I don't usually read obituaries, but this one in The Guardian caught my eye:
Marla Ruzicka, who has been killed by a car bomber near Baghdad airport, was an extraordinary, one-person American aid agency, who worked tirelessly to get compensation for victims of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Though only 28 when she died, she was an unusual mixture of charm, ebullience, adventure-seeking and tireless dedication to helping ordinary people whose lives had been shattered. She lobbied journalists and diplomats with equal persistence, but loved nothing better than to sit with wretched families after the spotlight had moved on, record every detail of their stories, go out and campaign for official apologies and compensation - and then stay in touch to keep them informed.
She'd gone to Iraq to document the civilian casualties, and became one herself, along with her driver, who had planned to quit, but stayed on knowing she was about to leave Baghdad this week. While there she developed contacts among the U.S. military, urging them to report on the many unreported incidents occuring daily in Iraq. In 2003 a segment of her journal was published on AlterNet :
A small grenade was thrown at the tank, causing it to loose control and veer onto the highway, over the family's small Volkswagen. Mohammad and Hamdia were killed instantly, orphaning the three girls in the backseat. The girls survived, but with broken and fractured bodies. We are not sure of Ayat's fate; her backbone is broken.
CIVIC staff member Faiz Al Salaam monitors the girls' condition each day. Nobody in the military or the U.S. Army has visited them, nor has anyone offered to help this very poor family.
There's more at AlterNet from Don Hazen, who says he's "never known anyone quite like her." Here's what she wrote, shortly before she died, in an essay to Human Rights Watch:
"A number is important not only to quantify the cost of the war, but, to me, each number is also a story of someone whose hopes, dreams and potential will never be realised, and who left behind a family."
Exactly.
