.ltBritish activist hopes she has undermined troops' morale
The Times,
2 February 1991
PAT ARROWSMITH, the diminutive veteran British peace activist, emerged from more than two months in Iraq yesterday saying she hoped her activities would help to undermine British and American soldiers' morale.
Ms Arrowsmith, aged 60, a vice-president of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, was one of more than 120 people from 20 nations who set up a peace camp at Arar in Iraq, about a mile from the Saudi frontier and seven miles from concentrations of allied mainly French troops. The camp was about 300 miles from Kuwait and was a former staging post for pilgrims to Mecca.
The camp, a concreted compound in the desert with covered areas of corrugated iron which still bears the big painted slogans "Give peace a chance" and "Gulf peace team", is thought to have been taken over by the Iraqi military as a base.
Ms Arrowsmith said she was confident the same forces which finally made America's military involvement in Vietnam untenable would paralyse the allies' efforts in the Gulf.
"I certainly hope my behaviour is as bad for soldiers' morale as possible that's what I want more than anything," she said, indicating it would have the same effect on Iraqi troops. "In principle, anyone at the moment who is seducing British soldiers from their duty or American soldiers from theirs has my full support."
She did not believe a decline in morale would endanger soldiers by inhibiting their effectiveness as a fighting force.
"When soldiers' morale goes down, they desert...that's what I am interested in," she said. She described her role and that of other peace campaigners in the Gulf and elsewhere as to "sow additional seeds of dissidence" in the hearts and minds of all troops in the conflict. She believed young American men were already seeking counselling on ways to avoid a possible draft.
Ms Arrowsmith who is on bail on charges connected with breaking into a military base in Suffolk, returned to Amman early yesterday with about 70 other members of the Gulf peace team, after the Iraqi authorities ordered them out of their camp.
The decision to empty the camp clearly caused much bitterness and arguments between the 70 or so activists who stayed for the first 10 days of the war, oblivious to the jets flying overhead and the distant thump of bombs.
John Livesey, aged 61 and a former soldier from New Zealand, indicated that he was in disagreement with the hardliners. "They were a pack of nutters at the camp. They are people with a death wish. They were people who were prepared to die to make a stand," he said.
Ms Arrowsmith was one of four Britons who had to be carried on to the buses taking them out of the camp. She agreed that there had been disagreements, but said that this was inevitable.
"We are going to be rather determined people to come on such a project...and, in the broad sense of the word, we are going to be anarchistic people who don't like rules and regulations."
Despite the closure and disagreements, Ms Arrowsmith was satisfied that the peace team achieved most of its objectives, acting as what she called "a moral force" in a war zone and a "human buffer between armies in conflict".
She believes it served as a deterrent to military action in its immediate surroundings and most importantly, set a precedent in the history of the peace movement. "This was an international camp right up at the front between two conflicting armies and it stayed for the first 10 days of war. I hope it will be followed by further such significant steps in future."
Britain, with about 30 members, was among the best-represented nations together with India, Italy, Australia and America. Activists passed the time by carrying out camp chores, joining working groups on non-violence and discussing strategy in so-called "definity" meetings, which lasted up to five hours at a time, and playing table tennis.
Ms Arrowsmith, who with several others made her own T-shirt with the logo "I choose to stay", said that, despite the proximity to the war, people were not frightened. "I think we recognised that bombers on their way to Basra or Baghdad were not interested in bombing a peace camp," she said.
