Tracey Harmon, conscientious objector member of IVAW and LOLA, discusses her poor phone reception in Iraq, her conscientious objector ordeal, working with an undisclosed NGO to investigate crimes by or against Iraqi Kurds.
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All right y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's Anti-War Radio on Chaos 95.9 FM in Austin, Texas.
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Tracy Harmon is a conscientious objector and a member of the Iraq Veterans Against the War and the Ladies of Liberty Alliance, and right now she is in Iraq on a peace mission.
Joining us by telephone from I'm not sure what city.
Hi Tracy, how are you?
Hi, excellent.
What city are you in there?
I'm in Sulamania.
In which?
Sulamania.
It's in the KRG.
It's up north.
Oh, okay.
Sulamania.
Oh, I don't even know.
It's north of Baghdad.
I think I'm thinking about 60 miles or so north of Baghdad, but pretty safe.
It's very different in the KRG.
I've had a lot of people tell me being in the KRG is quite different from being in Iraq.
We were in Iraq yesterday at night IDP camp near Mosul, so that was quite an experience.
It's been an experience being here.
Well, who all is there with you?
I'm on an international delegation with an NGO that I can't really blast the name out over the radio right now, but we have people from Canada, Japan, and Turkey.
Actually, our leader is from Turkish American that's leading the trip.
So, an international team, and we're here with an NGO that's been working.
They started out in Baghdad in 2002, and they were documenting prisoner abuses.
They were kind of the first ones to shed light on what was going on in Abu Ghraib, but because of the situation, a lot of the NGOs had to leave 2003, 2004, and they had some instances that happened, so they had to move up north and started working among the Kurds here in So, a big chunk of the work right now is, let's see, in 2007, they actually started putting together this report of all of the Kurdish villages along the Turkey-Iraq border, the Iran-Iraq border that are basically being, they're receiving a lot of shelling from Turkey, and it's kind of, it's a lot of politics because the central government here is not doing a lot to help them out.
There's the issue with Kurdistan and Kirkuk, so it's just a big political issue, but the fact is that there's human rights violations against the Kurds in these villages because they're basically being shelled.
So, they started documenting this report in 2007, and I've finished it, so a big chunk of what we're here doing right now is kind of delivering this report to, and just updating it.
So, we did a three-day trip yesterday up north to Kerbil, which is right along the border, and they've been able to hand this report to the mayor of this town.
I mean, I could tell that story, which is kind of interesting.
Yeah, well, it's very interesting.
And now, I'm sorry, could you repeat for me, because, you know, telephone quality isn't perfect here.
Yeah.
I'm just, I'm wondering, who exactly is the victim of what that you're reporting on again?
There's the Kurds, but the Kurds, and a lot of what we're seeing is, you know, effects of the Anfil campaign.
There's the 1988, the big notable was Halabja, and we're actually going to be visiting victims of chemical attacks in Halabja on Monday.
But, yeah, it's been...
That's kind of who we're working with here in the north.
But at the IDP camp that we were in near Mosul yesterday, you know, there were people there that were also fleeing from the violence in Baghdad and those areas, too.
So, it's just kind of a mix, but because of the situation in the south, and it was dangerous for Anfil workers, they kind of had to put fears into working with the Kurdish population there.
And will you be going to Baghdad?
Uh, no.
Well, good.
I mean, even today, yeah, I just read about 61 people were killed in the attack.
And, you know, today, I felt pretty safe here.
I've been feeling pretty safe.
I'm just telling myself that.
And I don't know if it's the military programming, the military background that just tells me for all kinds of suspicious activity.
And I just remember, you know, I never...
A big part of my reason for being here is because I never deployed.
I got out as a conscience protector, and I just felt really kind of burdened and obligated to take this trip on, make it a humanitarian trip to Iraq.
But I just...
I keep catching myself snapping back into that military mode.
And we had trainings when we went through lockdowns of Baghdad.
And today, I was just in the bazaar walking around, and it's Friday afternoon, and they just opened up this new mall right across from the mosque.
And it was crowding.
It was jam-packed with cars and people to people and bumper to bumper.
And I was getting extremely, extremely nervous.
So the people I'm traveling with, you know, they're...
They look at me like I'm crazy when I say, you know, they're just making anybody uncomfortable here.
So I actually ended up taking a taxi back home, and then just to come home and find out that there was a big attack in Baghdad.
So I don't know.
It's every day.
And if you're a human rights worker here in Iraq, you cannot be thinking about that.
You can't be focusing on those things at all, because it'll drive you crazy.
Yeah, well, and you won't get anything done.
So talk to me a little bit about this conscientious objector status, because I think the—well, I'm pretty sure the Chaos Radio audience is a pretty young audience, and it may well include people who've already signed up but maybe now have wised up and want to get out.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, I joined the military, obviously, to serve humanity.
I wanted to do something for the better of humanity.
I wanted to help people, and I just came to a point.
And I had done a lot of traveling as well, especially in the Middle East.
And this is kind of—I was a reservist.
I got a degree in theology, so I was going to college and going to drill and just kind of had a stance.
I wasn't, you know, facing any kind of upcoming deployment, so I had a chance to really study the situation and look at what was going on as a whole.
And as training started to—I mean, it's a really long story, but I just was at the point where I wanted to go to Iraq, Afghanistan, because that's what I feel like I signed up to do, and I was, you know, single.
I didn't have a family, but I just felt that—it was really during a weapons training when I would just start shaking while holding the rifle, just thinking about what if an innocent civilian was at the end of that barrel.
You know, what if I am responsible for the death of somebody that doesn't deserve to die in this war that our empire is waging?
So I filed for conscientious objector status in the summer of 2007.
This is when I went up to my commander and put my jacket in, and the whole conscientious objection is kind of like a court case.
You know, they're basically trying to prove that you're sincere in your beliefs and you're not trying to just get out of a deployment, because I wasn't really facing a deployment.
But you have to go through...
I had to see a chaplain talk about the nature of my religious beliefs, which you don't have to be objecting to any...
It doesn't have to be on any kind of religious grounds.
It can just be any moral grounds that you object to taking the life of another human being.
And so there's the chaplain's interview, then the psychologist's interview.
Make sure you're not crazy.
I mean, I don't know.
Maybe I am crazy, because I just don't want to take life.
And then the final interview is with the investigating officer.
And that whole process, that took about a year and a half.
It took so long because I actually had to make an appeal.
They were trying to give me a general discharge.
During the investigating officer portion, you know, they basically said, well, if you're so sincere in your beliefs, are you going to give up your educational benefits, which, you know, they were just trying to mess with me, I think, and I had to make an appeal to the Department of Conscientious Objection.
But I ended up getting an honorable discharge.
It just took a really long time, and it was, you know, just fighting through the system.
AR 600-43.
Could you please elaborate a little bit about the role that...
Talk to me about your religious beliefs here.
I was told, I think Angela mentioned, that you're in seminary right now, and I wonder, you know, what your religious beliefs, what role your religious beliefs had in your decision to seek conscientious objector status.
Yeah, well, I'm not, I'm actually not.
I was accepted into seminary before, but decided not to go.
Oh, I see.
But I actually went to a private Bible college in Knoxville, Tennessee.
So I was studying theology and God at the same time of studying the art of war, and those, there's always been different points.
You know, we come from such a God and country creation, and I don't think that was the message that Christ taught.
Certainly a lot of religions, you know, teach this message of peace, and part of my personal belief, I believe that God has given rights to human beings, and the right to a better quality of life.
Ah, geez.
Well, it's not always easy to keep a telephone connection to a rock.
Wasn't all that easy making a connection in the first place, so I guess we'll see how it goes.
