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p>Unless a Grain of Wheat Falls: A View from the CPT Crisis Team
     Doug Pritchard and Carol Rose

(Doug) Saturday, November 26, 2005, 9 a.m. EST. My wife, Jane, was in Edmonton, Alberta, helping our future daughter-in-law, Jasmine, shop for her wedding dress. I was home alone in Toronto and had just picked the newspaper off the front porch, ready for a leisurely read in bed. Then CPTer Greg Rollins called from Baghdad. “The whole delegation has just been kidnapped. Don’t tell anyone yet. I will call you when I have more details.”
     My stomach sank. I took a deep breath, thinking, “We all knew this could happen. We have been through emergencies before. We know what to do.” I prayed for a quick release for the delegation and for strength and wisdom for all of us in the days ahead. Then I took the subway to the CPT office, where I would work, pray, weep, hope, eat, and sleep for the next four months and beyond.

(Carol) On Thursday, November 24, my husband Duane and I had digested Thanksgiving dinner with my extended family. On Friday I’d spoken about CPT’s work with an enthusiastic group in Fresno, California. On Saturday the twenty-sixth I woke early to the most brilliant of fall days in the comfortable home of a CPT supporter—ready for a transition. A bus ride would take Duane and me to the heart of Los Angeles, where we would visit a courageous and compassionate congregation in one of that city’s most troubled neighborhoods. But nothing had readied us for the transition announced by the early ringing of my cell phone.
     Doug’s tone spoke of crisis before his words: efficient, accurate, clear, holding back the storm of emotions so as to do what needed to be done. “The Iraq delegation has been kidnapped. Crisis Team call in 60 minutes. Need to be off the phone to get further information from the team in Baghdad.” I hung up and began the waiting of an Advent that took four months instead of four weeks. My heart echoed with the prayer it had learned decades ago, “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on us.”
     Flame-colored leaves carpeted the ground, canopied the sky, fell around me.

(Doug and Carol) Greg phoned back with more details. Doug immediately called together a Crisis Team. This initial Crisis Team consisted of us as the CPT co-directors, Delegation Coordinator Claire Evans, Training Coordinator Kryss Chupp, Canada Co-Coordinator Rebecca Johnson, Colombia Project Support Coordinator Robin Buyers, and CPT Steering Committee Chair Brian Young. This Crisis Team never met faceto-face. It carried out its work of coordinating CPT’s response to the situation through daily telephone conference calls. This team maintained an amazing unity, focus, and energy level through the constant stress of the crisis. This was a gift from God.
     We had been through serious crises before. CPTers had been held prisoner. Chris Brown and Kim Lamberty had been severely beaten and hospitalized in Palestine. George Weber had been killed in Iraq in 2003 when the new SUV he was riding in blew a new tire and rolled several times. Yet this current crisis was on a whole different level. Eventually it would extend across four continents and last four months.
     From that day on, we in CPT began juggling two new priorities along with the rest of our work. One priority was to support the extended families of the four who were missing: Tom Fox from the United States, a full-time member of the CPT Iraq team; Jim Loney, the other CPT Canada Co-Coordinator based in CPT’s Toronto office and leader of the short-term delegation that was kidnapped; and the other members of the delegation, Norman Kember from the United Kingdom and Harmeet Singh Sooden from New Zealand.
     The other priority was to do everything in our power to secure their safe release.
     Members of the Crisis Team contacted the immediate families of the missing four to break the news, then stayed in close contact with them for the months to come. Each family had its own concerns, complexities, and needs. Extended family members from around the globe also became involved and the team contacted them too. In some cases, CPTers were able to visit the families. For example, Fr. Jerry Stein flew from Texas to northern Ontario to stay with Jim Loney’s parents for the first month until their other children were free to come.
