Was it worth it?

When they first arrived in Iraq, back in February, they were the centre of attention. But once the bombing started, the world forgot about the human shields. Now the war is over, Kim Sengupta catches up with the protesters who put their lives on the line

The Saraya Hotel in Amman was busy again at the weekend. The run-down staging post on the route to Baghdad had been looking a little desolate of late. But now the human shields are drifting back. Some want to return to Iraq, some will try Palestine. Others are laying down early plans for Syria, in case that is where Dubya takes his war next. Away from the public gaze, the protest flame flickers on.

The human shields, and the broader grouping of peace workers, brought a dash of early colour to the Iraq conflict. Part of the attraction was their eclectic mix. There were Gulf War veterans and a hairdresser from Croydon; retired diplomats and the current Miss Germany; grandmothers from Mississippi and Muppet Dave, a friend of Swampy; Ken O'Keefe, a former US marine and the organiser of the shields, and Gustavo, the first canine pacifist activist. They all turned up in Baghdad.

In the final days of the phoney war, before the bombing began, they were much in the headlines. They even had their own "embedded" press corps: journalists who overcame the difficulty of getting media visas by going in as human shields (although some would pay the price for this later). The shields were filmed and interviewed both on their journeys into Iraq – some travelled in photogenic double-decker buses – and on arrival, meeting Iraqi officials and "ordinary people". Donald Rumsfeld implied that they could be charged with treason: the overall US commander, General Tommy Franks, warned that they might get killed once the war began. Yet the peace people vowed that they would not be intimidated: they had an important message.

At the time, Miss Germany – the 19-year-old blonde Alexandra Vodjanikova – said: "I am just a little girl. I hope to ask Saddam Hussein to co-operate with the weapons inspectors and generally work for peace." She did not get that chance, but she did have a meeting with his psychopathic and reputedly highly amorous son Uday. Miss Germany went home soon afterwards, coyly refusing to give details of how her peace summit went.

Her visit was always meant to be short. But other shields, who had maintained that they would stay to the bitter end, also began to leave. On 23 February, at a press conference in the Saraya in Amman, 20-year-old Nathan Chapman from Norfolk had said: "We get a great deal of cynicism from the media. But I think most ordinary people understand and sympathise with what we are doing. If this means dying, so be it.'' Ten days later, when I tried to find Chapman in Baghdad, I was told that he had come and gone – he now felt he would be better employed as a facilitator for the other shields in Amman.

Godfrey Meynell MBE, a former colonial officer and High Sheriff of Derbyshire, who had provided much early copy, also left. He was doing so, he said, out of "cold fear'' of the bombing. Meynell had at least deployed as a human shield – at a power station – before his departure. But others were leaving, or being expelled, after increasingly acrimonious disputes with Iraqi officials about exactly where they should deploy. The shields wanted to be in hospitals, food stores and Iraqi homes. The Iraqis wanted them at strategic sites such as oil refineries and water-purification plants.

The most high profile of those expelled was 33-year-old Ken O'Keefe. On arriving in Baghdad he had declared: "I don't let fear dictate my life." He was thrown out in March, a week before the bombing started, because, the Iraqis claimed, he had refused to deploy. "They removed us from the sites we had chosen," O'Keefe said, "because we were critical of the integrity and autonomy of the Iraqi authorities. I was escorted by intelligence officers to the border because I say what I believe and the Iraqi government wants submissive robots."

The Organisation of Friendship, Peace and Solidarity – set up by the Iraqis under the diminutive Abdul Razzaq Al-Hashimi, a senior figure in the regime with a sinister reputation, to look after the human shields – was certainly having doubts about the visitors. A number were expelled for security reasons. Others faced more serious consequences. Five journalists who had entered on "shield" visas were arrested one night in their Baghdad hotel room by the Mukhabarat, the Iraqi secret police. They disappeared for more than a week before emerging in Amman, having been held in a number of prisons.

About a hundred human shields still remained in Iraq by the time the bombing started. The press corps in Baghdad would come across them now and again, at water and electricity plants or confronting American troops as they entered the capital. All survived uninjured – though Tom Hurndall, a 21-year-old from Manchester who had left Iraq for Palestine, was later tragically shot dead by Israeli soldiers in the Gaza Strip.

Rory McEwan, a 41-year-old organic gardener from Oban, Scotland, was one who stayed. The first time I saw Rory was the morning the Americans began the bombing of Baghdad. He was running up the stairs to the roof of the Palestine Hotel, his eyes bright with excitement. "This is amazing, isn't it?'' he said. "Fucking amazing!'' A week later I heard he had been thrown out of the country in one of Hashimi's culls. Two days ago I ran into him again at the Saraya in Amman. He had been deported not just once from Iraq, but twice, and was now desperate to get back after a brief trip home – which he had found strange and uncomfortable. Now he was anxious to know how safe the road was to Baghdad, and whether he would still need a visa.

