seriously the teachings of Jesus, which means we are pacifist. That is one of the biggest beliefs that separate us from other Christian traditions. Many people involved with CPT are Mennonite, but CPT itself is ecumenical, meaning its members and supporters come from all kinds of churches and faiths. So with that said, here is some text from the CPT website that does a better job of explaining CPT than anything I could say.

"Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) is a living answer to the question, "what would happen if Christians devoted the same discipline and self-sacrifice to nonviolent peacemaking that armies devote to war?"  It is an evolving challenge.

Partnering with nonviolent movements around the world, CPT seeks to embody an inclusive, ecumenical and diverse community of God's love.  We believe we can transform war and occupation, our own lives, and the wider Christian world through:

• the nonviolent power of God's truth
• partnership with local peacemakers
• bold action

CPT places teams at the invitation of local peacemaking communities that are confronting situations of lethal conflict.  These teams seek to follow God's Spirit as it works through local peacemakers who risk injury and death by waging nonviolent direct action to confront systems of violence and oppression.

CPT understands violence to be rooted in systemic structures of oppression. We are committed to undoing oppressions, starting within our own lives and in the practices of our organization."

The undoing oppressions aspect of CPT's work is something I find very crucial. It is challenging but necessary. In the training program we did modules on Undoing Racism, Undoing Sexism, Undoing Heterosexism, and Sexual Harassment. You can check out this link if you would like to read more about undoing oppressions. If you only read one of the articles, I would probably suggest White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack by Peggy McIntosh.

I'm working with the Iraq team for the next two months. The team has a couple different projects currently but the focus is documenting human rights abuses along the Iran and Turkish borders of Iraq. Due to a long history of Kurdish repression, two rebel groups along the borders are fighting for Kurdish autonomy. Turkey and Iran respond with cross-border bombings, which often destroy village life if not kill innocent people. Iranian bombings have killed many civilians this year, including a ten year old boy. If you would like to see the fruits of the team's labor, you can read a report the team published recently titled "Where there is a promise, there is tragedy: cross-border bombings and shellings of villages in the Kurdish region of Iraq by the nations of Turkey and Iran"

I hope this post accurately describes CPT as well as the Iraq team. If you have any questions or comments, please share. You can email me here.

I arrived safely at the CPT house in Suli Friday at 2am. Friday is the team's day off so I was able to rest and try to shake the jet lag. The traveling went well. I was worried something would go wrong and I would be stuck in Istanbul or something but that didn't happen. The flight to Istanbul was ten hours long. I sat next to a young Turkish woman who wants to move to the US. Her English was pretty good so we talked quite a bit. When I told her I was on my way to Iraq for a couple months she was pretty alarmed. "But aren't you going to miss pancakes, cheeseburgers, french fries, and Dr. Pepper?" She wasn't kidding. It seemed like her favorite part of Western culture is processed food. She was in the US for twenty days and went to a diner for pancakes every morning, no joke. She told me her luggage was filled with marshmallows and Oreos since she didn't know when she would be able to go back to the US. As we talked more it was clear that her love of the West went deeper than food. She explained that she is very independent and that doesn't go over very well in Turkey. Eventually she would like to move the to US but she doesn't think she will be able to get citizenship without marrying someone in the US. She then said if she wanted to get married and stay home with kids she could do that in Turkey.

The people on team here are super nice and helpful. The biggest challenge so far is the jet lag. I've read a little bit about jet lag and I'm definitely feeling it. When I got to the house in Suli, I felt exhausted but I had a hard time getting to sleep. Eventually I fell asleep but it wasn't until 10am and I slept til 6pm. So the next night's sleep was off too. I was pretty tired and felt terrible yesterday but I did my best to be present and enjoy the day. I went to bed at 9pm or so and woke up at 5am. I don't know what it is about 5am but it wakes me up every time. I'm hoping I can sleep past it tomorrow morning. I also had a pretty killer headache which is associated with Jet lag but I think that is over with.

Also, I'm thankful for Skype. I was able to talk to my parents Friday. That was awesome. I knew I would miss them but I was taken aback a little at how emotional I felt hearing my mom's voice. She is pretty awesome so I shouldn't be surprised. It took my dad a minute to believe it was me calling. Eventually he asked how I was calling and after I explained he kept saying "woah!". I love that dude.

Well, thats it for now. I don't if anybody is reading this or not but feel free to tell me what you think.
Much love, Stefan

ps: I don't have time right now to check this for typos and grammatical errors so please forgive me for any mistakes. 

If you don't know, I will be leaving Wednesday, August 10th for Iraq. I will be there until Halloween. I will be working with Christian Peacemaker Teams(CPT). The basic jist of CPT is violence reduction work. CPT Iraq specifically "works toward accompanying displaced persons home by living in conflicted border regions and documenting human rights violations against civilian populations." The quote is from CPT's website, http://www.cpt.org/. You can check out CPT Iraq's page here. This blog will hopefully be a way I can keep in touch with people and let people know what I'm doing.

Alot has been on my mind the past couple weeks as you can imagine. In addition to excitement, anticipation, etc, I have been stressed some about traveling by myself and fundraising but thankfully those feelings are gone, for now at least. It's finally hitting me how much I'm going to miss folks while I'm gone. I know eleven weeks isn't very long in the grand scheme of things but it's close to being the longest I've been outside of Oklahoma. As I type this though, I start feeling ridiculous that my biggest problem currently is missing my family/friends because I will be away for eleven weeks which is largely based on the privilege I recieve, not earn, due to the social location I find myself in i.e.: white, heterosexual male with a US passport. I would like to go into this deeper at some point but this post was supposed to be brief so I'm going to stop now. Feel free to comment or email me if you want.

Much love, Stefan