Kathy Kelly

"If they would just confirm to us that my brother is alive, if they would just let us see him, that’s all we want. But we can’t get anyone to give us any confirmation. My mother dies a hundred times every day. They don’t know what that is like." In July of 2018, an Amnesty … Continue reading “US Supports Saudi-UAE War Crimes in Yemen”

Writing this week for the Chicago Tribune, Steve Chapman called a U.S. Government report on the war in Afghanistan "a chronicle of futility." “The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction” report says the US spent large sums "in search of quick gains" in regional stabilization – but these instead "exacerbated conflicts, enabled corruption and bolstered … Continue reading “On Purpose, In Kabul”

This past Friday in Afghanistan’s Ghazni province, Hazara girls joined young Pashto boys to sing Afghanistan’s national anthem as a welcome to Pashto men walking 400 miles from Helmand to Kabul. The walkers are calling on warring parties in Afghanistan to end the war. Most of the men making the journey are wearing sandals. At … Continue reading “A Mile in Their Shoes”

Here in Kabul in early June, outside the home of several Afghan Peace Volunteers, a large drilling machine is parked on what was once a lovely garden. To this now muddy patch, workers will soon arrive for another noisy, dusty day of digging for water. The well dried up a week ago. As of today, the … Continue reading “Afghans, Parched for Water, March for Peace”

The ruins carpeted the city market, rippling outwards in waves of destruction. Broken beams, collapsed roofs, exploded metal shutters and fossilized merchandise crumbled underfoot. In one of the burnt-out shells of the shops where raisins, nuts, fabrics, incense and stone pots were traded for hundreds of years, all that was to be found was a … Continue reading “In Yemen, Shocked to His Bones”

On April 26th, 2017, in Yemen’s port city of Hodeidah, the Saudi-led coalition which has been waging war in Yemen for the past two years dropped leaflets informing Hodeidah’s residents of an impending attack. One leaflet read: "Our forces of legitimacy are heading to liberate Hodeidah and end the suffering of our gracious Yemeni people. … Continue reading “The Shame of Killing Innocent People”

This week at the Voices for Creative Nonviolence office in Chicago, my colleague Sabia Rigby prepared a presentation for a local high school. She’ll team up with a young friend of ours, himself a refugee from Iraq, to talk about refugee crises driven by war. Sabia recently returned from Kabul where she helped document the … Continue reading “Reality and the US-Made Famine in Yemen”

Two weeks ago in a room in Kabul, Afghanistan, I joined several dozen people, working seamstresses, some college students, socially engaged teenagers and a few visiting internationals like myself, to discuss world hunger. Our emphasis was not exclusively on their own country’s worsening hunger problems. The Afghan Peace Volunteers, in whose home we were meeting, … Continue reading “Salt and Terror in Afghanistan”

Kabul – The fire in the Chaman e Babrak camp began in Nadiai’s home shortly after noon. She had rushed her son, who had a severe chest infection, to the hospital. She did not know that a gas bottle, used for warmth, was leaking; when the gas connected with a wood burning stove, flames engulfed … Continue reading “The Suffering of Afghan Refugees in Winter”

Dr. T., a medical doctor, is a Palestinian living in Gaza City. He is still reeling from days of aerial bombardment. When I asked about the children in his community, he told me his church would soon be making Christmas preparations to lift the children’s spirits. Looking at his kindly smile and ruddy cheeks, I … Continue reading “Truth and Trauma in Gaza”