Human Shields deported from Iraq

During the Gulf War way back in 1990 Saddam Hussein had seized foreign nationals and used them, for a time, as hostages and human shields.

But in the early months of 2003 this wasn’t necessary as hundreds of people from around the world volunteered to act as human shields in Iraq.

The main goal of these people was to give the US pause and, should a war begin, protect Iraqi civilians and civilian infrastructure bombing.

At first they received a warm welcome but as the weeks progressed the Iraqi regime began to exert an increasing amount of pressure on the activists, even going so far as telling them which sites they could or could not protect…

This caused a rift within the group and several leading figures went on the record, criticizing Saddam Hussein and his regime.

In response the less compliant, more outspoken Human Shields were then swiftly deported and this caused a collapse in morale…

In the two weeks that followed the numbers of those who remained dwindled from a peak of over 500 to around 80…

Reports I read indicated that not one of the sites the remaining volunteers had been shielding were damaged, and none of the human shields who had stayed in Baghdad for the duration of the war were killed or injured.

One of those deported was Ken O'Keefe who would later try to renounce his US citizenship by burning his passport and then got involved with running supplies through Israeli blockades of Gaza (or at least attempting to).