The Iraq Water Project (IWP) is a project of Veterans for Peace, Inc. (VFP), a national veterans Peace & Justice organization based in St. Louis, Missouri.
Our principal partner for IWP's major water facility reconstruction projects was Life for Relief & Development, a nonprofit organization headquartered in Southfield, Michigan, and dedicated to alleviating human suffering in Iraq and many other parts of the world.
Recently, we are working with Muslim Peacemaker Teams, Iraq, in providing water filtration units, helping supply clean water for schools, hospitals, and the Iraqi people.
Veterans For Peace Asks For Your Contribution to Continue our Clean Water Projects in Iraq!
Please help and give a tax deductible donation online
Or send a check made out to VFP-Iraq Water Project to:
Veterans for Peace
- Iraq Water Project -
216 South Meramec Ave.
St. Louis, MO 63105
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Special Report by Yusha (formerly Tom) Sager
Memorial Day, May 30, 2005
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Thousands of families now have access to clean water
Prior to the March 2003 US invasion, the Iraq Water Project sent three teams of veterans to Iraq who paid their own expenses and worked alongside the Iraqi laborers repairing water treatment plants.
We were then proud to announce that thanks to the IWP six water treatment plants in different cities and provinces of Iraq were once again sending clean drinking water to more than 85.000 people. Read a post-invasion report by our IWP Project Coordinator sent from Iraq in August 2003.
Tribute to Edilith Eckhart, Co-Founder, Iraq Water Project
Project History
In 1999, responding to the continuing crisis in Iraq due to the first Gulf War and the devastating, comprehensive sanctions imposed by the United Nations, Veterans for Peace members in the United States created the Iraq Water Project.
The primary goal of the Iraq Water Project has been to save lives
The second, but equally important goal of the original IWP was to educate the American people about the devastating effects a decade of sanctions had on the average citizens of Iraq and to force an end to these sanctions against Iraq.
The sanctions have been lifted, not as we hoped, through education and pressure on the US government, but as a byproduct of US President George W. Bush’s unprovoked attack on that nation.
The sanctions have been lifted because the War on Iraq completed the desolation of the infrastructure, a foreseeable consequence that was completely ignored in prewar planning. The US made sure the oil was flowing, but did nothing to prepare for the chaos that comes after the violent fall of a government.
Now it is not only the vast rural areas that are without safe drinking water, but the big cities as well. The US government and its Iraqi understudy have been unable to even get the lights reliably on, feed the hungry or provide basic health care.
Before this latest war, and in calamitous consequence of earlier US policy, Iraq was a social and environmental disaster in the making. Now it is a social and environmental disaster, assembled and delivered.
IWP Future
A major readjustment of the project’s approach was clearly necessitated by the advent of the United States invasion and occupation. The project goal of demonstrating to Americans the pernicious consequences of our government’s Iraq policy remains, however, as important as ever. But the unabating chaos that this war brought, and the vastly heightened danger to personnel engaged in reconstruction are obstacles not lightly dismissed.
In the fall of 2006 IWP decided to make a tactical change in our campaign to help Iraqis. In place of water plant rebuilds which benefit specific but limited urban and rural populations, we switched over to a more diffuse approach, whereby we send small and relatively inexpensive sterilizer units to public and private institutions all over Iraq.
This new direction offers the advantage of a wider exposure to Iraq's people while at the same time removing the pressure of funding deadline obligations. We send the units at the rate that donations and grants come in.
As well, IWP has entered an alliance with Michigan Peaceworks (Ann Arbor) and Muslin Peacemaker Teams in Iraq. We are each doing the same work and cooperation makes us all stronger. Photographs on this homepage show some of this effort. Click on the What's New section for further explanations.
Thank you for your interest in the Iraq Water Project.
http://www.iraqwaterproject.org/
