A heated debate over the threat posed by Iran's nuclear program to the prospects of peace in the Middle East dominated a recent panel discussion of U.S. foreign policy in the region that was held last week at Columbia College Chicago.
Though the discussion was titled "The Middle East: peace at what cost?" none of the four experts-a diplomat, a historian, a publisher, and a writer-seemed willing to actually name a price.
Panelist Danny Postel explained that, though Iran's current Islamicist government is dangerous, it's actually more dangerous to Iranians than it is to the United States, Israel, or the rest of the Middle East. Postel also suggested that the West be more selective in the intelligence it gathers about Iran.
"There was a gathering storm gathering in Washington and Tel Aviv in the lead-up to the Iraq War. We now know that the evidence used to justify that war was faulty or fraudulent. Regarding Iran, a healthy dose of skepticism would be in order," said panel member Danny Postel, a freelance writer who has lived and worked in Iran. "The intelligence being fed to the media now comes from the Mujahadeen*, a Stalinist, Islamicist cult that fought for Saddam Hussein against their own country. They're on the [U.S.] State Department's list of terrorists," Postel said.
Andy David, a deputy consul general at Chicago's Israeli Consulate, viewed the prospect of a nuclear Iran as a definite threat to Israel.
"We agree that war is the last resort, but there is one thing worse than war and that is a nuclear Iran," David said.
David explained that his parents live in Haifa, the site of recent rocket attacks by the Lebanese radical group Hezbollah, a group funded in part by the Iranian government. Because of the rocket attacks, David's parents were forced to spend weeks in a bomb shelter.
"Because they are a serious country, we take them seriously," David said.
Postel agreed with David's assessment of Iran as a serious player in the region's future stability, but countered the view of Iran as an expansionist nation.
"Iran is a superpower. It always has been and always will be. But Iran has not invaded another country since 1724, when it invaded India. As an unfavorable comparison, the U.S. and Israel are invasion-friendly," Postel said.
Justifications for the fighting that has troubled the Middle East for the last 100 years ranged from historical differences to cold, hard economics.
"It's all about the oil and money. There is no other excuse. There is no other reason," said Monsour Tadros, publisher of the Arab-American newspaper FutureNews.
Historian John Nielsen, who works at the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute, explained that many of the historical reasons for war in the Middle East fail to present the whole history.
"The tensions in the Middle East have historical antecedents, but recently we've seen a lot of groups cherry-picking history. By doing this, they ignore millennia of human history in the region," Nielsen said.
A green-gray uniform sits neatly folded inside a small cubbyhole in the library of Chicago's Cambodian American Heritage Museum and Killing Fields Memorial, a pair of black sandals beside it. The uniform, acquired and donated by a museum patron, once belonged to a Khmer Rouge soldier.
"The museum is here to tell the story of what happened in Cambodia, what the Khmer Rouge did to Cambodians. That is also why I am here. If I tell my story, it may make a difference to someone who has never heard of the Khmer Rouge," said Leon Lim, chairman of the museum and a Killing Fields survivor.
On April 17, 1975, Khmer Rouge Communist forces captured the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh, ending a five-year civil war. Lim was a medical student at the city's university and among those forced to evacuate Phnom Penh, as the Khmer Rouge sought to empty the country's urban areas and turn the nation into an agricultural utopia.
"It was terrifying. They told us that the Americans were going to bomb. They didn't give us any time to gather our things," said Lim. "We didn't know what was going on at the time, that they were rounding up professionals, lawyers, engineers, doctors and intellectuals. People who wore reading glasses. Then they took us into the countryside to work at the camps. They saw us as class enemies and wanted us out of the way."
Lim and others were forced to work in labor camps for 12 hours a day, often with only a few handfuls of rice to eat. At the end of each day, Lim would be hungry and exhausted. Many fared worse. He saw people die of starvation, exhaustion, illness and execution. In all, at least 1.5 million Cambodians starved to death or were executed under the rule of dictator Pol Pot. Lim stayed at the camp for more than three years.
Vietnam invaded Cambodia in 1978, forcing the Khmer Rouge into the countryside and beginning a 10-year occupation and 13 years of civil war. Labor camp workers who had previously been kept from moving about the country were able to do so as Pol Pot's grip on the nation loosened. Lim returned to his home village in 1979 with his wife and his sister. There, they found the rest of his family had been executed, including his parents and younger siblings.
They stayed in the village for six months before joining a small group and setting off for the Thai border. They carried only a little food and extra clothes, trying to avoid being spotted. The journey took two weeks. They walked through jungles and minefields, always worried about being spotted. They were never noticed.
BETWEEN 180,000 to 185,000 Cambodians fled the country and resettled in the United States between 1980 and 1985, said Elizabeth Keo, program director of the Cambodian Association of Illinois, an aid group serving Cambodians in the Chicago area. There are about 5,000 former Cambodian refugees living in Illinois. Three thousand live in the Chicago area.
"The weeks before leaving, I kept asking myself whether I should go or stay behind. I decided that I would rather die than live in a country without freedom, whether it was the Khmer Rouge or the Vietnamese. Once we left, we only thought about surviving. We walked during the day, and when nighttime came, we had to find places to hide in the bushes," Lim said.
