March 10: Remember Tom Fox

March 10 — how could I forget? How dare I fail to remember?

Nineteen years and four months ago, John Stephens and I began a blog site called freethecaptivesnow.org , as both a personal vigil and a community service, compiling and posting nightly updates of reports — or mostly the lack of reports — about the fate of four peaceworkers kidnapped in Iraq. They had been taken in Baghdad, and one of them, Tom Fox, was a Quaker and a friend of both John and me.

After those long weeks of uncertainty, it was this day, March 10, 2006 when we learned the worst: that Tom Fox had been murdered, his body found dumped in a vacant lot in that war-torn city.

About two weeks later, the other three: James Loney of Canada, Harmeet Sooden of New Zealand, and Norman Kember from England, were freed by British commandos. John and I then laid down our nightly vigil. (There’s still a Wikipedia page for Tom.)

Every night of those thirteen weeks, either John or I would scan dozens of wire service reports for news of Tom and the others, and post what we found: with only a few exceptions, the news was “no news.”

The exceptions were when the gloomy videos of the four – and then, on March 7, 2006 the three, minus Tom – were released.

An ad placed in Arabic newspapers, appealing for the captives’ release.

Here, to mark this occasion again, is an excerpt from my Introduction to a short book of remembrance, Tom Fox Was My Friend. Yours, Too. It wonders and reflects on why he was killed:

On March 10 came the dispatch we dreaded most: confirmation of Tom’s murder. (Early reports that he had been tortured were reportedly not confirmed by a later autopsy.) The only relief from this loss appeared on March 23, when the other three captives were freed.

Who killed Tom? And why? Few other than the ones who pulled the trigger know the truth, and one wonders how much even they understand.

Speculation abounds, of course, with many of my more left-leaning friends imagining a CIA-sponsored conspiracy to silence these noisy pacifist dissenters.

Yet from the reading and interviews I have done, however, the most likely guess seems much more mundanely sordid: it was all about money.

The videos showing Tom and the others were issued by a previously unknown group, “the Swords of Righteousness Brigades.” This name is very likely a fake, a cover for a criminal gang, which simply kidnaped them for ransom. There is, as John and I learned while keeping our vigil, a sizeable kidnaping industry in Iraq. Many Iraqis have been thus abducted for profit, as well as citizens of numerous other countries.

The four CPT captives; Tom Fox is second from right.

James Loney felt the ransom was wanted to help finance the guerilla insurgency. Many other observers feel that while the kidnapers are Muslims, and many have likely suffered from the invasion and occupation, these crimes appear to be only loosely connected to religious or political grievances. Rather, they are more a specimen of organized crime in a devastated and lawless society.

From this “profit-seeking” perspective, taking CPT team members was not a particularly good “investment”: the group has pledged not to pay, and not to ask anyone else to. Moreover, none of the four had a personal fortune to plunder. But the gang likely figured that regardless of such brave declarations, given enough pressure, someone would eventually cave in and pay. (Harmeet Sooden later told a New Zealand press conference that he suspected a ransom had been paid for
him and the other survivors, despite vehement government denials.)

But if the kidnapers were after money, why kill Tom? There are a number of hypotheses:

One, to show the friends and supporters of the other three that the kidnapers meant business. Some other hostage killings – for instance, that of longtime relief worker Margaret Hassan, an Iraqi citizen originally from Ireland – were evidently staged to show recalcitrant governments that ransom demands were life and death matters.

Or two: because Tom was an American, and as a veteran had a US military ID card, he was a certified “enemy,” and one for whom the US government would not pay. That made him worth less and disposable.

Or three: if the kidnapers couldn’t get ransom from Tom’s family or government, maybe they recouped something by selling Tom to another Iraqi insurgent gang, one willing to pay for the privilege of shooting a military-identified American. (It is all-too easy to imagine their derision at his protests that he was a musician, not a fighter.)

Again, no one knows, but these are plausible explanations for the inexplicable. . . .”

[Update: in 2007 the Christian Science Monitor published a report  about an investigation into the kidnaping in Iraq of one of their reporters, Jill Carroll. In the article, a U. S. Military officer alleged that an Iraqi insurgent believed to be involved in the Carroll kidnaping was also the person who killed Tom. That insurgent had recently been killed by U.S. forces,  so the identification was not conclusive.] 

On Thursday, [March 10, 2006] when we met at Quaker House to finalize the subjects and speakers for the 2006 annual peace march and rally in Fayetteville’s Rowan Park on March 18, Tom Fox was not on the list.

Twenty-four hours later, though, he was.

Not as a speaker. As a casualty.

Much of the 2006 peace rally program recalled the many who had fallen in the Iraq war–US troops, civilians, and innocent Iraqis. Tom was not the only civilian on that brutally long list. But he is the first fallen American who went to Baghdad specifically as an unarmed peaceworker.

Tom’s path to Iraq and an ignominious death was straightforward. He and I had talked about it in August 2005 when I saw him for the final time.