     The families and CPT also called on the wider support networks of the missing four. These were phenomenal groups in each case. Tom’s Quaker and Mennonite communities. Jim’s Catholic Worker community. Norman’s extensive networks in the British peace movement and his home church. Harmeet’s friends in the New Zealand and Australian peace movements. They spoke extensively with the media and were tireless in organizing appeals and vigils, supporting the families, and seeking contacts who might influence those who had taken the CPT delegation.
     The team in Iraq had the most access to avenues of action, avenues that might lead to the safe release of the CPTers. They contacted everyone CPT knew in Iraq and sought their assistance in gathering information and making contact with whoever was holding our friends.
     At the outset, diplomats who were experienced with Iraqi kidnappings insisted it was best to avoid publicity for the first 72 hours to give the best chance for a quick release. Thus we said little to anyone beyond the delegation’s families, despite the growing number of leaks and pointed media inquiries. This secrecy was a heavy burden for those of us who did know. It cut against the grain of CPT’s culture of trusting, open teamwork. It inhibited the prayers of CPT’s wide network of supporters and the actions they were ready to take on CPT’s behalf. We now see this initial silence as a mistake.
     Ironically, the release of the first video on November 29, on the Arabic television channel Al Jazeera, was in many ways a relief. It showed the CPT Four alive and well. It allowed CPT to tell its stories publicly. It allowed us to tap the source of CPT’s strength in its communities of prayer.
     It was also distressing to see our brothers confined and accused of being spies. CPT appealed to the world for statements of support to counter this accusation and to call for their release. Hundreds of statements came in the next few days, from senior religious councils and from school children, from political leaders and from those organizing for justice and human rights, from friends in distant nations and from strangers near at hand.
     Most significantly, prominent Muslim leaders courageously called for the release of these Christians, two of whom were citizens of countries with troops in Iraq.1 This resulted from generosity beyond measure and from CPT’s years of respectful work with Muslim partners in Palestine and Iraq. We hope that bridges of trust between our two faiths strengthened during these months will be a lasting legacy of this crisis. Supporters organized hundreds of prayer vigils and continued to do so for the duration of the CPTers’ captivity. We believe that these prayers and statements kept our four friends alive and led to the eventual release of three of them.
     CPT also got hate mail. At times it was frightening to see the depth of fear and anger in these thousands of bilious messages, many instigated by right-wing bloggers and talk-show hosts like Rush Limbaugh. CPT Canada office assistant Scott Albrecht took on the ugly task of sorting these e-mails from other inquiries and messages of support, thereby sparing the rest of us the emotional distress of reading them.
     In the second video released on December 2, those holding the CPT Four threatened to kill them unless the U.S. and the U.K. released all detainees and withdrew their troops from Iraq by December 8. In a subsequent video, this timeline was extended by 48 hours, to December 10, which is, ironically, International Human Rights Day.
     Here the Crisis Team experienced a shift. This was not solely about CPT and our colleagues. Addressing the widespread abuse of human rights in Iraq was an important part of CPT’s work. The world’s spotlight was now on our four friends. The Crisis Team felt the Spirit’s call to let that same spotlight illuminate more clearly the plight of 14,000 Iraqis held by the Multi-National Force in Iraq. They were being held without charges or access to legal processes or family. Many of them had been abused, as CPT’s investigations and others’ photos from Abu Ghraib had shown.
     CPT was never able to make direct contact with those holding our friends. Our surest way of communicating with them, whoever they were, was through our website and through the media. So CPT’s media work played an integral part in our strategy for release. The most important media for this purpose were in Iraq and adjacent nations. Therefore CPT focused its efforts on appeals, news releases, interviews, and actions for the Arabic media. This concentration on Arabic media was sometimes frustrating for media and supporters in North America, the United Kingdom, and New Zealand, who wanted more of CPT’s time and attention at home for the “human interest” story of their kidnapped citizens. To monitor the impact of these efforts, we had a network of people following the Arabic and English media and giving daily feedback to the Crisis and Media Teams, but we wished we had even more.
