Wheels of Justice

Michael Birmingham of Dublin, Ireland, joins the tour after having spent most of the last 16 months in Iraq. He is a co-founder of the Irish Campaign to End the Sanctions on Iraq, a campaign comprised of Iraqi exiles and Irish anti-sanctions activists. He also co-founded the Irish Anti-war Movement, a broad-based organization opposed to war in Afghanistan and Iraq. Birmingham also managed a Dublin-based human rights advocacy service.

Prior to the most recent invasion, Birmingham spent six months in Iraq with Voices in the Wilderness; he volunteered with the United Nations Development Programme in Baghdad and maintained personal contact with the UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq and top UN agency officials in the World Food Programme, UNICEF, and World Health Programme. From ground zero in Iraq, Birmingham coordinated delegations to Iraq—European Parliament (thirty elected members of that parliament from 13 countries) and September 11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, as well as other U.S. and international delegations. After witnessing the first ten days of “Shock and Awe” and seeing the effects of the attacks on civilian sites, including hospitals, Birmingham was deported by Iraqi intelligence services.

From April 2003 until May 2004, Michael Birmingham traveled throughout Occupied Iraq, meeting with a wide spectrum of Iraqi society in Baghdad, Basra, Hilla, Falluja, Nasiriyah, and other locations; he lived in Baghdad’s poor eastern suburbs, and inside and around Sadr City. Birmingham worked for housing rights with people facing eviction; he supported Iraqi families whose loved ones disappeared during and after the war and worked with families of civilian by-standers killed by U.S. soldiers.

Birmingham arrived in Falluja shortly after U.S. soldiers opened fire on unarmed parents protesting the military occupation of their children’s school, an event which saw the death of 18 civilians. This incident, which occurred in the infancy of the U.S occupation, ignited anger in Falluja and HEAVILY influenced the Iraqi general public’s perception of the U.S. military presence in their country. Birmingham was in Sadr City during some of the large-scale fighting between U.S. soldiers and members of the Mehdi Army, and he was in the United Nations building when it was bombed in August 2003.

What was there to witness? The many ways in which the United States military presence deliberately undermined and endangered humanitarian, human rights and other essential non-military work. In both Iraq and Afghanistan, covert military, mercenary, and espionage operations have made it almost impossible for both local and international non-military workers to operate in a way distinguishable from them. This is the face of occupation.

Michael Birmingham has given interviews to CNN, BBC, ABC, Al Jazeera, and other major U.S. and international news networks; he is a frequent contributor to alternative media covering the Iraq war and occupation, including Democracy Now. As a result of his extensive experience and immersion in much of Iraq under occupation, Birmingham has strongly criticized the biggest failure of the outside world regarding Iraq: throughout nearly two years of incessant discussion, the outside world has yet to truly to listen to the voices of the oppressed in Iraq.

In his own words: “An inability to dialogue, to work effectively in solidarity, to value truth, to face fear with courage, and to keep focus on serious destruction of human life (when distracted by petty arguments with those near us) characterize some of the serious problems that have inhibited the effectiveness of the outside world’s response to the war on the Iraqi people.”

Michael Birmingham returns to Iraq November 2004 after a month with the Wheels of Justice.