Peace campaigner ready for perilous mission to Iraq

US military troops aren't the only people engaging in a build-up ahead of war in Iraq. Peace workers are on their way there too, among them Ms Kathy Kelly, a Chicago-based activist who fittingly - given the controversy over the use of Irish airspace - stopped off on Irish soil at the weekend on her way to Baghdad to address an anti-war conference in Kildare.

Sixteen members of her campaign group, Voices in the Wilderness, are already in Iraq with the primary aim of giving witness to the effects of the conflict on the population.

A further 18 campaigners, including some Irish citizens, are due to join them within a fortnight.

"We hope that by having ordinary people over there, and particularly ordinary Americans, we can help to educate the US that there is more than one person in Iraq," she says.

Ms Kelly (50) is something of a Gulf War veteran. A practitioner of "non-violent resistance", she first went to Baghdad just before the initial conflict began in 1991, spending four nights in the city before heavy bombing forced her to evacuate.

This time, she says, she is better prepared. The group has access to satellite phones, and a contingency plan if electrical supplies go - everything indeed but an "exit strategy".

"We are going into a very dangerous situation," she admits.

"There could be internal chaos and upheaval and there might be people who would want to attack Americans for a number of reasons.

"But I can't imagine walking away from the Iraqis. It's a modest effort but we feel we have to be there."

While the media will tend to focus on so-called "surgical strikes" on military targets, Ms Kelly and her colleagues plan to concentrate on more "mundane" destruction if war breaks out. The devastation caused to water supplies during the 1991 campaign led to a massive outbreak of disease, and says Ms Kelly, "that could happen again. It is estimated 900,000 people could become homeless. People could reach starvation".

A former high school teacher, Ms Kelly - whose mother hails for Listowel, Co Kerry - was inspired by figures such as Father Daniel Berrigan, the Jesuit priest whom she says stopped her from getting "a prescribed view of the world".

She ceased paying federal income taxes in the 1980s to protest against the US military budget, and in 1988 spent nine months in prison for trespassing on nuclear missile sites.

As a member of the Catholic Worker movement, she takes a vow of poverty.

"I don't have a house. I don't drive a car. The most expensive thing I own are my contact lenses."

Ms Kelly was a guest speaker at Afri's 11th annual Féile Bhríde conference at the weekend.

Next Saturday, starting at noon, Afri is holding a peace walk from Bunratty Castle to Shannon Airport in protest against US military stopovers at the facility.