Margaret Hassan (photo by Mike Moore)

We have learned with great sadness of the tragic loss of Margaret Hassan, director of CARE Intenational’s work in Iraq and a colleague of Voices. Margaret’s life was dedicated to the well-being of the Iraqi people, as illustrated in the words of her friend which follow. Margaret stayed in Iraq when others were leaving, when the prudent and safe thing to do would have been to leave Iraq. While Margaret’s physical presence is no longer amongst us, her challenge to us remains alive and well-a challenge to work respectfully with and to love the Iraqi people, to work for a just resolution of the war in Iraq.

BBC NEWS
Margaret Hassan: A personal tale
By Felicity Arbuthnot
(October 22, 2004)

Freelance journalist Felicity Arbuthnot, a long-time friend of kidnapped aid worker Margaret Hassan, describes the charity boss’s heroic endeavours to help the people of Iraq.

Even in the bloodshed and turmoil of post-invasion Iraq, the kidnapping of Margaret Hassan, head of Care International in Iraq, is incomprehensible.

Dahr Jamail’s website now includes a section called ‘Covering Iraq‘. This section will provide analysis and discussion of US mainstream news in light of Dahr’s reports and photographs from Occupied Iraq. Its intent is to identify unreported news from Iraq and to make a broader audience aware of events there. ‘Covering Iraq’ encourages your comments, reactions, and participation. Omar Khan, a writer and editor in Oakland, will be managing and writing in the new section. Please visit ‘Covering Iraq‘ on Dahr Jamail’s website to participate.

Liberating Fallujah
by Omar Khan

The past several days posed a characteristic difficulty for the US Department of Defense: how to wage war upon a population while doing so on behalf of that population. But it has been fortunate not to face this difficulty alone. Both public and private sectors have developed and deployed a vast literature in order to adequately answer this question. With the arrival US advisors of Vietnam, “counterinsurgency doctrine” developed original ways of keeping like states independent where local populations threatened to determine the character of their governments. When counterinsurgency began to bear an unfortunate association with the deaths of millions against whom it had been mobilized, discussion has increasingly become of “foreign internal defense” and in recent years, measures of “internal security and stability.”

Dahr Jamail

BAGHDAD, Nov 16 (IPS) - At least 800 civilians have been killed during the U.S. military siege of Fallujah, a Red Cross official estimates.

Speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of U.S. military reprisal, a high-ranking official with the Red Cross in Baghdad told IPS that “at least 800 civilians” have been killed in Fallujah so far.

His estimate is based on reports from Red Crescent aid workers stationed around the embattled city, from residents within the city and from refugees, he said.

“Several of our Red Cross workers have just returned from Fallujah since the Americans won’t let them into the city,” he said. “And they said the people they are tending to in the refugee camps set up in the desert outside the city are telling horrible stories of suffering and death inside Fallujah.”

The official said that both Red Cross and Iraqi Red Crescent relief teams had asked the U.S. military in Fallujah to take in medical supplies to people trapped in the city, but their repeated requests had been turned down.