In Iraq, these peacemakers shun guns

Transcending religious differences
It's a seemingly hopeless task, but small victories make the volunteers believe they can have an impact.

Last year, for instance, a group of Shiites from the holy city of Karbala approached CPT for help in starting a partner organization called Muslim Peacemaker Teams (MPT).

In one of their first joint projects, the two groups traveled to Fallujah, the Sunni-dominated city that was the site of a major U.S. Marine assault in November 2004 aimed at clearing out an insurgent stronghold. More than 70 percent of the city's buildings were destroyed, and little has been rebuilt.

Fifteen Shiites from MPT and three CPT volunteers spent the day cleaning up rubble and garbage from bombed homes and mosques on the main downtown streets.

"We were out there in our abayas sweeping," said Provencher, who took part in the project. "We symbolically cleaned up an area to show that we wanted to help the city rebuild."

"People in Fallujah were surprised," said Sami Rasouli, the founder of MPT and an Iraqi-American who returned to his native country after the war to help rebuild it.

"We told them, ‘We are your brothers and sisters from Karbala and Najav, Canada, and the U.S., and we've come to express our solidarity with you and tell you that you are not alone.’ And we came to express our belief in Iraqi unity," Rasouli said in a phone interview from Karbala.

The Shiite visitors and Sunni hosts later worshipped together at the local Sunni mosque, an almost unheard-of occurrence.

"We agreed not to be dragged into a side fight and to focus on educating our people about the forces that try to divide us. We promised to work to avoid any civil, sectarian war," Rasouli said.

CPT and MPT visit Fallujah regularly to maintain friendships and work to help the city recover.

Anita David, a CPT volunteer who visited Fallujah with Rasouli just last week explained how people in the town are still suffering.

"There is a lot of anger there, they are still angry, because there is so much left to be done," said David.

Only a small number of homes have been restored and the town is further hurt economically by the isolation that its strict security cordon necessitates.

Anti-torture campaign
Much of CPT's work over the past two years has involved helping Iraqi citizens knock on bureaucratic doors and visit prisons to locate family members detained by U.S. troops.  

With the handover of political authority to a new Iraqi government last year, the process for locating detainees has become even more complicated, according to David. CPT says it is also receiving reports of abuse and torture by the newly formed Iraqi security forces.

"Usually by the time the name gets to us, the family members have been to the morgue, they've been to hospitals, to their local police stations and to their local military base," David explained. "But now you have any numbers of prisons ... we don't know about, Iraqi bases where people disappear into."

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