     Normally, CPT-related media work is carried out by our large network of CPTers and members of previous CPT delegations who develop their own media contacts in their home communities. We laughed when a reporter called and wanted to speak to our “communications department.” Media coordination was initially managed by CPT’s creative but overworked Colombia Project Support Coordinator Robin Buyers, who was joined by the volunteers on CPT’s ad hoc Media Team. They met frequently by telephone, disseminated news releases and statements of support, monitored media coverage, worked to correct inaccuracies, and provided regular media guidelines to CPTers plus the hundreds of CPT spokespeople in the above networks. These spokespeople were accessible 24 hours a day and gave consistent, competent responses to the media across many time zones. Some journalists said that, in their experience, CPT was unusually professional for an organization of its size and that it should give “media seminars” to other small nongovernmental organizations!
     During this crisis, partner organizations and the four men’s support communities also took a great deal of initiative. As Pat Gaffney from Pax Christi UK writes, “Without a press office, without spin doctors or PR people, I believe we did a great job in maintaining the integrity of the witness and message of Norman, Tom, Harmeet and James. Perhaps our weakness was, in the end, our greatest strength.”
     After the December 10 timeline expired, there was a worrying and wearying seven-week silence before the next videotape. During this time, CPT was buffeted by repeated rumors of ransom demands, negotiations, executions, and imminent release. We received calls from people pretending to have connections. More foreigners and nationals were kidnapped in Iraq. Some were released. Some were killed. CPT continued its call for justice for Iraqi detainees through an Epiphany Fast at the White House and our Shine the Light Campaign in Washington, D.C., Chicago, and Toronto.
     We also had to get back to supporting the work of the rest of CPT. Kryss Chupp was released from the Crisis Team to lead the upcoming training of new CPTers, which started on January 2. Robin Buyers was also released from the team to rejoin the Colombia team. CPT reservist Jane MacKay Wright replaced her. Brian Young had to leave the team for a few weeks to complete his seminary term and was replaced by Steering Committee Vice-Chair Ruth Buhler.
     In the course of this crisis we experienced the power of adrenaline. The Crisis Team, the rest of the CPT Support Team, and the field teams ran on little else for the first weeks. But like all drugs, adrenaline has its limitations and side effects. As our exhaustion grew, we began to seek the advice of counselors who helped us establish more sustainable patterns for work, worship, meals, sleep, and breaks. The CPT offices in Chicago and Toronto were now supported by 100 volunteers who brought meals, maintained computers, answered phones, organized vigils and mailings, and provided hospitality. As the stress from this crisis accumulated, the Crisis Team made plans for the extensive stress and trauma care that would be needed once the crisis was resolved.
     Throughout this time, CPT held true to its center. The core of CPT’s work is living out Jesus’ call to love God, love our neighbors, and love our enemies—living out nonviolent ways of being in the world. War zones are where CPT works. If CPT is not prepared for the risk of injury and death, we should not be there. This could have happened to any of us. Our teams are well prepared for violence reduction work in war zones— through our strong Christian commitment and through the work done in CPT training, on project sites, in developing creative nonviolent tactics and media skills, and in the ability to face danger and death.
     Just two weeks before the kidnapping, the Iraq team had spent a day discussing the topic, “Why Are We Here? What Does it Cost?” They named their current goals in Iraq as: being a witness for peace and the power of the cross; telling the truth of what was happening; supporting and building bridges among local human rights organizations; and using CPT’s power to assist Iraqis in gaining access to U.S., U.K., UN, and other authorities. They also counted the costs of this work: burnout; limited outlets for physical exercise; absence from family and friends; and daily risk of injury, kidnapping, and death.
     Despite the costs, CPT-Iraq team members were unanimous in their commitment to continuing their work of Christian peacemaking. Tom Fox reflected on this discussion in a powerful way the night before he was taken, saying, “[We are here] to take part in the creation of the Peaceable Realm of God… to root out all aspects of dehumanization that exist within us. …We are here to stop people, including ourselves, from dehumanizing any of God’s children, no matter how much they dehumanize their own souls.”