McEwan had been deployed at the Doura power plant, which supplied electricity to half a million people in Baghdad, and which was close to the site of a fierce battle. Bombs and missiles had struck right next to the plant, blowing out the windows. "I had never been in a situation like that before, and it was a pretty frightening experience," said McEwan. "We were genuinely very worried that the place was going to get hit. But we had come as human shields, and this is what we had to do. I was quite prepared to stay."

A few days later McEwan was told that he and a group of others were going to be expelled. "Mr Hashimi met us and told us that we must leave immediately for Syria. We did everything possible to try to get him to change his mind, but he said it was a security issue. "The journey to the Syrian border was very scary. We saw tanks and lorries shot up by the Americans, we saw bombing raids ahead. Later we ran into some Australian Special Forces. They were quite threatening at first, but calmed down once they saw our passports. One of the group immediately began to tell them about the positions of the Iraqi military we had seen. They let us continue on to the Syrian border. We were desperate to stay in Iraq. At the end our official minders agreed to take us back to Baghdad – in return for a $100 bribe." The party returned to Baghdad, but their reprieve did not last long. They were expelled at 6am the following day, this time to Jordan.

"I went back to Britain, but I found it very difficult," said McEwan. "People seemed to think that the war was a success just because it had ended quickly. Tony Blair's popularity was going up. I couldn't really stand it, so I came back to Jordan."

Uzma Bashir was also at the Saraya at the weekend. The 33-year-old British Muslim from Bradford had given up a job as a lecturer in health and social care at West Herts College to go to Iraq. When the Americans arrived in Baghdad, she was among the most combative of the shields confronting them: some of the young US marines were quite shocked by her liberal use of expletives.

"I have been against this war for a long time," she says, sipping tea in the Saraya's spartan dining room. "I was arrested for trespassing on the Northwood military base, so I have a bit of experience in challenging the military. They killed a lot of innocent people in Iraq; there was no justification for this. Most of the American soldiers just would not answer my questions. But a few were quite aggressive." She now plans to visit the West Bank in Palestine before returning to England: her mother, who was doing the Haj to Mecca while Bashir went to Iraq, is anxious about her safety.

Sitting next to her is LaRita Smith, 79, from Jackson, Mississippi. Her family is also deeply concerned. "In fact, they tried to stop me from coming," she says. "I had told them all I was going on holiday to Jordan, but they suspected I was heading for Iraq. They hacked into my e-mails, but by then I was already at JFK airport in New York, and there was nothing they could do."

Smith, who used to run an art gallery in Jackson, stayed in Baghdad throughout the war. "I guess the Iraqis thought I was too old to deploy," she said. "But I saw some terrible things in Baghdad. The Americans let the National Museum get looted. I am tired now and I haven't got much money left. But I will certainly be taking up this matter of the museum when I go back. As an American I feel really sad about what my country has done."

Marc Eubanks, who served in the US Air Force for seven years, stayed throughout the bombing and subsequent looting at the Doura power plant. On two nights he was given an AK-47 semi-automatic rifle by the plant director to defend it against the looters. He said: "I did not have to use it and I certainly was not looking forward to using it. The director pointed out to the looters that I was an American, and if anything happened to me their houses would be bombed by the US forces. I was not comfortable with that.

"In Baghdad it was clear that the Americans had a complete lack of comprehension of the local situation. They simply did not know how to communicate. One day they blew up an ammunition dump in a residential neighbourhood and injured quite a few people. I had tried to point out the dangers to an American soldier just beforehand, but he got quite aggressive with me," Eubanks said.

"Some of the human shields who went to Iraq were 'peace tourists'. They were in denial that a war would take place. I thought the war was inevitable. What we have now got to do, as former human shields, is try to deal with the aftermath."

Eubanks is now with his girlfriend in Greece, contemplating the future and planning to renounce his US citizenship as a further gesture of protest. "What I would like to do is play some part in the political process in Iraq. I have already made a start on that. I told some Iraqis before I left that if they feel angry about the Americans, they should demonstrate. I gather there are quite a few demonstrations now," he said.

John Richardson, a 56-year-old community worker, is back at home in Batley, Leeds. He will discover today whether he has kept his job with an organisation that supports asylum-seekers and refugees. "I took two weeks' leave back in February and went to Iraq as a human shield," he said. "My employers are reasonable people, but I don't know whether they're going to be that reasonable. Everyone I told I was going to Baghdad thought it was mad. But I have no regrets whatsoever about going. I saw some amazing things and took part in history."

Richardson was also deployed at the Doura power plant. "One day, at the end, Marc Eubanks and I had to make our way through where there had been some fighting to the American forces to tell them that the plant was being attacked by looters and that they should come as soon as possible. On the way I kicked a shell, which bounced down some steps. Marc went quite bananas – being a former services man he realised it was a live round. I guess we were quite close to getting killed."

What does the future hold for him? He says he is writing a book about his experiences, along with a fellow human shield, Robin Banks. "When we set off for Iraq we didn't have a book in mind. But it has been such an amazing experience that we felt we should do this. It is very strange, sitting here in Batley, to think what we, very ordinary people, went through."

Indeed. The human shields may not have stopped the war, but it looks like we may not have heard the last of their stories.