Invest in Peace

Democracy in Action, a leading provider of technology services to progressive non-profits, recently honored DAI with a grant that provides us with a year of free use of their full suite of cutting-edge tools for e-advocacy and fundraising.

DAI’s work is based on our ability to connect people - Iraqis, Americans, and others - in a network that bridges the walls of violence, ignorance, and suffering that have been built by years of war, sanctions, and chaos. We are already moving forward with using these new tools to deepen our engagement with constituents in the US as we develop a rapid-response capability to match urgent medical needs of Iraqis in the Middle East with a growing community of support in the US. We are well on our way to making our vision of “investing in peace” a reality.

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Wasim is 9 years old. His young parents came with him from Iraq seeking treatment, since the medical facilities in Iraq had been devastated by sanctions and then by the ongoing war and occupation. Wasim has been mostly blind since birth, despite having had several surgeries in Jordan intended to improve his vision. His family needs support to help their son see clearly for the first time.

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The whole Direct Aid Iraq team would like to say “thank you” to Christian, our very first intern. Christian is a student at a Quaker boarding school in northern New England, and has been working with DAI in our Vermont office for the last three weeks. He’s overcome illness, a car accident, and more to contribute his gifts and time to supporting this work, and we’re deeply grateful.

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DAI team members in the US and the Middle East have been working for months to find help for Rasul, an Iraqi boy shot through both eyes in a firefight in Baghdad. We have just learned that — thanks to the generosity of DAI supporters — medical treatment to help restore his sight may soon be a reality.

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Hussein S. was a student attending the technology institute near his home in the Baghdad neighborhood of Al-Adel. On his way to school on February 2nd, 2006, the thirty year-old suffered several serious injuries from a roadside bomb targeting an American military vehicle. While he sustained various shrapnel wounds to his neck, torso, and extremities, it was Hussein’s head that received the most damage from the explosion. A large portion of his skull was shattered, and additional pieces of the bomb were lodged in his brain. Hussein also lost his left eye, as well as his hearing due to the intense noise generated by the explosion.

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The DAI Amman team is happy to report that Mustafa Ahmed’s surgery went extremely well, and he is recovering remarkably smoothly. The doctor who performed the surgery to insert a specially-crafted plate to patch Mustafa’s skull assures us that he will now have every chance of living a normal life. The support of DAI and others has helped him in a significant way to begin to put all that he and his family have suffered behind them.

Many thanks to all whose work and contributions made DAI’s support for Mustafa and his family possible.

The image that appears above this posting is of Mustafa following his operation, in the lobby of the hospital where his operation was performed.

The following text is taken from a letter written about Mustafa’s case by an Iraqi colleague in Jordan:

On the 3rd September 2006, Mustafa (2 and ½ years old then) was with his father “Ahmed” in the car heading home after doing some shopping for the house. They parked the car just outside their house and stood there for a couple of minutes chatting with a couple of Ahmed’s neighbors and friends. Mustafa was standing just beside his father – as all children of his age do. It was sunset time in Saidiya district in South Western Baghdad.

A car came to park slowly in front of the three friends, the window was lowered slowly, and before they knew it, a machine gun nozzle appeared and started shooting at the group. Ahmed and Mustafa were hit at once; the three others ran inside the house to escape the bullets. Two of the men from the car got down and ran inside after the group and finished them off in the kitchen in front of their families and kids; before running away, the attackers shot Ahmed – who was unconscious – again to make sure he was dead.

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Dani is from the Karrada district in Baghdad. Due to the lack of basic preventative care in Baghdad, he suffers from abnormal swelling in his eyes that has threatened his eyesight on more than one occasion. His family tried to travel together to Amman, but his older brother and father were turned back at the border, leaving him alone with his mother in Jordan, with little means of support, since his father and brother are not able to provide sufficient remittances from their irregular work in Iraq.

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Haifa’a was shot in the face by members of a militia in Baghdad as a result of her failure to abide by the new restrictions they had placed on women’s behavior in her neighborhood. The weapon used fired a special kind of corrosive cartridge - only manufactured in the United States and Israel - that destroyed Haifa’a’s eye and much of the bone surrounding it.

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Hussein is a four-year-old boy, diagnosed with Hirschsprung’s Disease (HD), a serious, congenital illness which causes chronic constipation and severe discomfort, and can slow physical development. Children with HD are born without some or all of the nerves in the large intestine that are necessary for elimination. Left untreated, HD can cause infection, a ruptured colon, and death.

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