     In keeping with Tom’s words, which echo long-standing CPT policy, the Crisis Team resisted attempts by the media and government to demonize those who had taken our colleagues. We referred to them as hosts, brothers, and friends, and appealed to them as fellow human beings concerned about justice and the future of Iraq. We were confident that our captive colleagues were doing the same, seeking to show their own humanity and reaching out to the humanity of those who were holding them.
     From the beginning, we knew that an armed rescue operation was a possibility. In a hostage situation, CPT rejects all military or violent approaches. But others do not. On the day of the kidnapping, the Iraq team immediately told the governments involved, “We do not wish for either government or military intervention as we believe it may endanger [our colleagues].” The governments insisted that, while they too sought a nonviolent outcome, they reserved the right to use armed force, and they would do so without reference to the missing men’s wishes, or those of their families, or CPT. The possibility of an armed assault that could lead to the death of the captives, bystanders, those holding our friends, or the soldiers themselves, hung heavy over us all. CPTers reiterated this concern repeatedly in our encounters with governments and in our statements to them through the media, but the governments were just as insistent that this was their call alone.
     From the beginning, we also knew that a ransom demand was a possibility. Since the U.S.-led invasion, thousands of Iraqis have been kidnapped for ransom. Some of the political kidnappings of foreigners have apparently also led to ransom demands. We did not know who had kidnapped our colleagues and what their motives might be. We still do not know. CPT has a clear and long-standing policy against paying ransom. But now it was a real and immediate concern. These were among the most difficult discussions with the families of Tom, Jim, Norman, and Harmeet, and within the Crisis Team, as the team weighed our friends’ lives against a possible ransom. We felt a heavy responsibility to be prepared in case we received such a demand. As we considered this possibility again and again, the Crisis Team and the Iraq team remained unanimous that we must not pay a ransom.
     CPT enters war zones to offer nonviolent alternatives to war. That is our mission. CPT is founded on a commitment to Jesus and to his way of love for all, regardless of the cost. We believe that paying a large sum to support a violent group directly supports the ongoing violence of that armed group and would seriously compromise CPT’s work of nonviolence. Paying a ransom would also set a dangerous precedent that would immediately put in greater danger the lives of other CPTers in Iraq and in other kidnap-prone project locations like Colombia.
     Some told CPT that if a ransom is not paid and the hostages are held longer, the risk of a violent military intervention rises. While this is possible, we held that paying a ransom to an armed group increases the likelihood of their continuing their own violence against others. Some told CPT that if we do not pay a ransom, CPT is responsible for the deaths of our colleagues. We reject this argument. CPT is not responsible. Those who do the killing are responsible.
     CPTers and delegates are all informed of CPT’s commitment not to pay a ransom. Each of us, in joining CPT, takes this seriously—that there will be no ransom and no armed intervention to save our lives. Paying a ransom would betray the deepest convictions of our colleagues.
     In the end, CPT received no genuine ransom demands. To our knowledge, neither did anyone else.
     The long silence of those holding the CPT Four was broken on January 28 with the release of another videotape on Al Jazeera. We were relieved to see that our friends were still alive. However, an accompanying statement said that this was their “last chance” or “their fate will be death.”
     Through friends, CPT’s website, and the media, the Crisis Team and the Iraq team continued trying to make contact with those holding our colleagues. We continued to hear conflicting rumors of contact, imminent release, and death. U.S. soldiers raided more homes and mosques in Baghdad in search of various kidnappers and even fired on Canadian diplomats in Baghdad’s Green Zone, further raising the Crisis Team’s fears of a violent rescue attempt by trigger-happy troops. The new Canadian foreign affairs minister, Peter MacKay, said he was “very optimistic” about a safe release based on “the most up-to-date information.” He retracted the statement the next day, saying that there was no new information, and he phoned the families to apologize. Other hostages were shown on TV. Christian and Muslim groups issued new appeals for the release of all hostages.
