Eve of War

The world is poised for war. Not the world, actually, rather a specific part of it. Shared cultures can breed shared perspective. One set of participants tends to be of the Anglo persuasion: the US, England and Australia. But Spain and Bulgaria are also players in the mix, so it is not a one-language affair. The Arab world doesn't like Saddam Hussein, but their perspective of war is affected by shared culture and language. Millennium has many different ethnicities working on the ground: their objective transcends mere language.

With war imminent, our Millennium-Northern Iraq team this week left Erbil along with thousands of others to head to safer locations. While most humanitarian workers have left the country, ours remain in the north at a pre-determined location near one of the refugee camps set up by the regional government.

Last week, through contingency relief funds, Millennium-Northern Iraq
provided 2,000 blankets and other items for distribution to families forced out of their homes by the government of Iraq. Thousands of Kurds from the oil-rich city of Kirkuk have crossed the border into Northern Iraq near Erbil and Sulemanyia, the largest expulsion that Millennium-Northern Iraq's director is aware of since arriving in the region in 1993. The Kurds arrived with only the clothes on their backs and whatever they could carry in their hands. No language was needed to understand what was happening.

James Clark

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(c) 2003 Millennium Relief & Development Services, vol. 2 no. 31
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