Some Americans demonstrate their opposition to President Bush’s talk of war against Iraq by picketing, signing petitions, or spending their weekends demonstrating in front of their local governmental buildings. But Hoboken resident Judith Karpova, a 58-year old writer and computer consultant, has chosen a more far-reaching protest tactic; she is actually packing her bags and is traveling to Iraq.
Karpova, who has lived in Hoboken since 1977, is scheduled to meet the Truth, Justice and Peace Action group on Feb. 17 in Amman, Jordan, and with them she expects to cross the border into Iraq.
Her plane ticket are open-ended, and while she only plans on spending a couple weeks there, she said Tuesday that she is prepared to stay longer if trapped by the impending war.
Karpova said that she hopes to achieve several goals by going.
First, she said, that the act itself carries a certain amount of symbolic weight. “I think that it is the strongest statement that an American citizen can make,” she said. “To be willing to go to Iraq to protest a government administration that is out of control.”
Karpova’s trip is also in part an act of civil disobedience. She and her fellow peace activists are defying U.S. government prohibitions against Americans traveling to Iraq; the United States has no diplomatic relations with Baghdad. Each member of the group who enters Iraq could face up to 12 years in prison and a $1.25 million fine.
Yet Karpova said she feels compelled to make the visit to Iraq because of her deep-seated belief in peace rather than war. “What I’m doing is the most patriotic thing that anyone can do,” she said. “I believe that if George Bush does pursue this war, then we have become the aggressor, and he will become the moral equivalent of Saddam, and that corrupts who we are as a nation.”
Her trip is also intended to be a gesture of solidarity as much as protest, she said; an opportunity to put a human face on the suffering Iraqi population. “I have committed myself to go to Iraq and by coming back with their stories, to humanize the people whom the current administration seems so willing, even eager, to destroy,” she said. “There is a horrible enthusiasm in the way the proposed bombing of Baghdad is being discussed by the Pentagon, but no similar enthusiasm and patience to continue the peaceful process of verifying the disarmament of the Hussein regime, which is already underway.”
Karpova was clear that her trip is in no way a show of support for Hussein or the policy of his regime.
“He is a very bad leader with a horrible record of abuses against his own people. There isn’t a kind word that can be said about him,” she said. “But if there is a war, the people of Iraq are going to be hurt most, not Saddam.”
When Karpova crosses the border and travels head-on into a gathering storm that is a possible war, her safety is very much in jeopardy. So is she afraid?
“Of course I am,” she said. “Every day, I think about [the dangers]. But I have a conviction and honest belief in what I’m doing.”
And while she does fear for her own physical safety, she said that her mental health is as strong as it has ever been. “I really have become more at peace with myself and more at ease with my own existence since making this decision,” she said.
Others have gone
Karpova’s trip into Iraq is not the first one made by an American since the Gulf War and the 1991 cease-fire. Activists protesting economic sanctions levied against Iraq have voyaged there repeatedly to smuggle in banned goods. An American and British group opposed to sanctions, Voices in the Wilderness, has sent 50 groups to Iraq since March 1996, according to the group’s web site. “Voices in the Wilderness have been an invaluable source of inspiration and background for me,” said Karpova.
United Nations economic sanctions, imposed after Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait, cannot be suspended until the United Nations certifies that Iraq is free of weapons of mass destruction.
Karpova argues that 12 years of sanctions have contributed to high rates of illness, death, and disease in Iraq. In 1999, UNICEF reported that the death rate for small children had doubled in the last decade. Sanctions have been modified twice to allow for more food and aid, but Karpova said more needs to be done. “Because of the water treatment, electrical generating plants, hospitals and pharmaceutical plants were targeted and destroyed in the Gulf War, and because of the U.N. sanctions, [this] has prevented the importation of vaccines and construction material to rebuild the infrastructure,” said Karpova. “Over half a million children alone have died of contaminated water and childhood diseases.”
Karpova, a Green Party supporter, has a long history of activism and civic volunteerism. She protested the Vietnam War, and in the 1980s she led the effort to have Hoboken declared a nuclear-free zone. More recently, she has been active in demonstrations against the World Trade Organization.