     At the same time the “Danish cartoon” controversy exploded around the world. The CPT Iraq team immediately issued a statement condemning these cartoons, which insulted Islam, and CPT circulated this statement as widely as possible in the Arab world. Soon after, the Shia shrine in Samarra, Iraq, was destroyed and the violence in Iraq began to escalate dramatically. Yet the CPT Iraq team continued its peacemaking work. They were heartened by a new group of Iraqi human rights workers who had heard about CPT’s work and had now held their third public vigil calling for the release of the CPT hostages. March 5 marked the one hundredth day since the kidnapping, and special vigils were held around the world, especially in the United Kingdom, organized by Norman’s supporters.
     On March 7, the last video was released on Al Jazeera. Ominously it showed only Harmeet, Norman, and Jim. We in CPT had no idea why Tom was not shown, and we did not speculate publicly. But we were afraid. Two days later, on March 9, Tom’s body was found on a street in western Baghdad.

(Carol) Friday, March 10, 1:30 p.m. EST. Our first hint of this news came twenty-four hours later when I got a call from the U.S. State Department asking for assistance in contacting Tom’s daughter. It wasn’t the first time I’d talked with this official. She didn’t give me any information, but I sensed an edge of something different about this call. I was in Toronto at the time for the semi-annual meeting of CPT’s Steering Committee, and so Doug and I were able to meet in person to speculate together about what the call might mean. Was it related to Tom’s absence from the last video?

(Doug) A few minutes later I got a call from Canadian authorities saying that a body had been found and it was believed to be Tom’s. I was numb. The worst had happened.

(Carol and Doug) After we called Tom’s family and the team in Iraq, we gathered with those in the Toronto office for comfort and prayer. Through the months, we had kept those who had taken our friends hostage in a positive light and in prayer. Now we were taking a further step along this journey of enemy love. We remembered Tom’s family and friends. Doug read aloud the Iraq team’s Statement of Conviction that Tom had signed. We prayed the Lord’s Prayer together. Then we gathered ourselves for the next frenetic round of team and media work. Needing to keep our composure for this work short-circuited our grieving. We shed some tears on our own; we shed tears at the subsequent memorial services and debriefings; we shed more tears working on this book. But there are more yet to shed in order to plumb the full depths of our loss.
     At the time, the CPT Steering Committee was meeting down the hall from the Toronto office. They laced their meeting with prayer as this latest chapter of the story unfolded. U.S. authorities denied the CPT Iraq team the opportunity to positively identify the body. Instead, the authorities waited another seven hours before confirming from other sources that this was Tom. After the news was finally confirmed, the Steering Committee members phoned as many of the 190 CPT full-timers and reservists as they could to share the news personally and to offer their support and appreciation for the risks that we all take in entering this work.
     CPT was determined to accompany our fallen comrade on his last journey home. The Iraq team had received promises from U.S. authorities that this would be facilitated. Despite several days of efforts by the CPT Iraq team, the Crisis Team, and Tom’s support group, the authorities denied CPT the right to accompany his body. Instead we were limited to a send-off by CPTer Beth Pyles from the Anaconda military base in Iraq and a two-day vigil by CPTers Rich Meyer and Anne Montgomery outside the gates of Dover Air Base in Delaware, USA, until Tom’s body arrived on March 13. Carol traveled to Dover to join Tom’s immediate family and Rich Meyer for a viewing of the body and a brief memorial service before his cremation.
     The Crisis Team continued its work for the release of the remaining three amid growing anxiety about their future. Yet we were heartened when two CPTers offered to join the Iraq team immediately, despite the increased danger. CPT directed its appeals to people and groups who might influence the captors, such as the captors’ own families and associates. Iraqi contacts were sympathetic, but were also dealing with dozens of deaths every day in Iraq. Former hostages and negotiators whom CPT contacted were increasingly pessimistic. March 18, marked the third anniversary of the start of the Iraq war. CPTers spoke at many rallies about the cost of this war and called for an end to the abuses and injustice feeding it.
