Marla Ruzicka, founder of CIVIC Worldwide (The Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflicts), appeared on C-Span‘s Washington Journal today to discuss her efforts to identify and assist relatives of victims and those injured in the Iraq occupation who are seeking “sympathy payments” and other humanitarian assistance from the United States gov’t.
During this morning’s interview she stated that CIVIC surveys were conducted door-to-door by medical students and other Iraqi volunteers. Ruzicka also seemed eager to mollify critics of her efforts by emphasising that only those casualties of U.S. actions that could be verified by a living relative or death certificate are considered legitimate cases and any casualties or injuries that result due the ongoing lack of security (“terrorist”-caused) are not in her purview.
She claimed her survey teams were able to verify 2,000 deaths between March 20, when the war started, and May 1, when major combat operations ended, yet she wasn’t asked to explain the discrepancy between that number and the 5,000 attributed to her organisation’s records in this New York Times article published March 17, 2004.
And since the surveys aren’t available on her website the methodology and results can’t be compared to similar efforts by the Iraq Peace Team and others including data bases compiled of the civilian casualties in Afghanistan. It was shabby interviewing to not mention Iraq Body Count [Civilian deaths in “noble” Iraq mission pass 10,000] or discuss the national and global implications of minimising and/or discounting deaths and injuries occurring as a result of the continuing occupation.
Beware the humanitarian interventionist who gives quarter to a brutal occupier in the name of one day gaining a desk in the State Department especially when those efforts result in standards being established that allow only a little bit of help going to a fraction of those entitled to it?
Beware a nation whose citisens derive a sense of cheer from these “charitable” acts, their nation-building trepidations appeased by withholding compensation from their victims to do more requires acknowledgement of their crime, and they must continue moving easily beyond shallow and no regrets towards pious entitlement and invading at will any country they deem inferior and in need of their militaristic rule.
Update 9/9/04 @ 9:42am: Raed Jarrar was Marla Ruzicka’s Iraqi partner and survey director. The findings (covering the period of March 21 – July 31, 2003) are published on Iraqi Civilian Casualties.
Raed in the Middle on recent civilian casualties in Najaf.