Eventually, they arrived at the border and crossed over into Thailand, where the United Nations had recently established a refugee camp at Khao-I-Dang.
" It was just a field when we got there. There was absolutely nothing. No tents, no shelters of any kind. After a couple weeks they brought in tarps and poles and we used those to build our shelters. Eventually, there were 10,000 people living there," Lim said.
The camp's remote location sometimes made it difficult for supplies to get through. Food and water were sometimes scarce, due to transportation problems. Refugees learned to ration their food and water. Water was particularly precious, as rations were set at one bucket per family. Because of his medical education, Lim was recruited to work in the camp's clinic. He stayed there for two years before he found sponsors to help him get to the United States.
Leon Lim arrived in Chicago in May 1981, with $20 in his pocket and a waterproof bag containing his personal papers. There, he was reunited with an elder brother whom he thought had been killed. With a small monthly stipend from his sponsors, Chicago's Jewish Family and Community Service Agency, he decided that he would set the last six horrific years aside and use his education as a passport to a better life.
"I didn't even think of going back to medical school," Lim said. "After working in the camp for so long with so little, I just couldn't do it. I know my English was good, but maybe not good enough for that. I went back to school, got a master's in education and became a teacher instead."
Lim taught high school mathematics at Northside Preparatory Academy from 1987 to 1999, when he became an administrator with the school. He also spent time volunteering with the Cambodian Association of Illinois-an organization devoted to helping Cambodian refugees resettle and rebuild their lives-starting in 1981. Lim has been associated with the agency ever since, ushering it through the purchase of a new building at 2831 W. Lawrence Ave. in 1998 and construction of the museum on the adjoining vacant lot.
For more than a decade, he avoided speaking about the Killing Fields, but was eventually encouraged by his students and others at the Cambodian Association to talk about his experiences.
"I have told my story many times, and sometimes I get tired of talking about it, but it's important for people to understand what happened. People need to know what happened to me, what happened in Cambodia. As long as people ask questions, I will answer them," Lim said.
Lim's early silence on the Killing Fields is typical of Cambodian refugees. Traumas that Cambodian refugees dealt with include war trauma, from living through the atrocities of a civil war. Many lost loved ones and were forced to leave all of their possessions behind.
"Cambodian refugees have a difficult time coping with the past, because of the genocide and the hardships that they lived through under the Khmer Rouge," said Keo.
To Lim, the new building's Killing Fields Memorial-completed in 2004-has brought out many members of Chicago's Cambodian community who have previously remained silent.
The memorial itself consists of glass panels, etched with the names of Khmer Rouge victims. Of the more than 1,500 names on the memorial, most have been submitted by people in the Chicago area. They represent the family and friends lost by the survivors. Leon Lim submitted 22 of those names.
“Where will I live? Do I have rights?” asked the signs surrounding the refugee camp set up last week in Chicago's Grant Park last week. “What if I seek refuge in my own country? How can I protect my children from disease?” they continued, querying a line of people waiting for up to an hour to get inside on a hot Saturday afternoon.
“The questions you see on these signs are the same questions that refugees fleeing their homes would ask,” said Mary Vonckx, a New York-based anesthesiologist and volunteer for Doctors Without Borders. “They're there to give people an idea of how many questions refugees have to ask once they’ve left.”
Doctors Without Borders, an international humanitarian organization that delivers emergency medical aid to people affected by armed conflicts and disasters, set up its “Refugee Camp in the Heart of a City” exhibit in the downtown park to expose the public to the plight of more than 33 million people worldwide who had been displaced by war.
The refugee experience for most of the camp’s visitors would last only for the duration of the hour-long tours given by the group, but the volunteers hoped their efforts would leave a much more lasting impression. Station by station, tour guides led groups of twenty through some of same ordeals faced by displaced persons every day.
“You guys are the refugees. You have to leave your homes now, and you can take only one thing. What is that one thing?” asked Anne Luke, a tour guide and volunteer for Doctors Without Borders since 1998. When she’s in the field, Luke works as a nurse. She has served the organization in Lebanon, Somalia, and the Sudan.
“People have very little in these places,” Luke said, motioning to a billowing Sahara tent that sleeps 15 refugees in cramped conditions. “What they do have, they take inside with them when they go to sleep.”
Basic necessities such as food and water are scarce in refugee camps, tour group members saw as they were led through distribution centers. Water is pumped from wells, treated with chlorine tablets and stored in large plastic sacs called bladders. Each person is entitled to five gallons of water a day, to be hauled back to their shelter in plastic tanks called jerry-cans. When food is scarce, refugees are issued a box of compact emergency food, a cereal-like substance containing enough nutrients to sustain an adult for one day.
The tours also made stops at clinic tents, where guides explained methods for giving vaccinations and taking care of malnourished children, and a quarantine tent for cholera victims.
“Children probably get the most out of seeing the exhibit,” said Maura Corkery, a volunteer at the camp’s information center. “They see how much they have, compared to what children in the camps own. At the end, we always have parents thank us.”
“We had 1,200 people come through here yesterday, and we’re above 1,700 for today,” said Charlie Kunzer, a marketing associate for Doctors Without Borders. “One of our volunteers just finished talking to a woman who came out of the exhibit in tears, and she wasn’t the first today.”