     The team in Baghdad continued to support the building of civil society in Iraq. On the day that news of Tom’s body was released, they were preparing to host a gathering to introduce several Iraqi Sunni, Shia, and Palestinian human rights workers to each other. The team felt that Tom would have wanted this gathering to go ahead, and so it did. A week later a group of 88 Palestinian refugees fleeing Baghdad asked the team to accompany them to the Jordanian border. Tom had been part of a similar accompaniment in October 2005. Again the team felt that Tom would have wanted them to do this accompaniment, and so they did.

(Doug) Thursday, March 23, 3:30 a.m. EST. Jim Loney’s partner Dan Hunt called me in the dead of night. “They are free!” he said. “I just talked to Jim. I don’t know the details, but no one was hurt.” My wife, Jane, had woken up a moment earlier thinking about Jim. I phoned Carol while Jane woke CPTer Scott Albrecht, who was asleep in the next room. This was the call for which we had waited and prayed for months. Finally. Good news. Thank God. But we had little time to absorb and savor it. After a brief hooray, we jumped in the car. Jane drove us through dark empty streets to the CPT Toronto office as I began to inform the rest of CPT, and Scott took media calls.

(Carol) The phone jolted me out of sleep—again. Heart pounding. What was it this time? Another hoax trying to get us to send ransom money? More news of death? Another reporter from a very different time zone wanting to know some detail—like, what high school one of the missing men attended? Another video? A CPT supporter intending to leave a message about an administrative matter? As I had done dozens of times in the past four months, I instantly rolled over, grabbed the phone, and turned on the light. Just in case it was—after all these months—“the call” from those who were holding our teammates, I took the tape recorder and guide questions in hand.
     “They’re free!” Now this was news worth waking for! I jumped. I danced, thereby waking my teammate downstairs. I hugged Duane, my husband. I squealed in delight. I called teammates. I dressed. Media calls started moments later. In the office that day my frenetic work of responding to the needs of the Iraq team, families, other CPTers, and the media was punctuated with outbursts in which I would whirl a volunteer or teammate into my dance of joy.

(Carol and Doug) At our offices, we first tried to find a centered place out of which to speak to media despite our very incomplete information. We were so thankful our three friends were free. We were thankful for all those who worked nonviolently and who prayed fervently for their release: religious leaders and soldiers, teammates and government officials, partner organizations, friends, family, children, women and men all over the world. We were troubled by the military nature of the rescue operation, yet grateful for its immediate fruits, and that no one was injured in it. At the same time, our gladness was made bittersweet by the fact that Tom was not alive to join the celebration.
     The next hours and days were tumultuous. The Crisis Team encouraged the Iraq team in their frustrated efforts to support and accompany our colleagues home, and encouraged them as they consulted with their Iraqi partners about the future of CPT’s Iraq work. CPTers worked with the men’s support communities at home as they responded to media, planned homecomings, and prepared for Tom’s memorial services. Together with trauma counselors, the Crisis Team made plans for extensive debriefings and healing work for Jim, Harmeet, Norman, the Iraq team, and all the others in CPT who were affected by this long crisis. All this was expected.
     Somewhat unexpected was how quickly the media turned on CPT. Until then they had been surprisingly sympathetic to CPT, its goals, and its work. They had largely respected CPT’s security concerns regarding the missing men’s backgrounds (Tom’s service in the U.S. Marine Corps band, Harmeet’s former work for a New Zealand defense contractor, Jim’s same-sex partnership with Dan), and CPT’s protection of the Iraq team’s identities and place of residence in Baghdad. The media had also mostly refrained from vilifying those who took the CPT Four while they were still in captivity. At the same time, they had repeatedly published unsubstantiated and wrong information as they sought to scoop each other on this big story. Newsweek, for example, insisted on printing that Tom’s throat had been “savagely slit,” despite CPT’s several calls to them saying that Carol had seen the body and this was not true.