It was at Baltimore Yearly Meeting, our regional Quaker conference in Virginia (They met in Baltimore for two hundred-plus years, til the hotel rates got too high, but were unwilling to let go of the name.) Tom was between tours in Iraq, and we shared a meal and did some catching up.

We talked first about kids, as older dads will do. We both have a daughter and son the same age, and all grew up in the same Quaker meeting, Langley Hill in Virginia, near Washington DC. They’re into early middle age now, scattered across the continent, but still in touch.

A few years earlier, our sons had started a Quaker Hip Hop group called the Friendly Gangstaz Committee. The band caused quite a stir in our small Quaker world with startling, propulsively shouted renditions of well-worn hymns like “Simple Gifts.” Tom and I chuckled ruefully about that.

We also talked about work. From that same faith community, Tom and I had traveled somewhat parallel paths, trying to be true to the meaning of texts like, “Blessed are the peacemakers,”(Matthew 5:9) and “seek peace and pursue it.”(Proverbs 34:14)

How do you “pursue peace” in a violent world? My own seeking led, after a series of conventional jobs, to Fayetteville and Quaker House, a peace project near Fort Bragg.

When Tom finished high school, there was no money for college, where he could get student deferments to avoid being drafted for combat service in a war he abhorred.

He resolved this dilemma by winning a place in the top Marine Corps ceremonial band. He played clarinet there for twenty years, the uniform was that of a warrior;  but his “weapon” was a clarinet.

Then he became a baker at a growing health food supermarket. He was good with loaves, and his bosses wanted him to join management.

But Tom heard a “different drummer,” especially after September 11, 2001. With a war on, he felt called to “pursue peace” in a concrete way.

After much prayer and reflection, he joined the Christian Peacemaker
Teams (now called Communuty Peacemaker Teams, or CPT.)
CPT sets out to bring the “weapons of the spirit” into the front lines
of conflict, places where death and life are but a hair’s breadth apart.

Tom’s first CPT assignment took him to the Occupied Territories of Palestine.
This was dangerous work, amid a conflict which still seems hopelessly intractable. Tom stuck with it.

Then, when the U. S. Invasion of Iraq shifted from the foolish illusion of “mission accomplished” to the grinding facts of guerilla and civil war, he headed there.

He and three other CPT workers were kidnaped in Baghdad on November 25, 2005. Their captors gave notice that they would all be killed soon unless wildly aggressive demands of U. S. withdrawal were met.
After the kidnapping rightwing talk radio’s Rush Limbaugh sneered to his huge audience that “part of me likes this,” because, “I like any time a bunch of leftist feel-good hand-wringers are shown reality.”

This comment was typically mean-spirited, but also highlighted Limbaugh’s ignorance.
Tom knew the reality of Baghdad’s dangers firsthand. He had talked frankly about them over that last August supper. Tom was calm but clear about it: kidnaping, torture, murder were on all sides there.

It was a CPT team, after all, that brought the first reports about the torture and detainee abuses by U. S. troops at Abu Ghraib prison to reporter Seymour Hersh. They had also seen other humanitarian workers in Iraq kidnaped and some killed.

But there was even more to it than that. The Christian Peacemaker Teams took their identity seriously. Their namesake, after all, was another unarmed troublemaker in an occupied country, who was tortured and then suffered an ignominious public execution. Their policy was to pay no ransom.

A biblical phrase that comes to mind is Matthew 10:24: “The disciple is not above his master, nor the servant above his lord.”

The outcry for their release was loud, interfaith and earnest, hopes were kindled as early deadlines for execution passed without news,

So Tom had met his fate, and we mourned the loss. But at the peace rally we remembered his witness. Some also remembered that in the founding saga from which his team took its marching orders, death was a tragedy, but not the end of the story.

Unfortunately, Tom is almost completely forgotten today. Memories are fleeting and attention fickle, even among many Quakers, in our instant-media world. I was unable to find any mention of Tom on the CPT website. How can we reclaim, reflect on and learn from his example?

Perhaps  one way is to engage with these quotes below, all from sources that Tom was familiar with:

George Fox:

“Be patterns, be examples in every country, place, or nation that you
visit, so that your bearing and life might communicate with all
people. Then you’ll walk cheerfully across the earth answering that
of God in everyone. So that you will be seen as a blessing in their
eyes and you will receive a blessing from that of God within them.”

From the Epistle to the Hebrews, 13:3:
“Remember those who are in prison, as though you were in prison with them; those who are being tortured, as though you yourselves were being tortured.”

From the Qur’an, 11:20:
“And all that We relate to you of the news of the Messengers is in
order that We may make strong and firm your heart thereby.

12:111:
Indeed in their stories there is a lesson for men and women of
understanding.”

From the Tao Te Ching:

“Nothing in the world is as soft and yielding as water, yet nothing can better overcome the hard and strong, for they can neither control nor do away with it. The soft overcomes the hard, the yielding overcomes the strong. Everyone knows this, but who can practice it?”