Care head fought sanctions

2004-10-19 17:55

London - As US forces massed to invade Iraq last year, the director of Care International operations in Baghdad said she was determined to stay.

"I won't leave, because I think it's important for my staff that I stay with them.

"The strength comes from us supporting one another," Margaret Hassan said in an interview with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Now she is a hostage caught up in the violence unleashed by war, after being seized early on Tuesday in Baghdad.

Described by friends as caring, tough and direct, Hassan has lived in Iraq for 30 years, and began working for Care International soon after it began operations there in 1991.

She commanded a staff of 60 Iraqis who run nutrition, health and water programs throughout the country.

Hassan, who according to media reports is married to an Iraqi and has dual British and Iraqi nationality, had been a vocal opponent of international sanctions on Iraq, and warned British MPs before last year's US-led invasion that a conflict could produce a humanitarian crisis in a country already severely weakened by the embargoes.

British journalist Robert Fisk says he got to know Hassan after his newspaper, The Independent, raised about $250 000 for medicine.

Put in charge of distributing the drugs, Hassan "did an extraordinary job", he said in an interview on Tuesday with Ireland's RTE network.

"She managed to browbeat the authorities, the UN and the Americans to get these medicines into Iraq ... complex medicines for leukaemia sufferers. She is an extraordinarily energetic woman."

According to Fisk, Hassan speaks fluent Arabic with an Iraqi accent.

"She was very careful not to involve herself in any political discussion," he said, although she "was very much against the UN sanctions."

"She constantly talked about Iraq as a wonderful country and was very dedicated to the people there. So here, once again, we have a woman who should be a heroine in Iraq, and instead she's a hostage."

In a recent interview with Fisk published by The Independent, Hassan expressed frustration with what she called the "the man-made disaster" visited on Iraq by the recent conflict.

"Yes, some people have benefited from what we have done. But we can't solve the problem of Iraq. It's got no economy," she said.

Hassan felt that under sanctions the aid agencies were "providing the proverbial useless drop in the ocean" while Iraqis died of deprivation, Fisk said.

Care International is the world's largest humanitarian relief agency.

On the net:

Care International: http://www.careinternational.org.uk

- AP