Listen To Playlist: 'Respect for the People of Iraq'

Possibly one of the most hopeful events to come out of Iraq just came to pass this weekend in Finland. Padraig O'Malley, academic, author, and peacemaker, organized a meeting of 36 Iraqi leaders from across the Iraq's sectarian divide - Sunni, Shia, and Kurd. Flown from Baghdad to an undisclosed location in Helsinki, O'Malley said, "This is the most powerful group of Iraqis ever gathered outside of Iraq to talk about peace and finding a way forward together."
The initiative, which has become known as the Iraq Project, was launched as a common effort by UMass-Boston, the Institute for Global Leadership at Tufts University, and the Crisis Management Initiative
out of Helsinki.

Here is the cool part: O'Malley, who has worked to bring warring factions in Northern Ireland and South Africa together in the past, also invited Matamela Cyril Ramaphosa, former South African president Nelson Mandela's negotiator,
and Martin McGuinness, a former Irish Republican Army commander, to chair this weekend's meetings.

Martin McGuinness, who now serves as the leading member in the Irish National Assembly and as a
government minister was joined by Jeffrey Donaldson, a leader in one of the major Irish protestant parties, the Democratic Unionist Party. Both McGuinness and Donaldson, who once saw each other as mortal enemies, are sharing their own improbable story of reconciliation -- and are helping the Iraqis see, through their example, that it is
possible to reach across years of hatred and bloodshed and find a way to work together.

"Think about it," O'Malley said. "Now two people from Northern Ireland who just a decade ago wouldn't fly on the same plane . . . are working jointly to share their story with the Iraqis and tell them how they now
work together in the same government."

One of the most promising outcomes of this weekend's meetings is that the Iraqi's have taken ownership of the process and have a greed to meet again in Baghdad for the first time within the next three months -- and have invited the two Irishmen to help them work through their differences.

So far this exercise in unconventional diplomacy has been funded by a single trustee of Tufts University. We offer this playlist of Iraqi music as a way forward to support this peace process. Calabash will donate all of the net revenue we recieve to O'Malley's efforts.

Please share this post and playlist - This effort of citizen diplomacy could bring lasting peace in Iraq. Imagine if somehow we could get all the Clinton & Obama supporters, who have given online donations, to buy this playlist - what that could do to bring peace.

One of the artists featured on this playlist, Kazem Al Saher, who lives in exile in Cairo, is the top selling singer in the Arab music world. At the time of the American invasion of Iraq he led an American tour called 'The Impossible Love'. Kazem has played major US concerts for Arab people living in America, but few other Americans know him. Today, the distance between Iraq and the United States is as great as
that between the rival clans in Shakespeare's tragedy, which as we know was not only about love.

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