Local woman travels to Baghdad, makes her stand
A Santa Monica woman’s commitment to peace is taking her into the epicenter of a looming war with Iraq.
Kelly Hayes-Raitt boarded a plane Thursday for a two-week trip that will take her and 10 other U.S. women to Baghdad. Once there, the group will meet with weapons inspectors, visit a children’s hospital and an orphanage and a bomb shelter where 480 civilians were killed in 1991 during the Gulf War. “I think it’s vitally important that we hear from various perspectives on how this war will affect Iraqis, and one of the voices we rarely hear from are women’s voices,” Hayes-Raitt said.
One of the goals of the delegation’s visit is to highlight the disastrous effects a war could have on Iraq’s women and children.
“I feel a responsibility to Iraqi women to voice their fears, their hopes, their dreams,” Hayes-Raitt said. “Clearly, Iraqi women are repressed. But they will only become more repressed if we start bombing Iraqi buildings.”
The group also will deliver medicine, vitamins and medical supplies to an Iraqi civilian population that has suffered tremendously under United Nations sanctions, Hayes-Raitt said.
Approval from the U.S. state department and Iraqi officials was received on Monday. Since then, Hayes-Raitt, a member of Santa Monica’s Commission on the Status of Women, has been frantically preparing for her trip.
Once in Baghdad, Hayes-Raitt said the group will be escorted by a guide, a translator and Iraqi military “minders,” who will make sure the group doesn’t stray from its focus.
“They want to make sure we’re not taking photos of government buildings or things that might get blown up,” she said. “You know, they want to make sure we’re not taking pictures of water treatment plants and sensitive things like that.”
Hayes-Raitt, who runs a Santa Monica-based public relations firm, paid about $3,000 to go on the trip, which is being coordinated by CodePINK — a national women’s group opposed to war.
“I feel so lucky I have the opportunity to go,” she said. “I own my own business, I don’t have family obligations, so I feel I have a unique situation and an obligation to use that to hear Iraqi women’s voices and bring those back to Santa Monica.”
When she returns, Hayes-Raitt said she would like to go on a speaking tour of Santa Monica’s community groups and schools to raise awareness about the implications of a war against Iraq.
She especially would like to speak to junior high students, who could be impacted by the war against Iraq if the military’s predictions of a five-to seven-year commitment in that country hold true.
Though Hayes-Raitt has never been to the Middle East, she has traveled to exotic locations in China, India, Papa New Guinea and Sri Lanka.
“While I have been to out of the way places, I have never been some place as volatile as Iraq,” she said.
Despite that, she doesn’t fear for her safety. Hayes-Raitt believes the Iraqi government “would be fools to let something happen to us” during the group’s visit.
But while waiting for her flight at Los Angeles International Airport, she sent an e-mail to friends and family — and a few reporters — contemplating what lies ahead.
“Many reporters have asked me if I’m worried or scared,” she wrote. “Perhaps I should be. Frankly, what worries me the most is that my own convictions and opposition to this war will interfere with my ability to be truly open to what I am experiencing.
“And I worry about whether the State of the Union speech will make it more difficult to have honest moments with people,” she added. “The hotter the rhetoric, the cooler the candid conversations.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on January 31, 2003. Read the original PDF.