     First was the accusation that CPT was not grateful enough to the military for their role in the rescue (for details, see the chapter by Simon Barrow and Tim Nafziger).
     Then came the accusation that by initially using the term “release” CPT was denying that it was a “rescue.” It is still unclear how our friends were freed, given that the captors fled 15 minutes prior to the troops arriving with another captor in tow. Was a deal done? U.S. and U.K. government spokespeople also used the term “release” in their initial statements, and we did not know then, nor do we know now, why the captors had fled. One U.S. talk-show host was so outraged at CPT’s use of “release” that he urged his listeners to call the CPT Chicago office. They did so in such numbers that this harassment overwhelmed all the CPT Chicago phone lines for the next 48 hours. CPT was unable to receive calls at this office from anyone else.
     Then there were the broadsides against CPT as a whole. For example, Toronto newspapers said that CPTers were “misguided, arrogant and foolish …idiotic and churlish …Christian zealots …imprudent and foolish pacifists consumed with their own righteousness” (Toronto Sun); “Lenin and Stalin[’s] …useful idiots …[with] aggressive idealism” (Toronto Globe and Mail); “pawns …[who] put their loved ones through a nightmare” (Toronto Star); “callous or woefully naïve …virulently anti-American …zealot[s]” (National Post).
     This turnaround in the media coverage surprised and embarrassed some in the media too. Tony Burman, the editor-in-chief of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, wrote, “I find these outbursts of media hostility toward the Christian Peacemakers somewhat perplexing. …I suspect most Canadians have little patience for this. Most of us not only felt genuine relief and happiness about the rescue but, more profoundly, saw in these 'peacemakers’ something that was quite admirable [and] courageous.”
     This whole story touched people at a very deep level, ourselves included. People are hungry for alternatives to the violence that has destroyed so much in Iraq. The media served to open a much-needed debate. They voiced the worldly wisdom that says only violence and armed force can bring peace and security. We had an opportunity from our direct experience of the world to speak of fundamentally different possibilities.
     Many people, hearing about CPT for the first time, wrote to CPT about their concerns, questions, hopes. Many prayed who had not prayed before. Many wept at the news of Tom’s death and then wept again at the news of the others’ release. This kidnapping stimulated a vigorous public debate about the work of nonviolence. It provided an opportunity to lift up both the powerful writings and witness of Tom, Jim, Harmeet, and Norman, and the work of the CPT team in Iraq. An important public discussion was stimulated by this crisis, and it will continue long into the future.
     Jesus said, “Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit” (John 12:24). Our delegation was kidnapped and Tom was killed. Yet this crisis has already produced much fruit. We have no idea of the full extent of this harvest.
     Doug Pritchard was born in northern Ontario and trained as a chemical engineer. He is married to Jane, a family physician, and is the father of three sons. After thirteen years in the chemical industry, Doug took on the primary childcare role at home along with serving as Peace, Justice, and Social Concerns Coordinator for Mennonite Church Eastern Canada. In 1997 he was appointed as Canada coordinator for CPT and since 2004 has served as co-director of CPT. He lives in Toronto.
     Rev. Carol Rose is the co-director of CPT, a poet, and a pastor. As part of the formation of the CPT Colombia project, she regularly served as a reservist until becoming co-director in 2004. Since that time she has also served on site in Iraq, Palestine, Arizona, and Kenora. An active peacemaker since the late 1970s, Carol has worked with Mennonite Voluntary Service, Brethren Voluntary Service and Mennonite Central Committee in projects around the world, including work in Central America, Thailand, and the Philippines. She pastored Mennonite Church of the Servant in Wichita, Kansas, from November 1997 through February 2004. Carol is married to Duane Ediger and lives in Chicago.

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