GOSHEN -- Mabel Brunk, 83, traveled to Iraqi Kurdistan for two weeks this month with a Christian Peacemaker Team delegation.
This was Brunk's third trip to Iraq -- she once spent two months in Baghdad.
This time, she visited the city of Sulaymaniyah to learn about the struggles of the Kurds. Now that she's back, she wants to educate people about the issues the ethnic group faces and will try to urge legislators to get involved with the conflicts.
CPT, a faith-based organization, sends representatives to areas with conflict to try to raise awareness and coach people on alternatives to violence.
The Elkhart Truth asked her some questions about what she learned there and what she hopes will change.
What was your mission?
"We visited a team of four people, a Christian Peacemakers Team, who lived in Kurdistan in the city of Sulaymaniyah. They planned our time there. We were there for 10 days so we could see what they were doing, visit people they were working with, hear their stories, and then we were expected to come back and tell people here about the stories of the people of Kurdistan and what is going on there. Our work begins when we get back."
What were some of the stories you learned there?
"Currently now, in about the last year, (the Christian Peacemaker Team has) been concentrating on the plight of the displaced Kurdish people who have had to leave their villages because the Turkish military is bombing them, so they've had to leave -- the ones that live near Turkey. The ones that live on the other side, near Iran, the Iranian military sends rockets into their village, so they have to leave.
"These people, they're found living out in tents -- no trees -- the temperature goes up to about 120 in the summer, and they didn't have enough water. So the CPT group there had been going to the United Nations ... to tell about these people there, so now the UN is bringing in tanks of water every two days. ... They have no electricity. ... We went to one of these camps, and they were saying what they want is either better housing there or to be able to return to their village safely.
"We also went to a prison that ... under Saddam Hussein, a lot of men (were in) -- and women and children were there also. These were Kurdish people. He was really trying to get rid of them. ... While we were in that prison -- it's sort of kept as a museum -- there was a Kurdish woman who came in and suddenly started shouting and just almost yelling. We found out it was a poem she had written about her son who had been tortured and killed in the prison. You know, it brought tears to our eyes when we were told by our interpreter what she was doing.
"They were glad the United States came in and got rid of Saddam Hussein. They thought the United States would be helping them, but now we're letting the Turkish air force bomb their villages, so they feel like nobody is interested in them."
How did you get to Iraq?
"This time I flew on Royal Jordanian from O'Hare to Amman, Jordan. ... We had a 10-day visitor pass. That was as long as we could stay in Iraq, so we had two days in Amman, Jordan, and two days after ... working with displaced Iraqis.
"There are thousands of those who have gone into Jordan with practically nothing. They were Iraqis displaced out of the country into Jordan. ... And there the Jordanian system isn't able to do much for them.
"Then we flew again Royal Jordanian. It's just about an hour and 40 minutes to Sulaymaniyah."
What do you hope will happen as a result of your trip?
"I hope that I can tell the stories of some of these people to others here so they know something of the predicament and that they might take some action for themselves thinking about ways of living alternatively to using violence in places where they are ... And then for people to keep being informed, not just to listen to one news channel and let it go, but to learn more about Kurdistan online or from books in the library or getting information through CPT and what's happening there and other places of the world.
"And then prayer is something that is important. And then another thing people could do is support the Christian Peacemaker Team there, because they're the ones who can go to the local government and go to the UN and make the plight of these people known."