BAGHDAD: Marla Ruzicka, the Californian aid worker who provided succor to civilian war victims, especially orphaned children, in strife-torn Iraq, was killed by a suicide bomber as he attacked a security convoy that passed near her parked car on the airport road in Baghdad Saturday.
The 28-year-old Marla has been a one-man army in Iraq, often taking up the cause of innocent civilians who become victim of the cross-fire between Iraq's residual fighters and the U.S. army that is on the peace-keeping mission. She and her Iraqi driver, died instantaneously, Baghdad's U.S. embassy said.
The Lakeport, California-born Marla had worked with Sen. Patrick J. Leahy and got $2.5 million for civilian victims in Afghanistan, and later, $10 million for Iraq. She often moved to the interiors of the country, without guards, reaching the much-wanted aid to the poor civilian victims. She ran the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict, or CIVIC, conducted door-to-door surveys trying to determine the number of civilian casualties in the country.
"Everyone who met Marla was struck by her incredible effervescence and commitment," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch.
Marla's parents were notified about her unfortunate and tragic death.
Human Rights Watch said she was expected to leave Iraq in about a week's time. She had sent a report to the New York-based group saying her work on counting the casualties is important because it not only quantifies the cost of the war, "but to me each number is also a story of someone whose hopes, dreams and potential will never be realized, and who left behind a family".
Earlier in 2002, Marla had campaigned for civilian victims in Afghanistan, leading to a legislation in the U.S. authorizing aid to Afghans, who suffered losses in the U.S. military operations.
She went to Iraq, when the U.S. invaded that country in March 2003 with Code Pink, a women's anti-war group. While other aid workers returned after the war had ended and the rehabilitation process had started, she decided to stay back, founding CIVIC and continuing with her work in the warn-torn country.
Marla joins several foreign aid workers in Iraq, who were killed in the cross-fire. Among them are Margaret Hassan, the abducted British aid worker, who was later killed, and the workers of a Southern Baptist missionary group.
She had her own ways of doing things. Many criticized her overbearing and impulsive methods in reaching to the affected people, and her description of the governmental programs as slow and complicated. But the families that received help as a result of her efforts, spoke of her as an angel.
Onlookers still cannot comprehend how insurgents can perform such diabolical acts and kill innocent individuals whether US, Iraqi or another nationality who are only trying to help the Iraqi people to improve their lives; a motive simply cannot be imagined.
