![]() But it was by no means clear that the mission could survive without the woman who conceived it behind it. The loss felt incalculable.Īs her friends grappled with our grief, we wondered how her work could possibly survive without her unique brand of compassion, drive and near lunacy.īarely more than a one-woman outfit, CIVIC had powerful friends who had helped it achieve astonishing successes, like compensation by the US military for civilian casualties in Iraq. She and her Iraqi colleague, Fais, had been killed by a suicide bomber on Baghdad’s lethal airport road. Six years ago, on a Sri Lankan shore, I was woken by a call from Baghdad telling me that Marla was dead. The term “civilian casualties” is so commonplace now it is hard to remember a time before when armies spoke coldly of “collateral damage.” The belief that America should help those it hurt in war is now so much a part of counter-insurgency ethos it is hard to recall how revolutionary an act it was that Marla undertook that day.Īt the gates of the American Embassy in Kabul, Marla sowed the seeds of the organization that survives to this day, Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC). She was harder still to miss the morning she marched to the gates of the American Embassy with astonished, emboldened Afghan families by her side, to demand compensation and apologies for their loved ones lost in American military action. She was hard to miss, with her wild blonde hair and animal pyjamas peeking out from the hem of her long kameez. Nine years ago in the bright Kabul spring, I met a young woman called Marla Ruzicka. ![]()
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