Gorilla’s Guides

Helping people can be dangerous

IRAQ: Fae’ek Ahmed, Iraq, “Helping people can be dangerous”

BAGHDAD, 25 March 2007 (IRIN) - Fae’ek Ahmed, 30 works for a local Iraqi NGO that has been helping displaced families by providing them with essential supplies such as food, clean water, clothes and medicines in the capital, Baghdad, and in neighbouring provinces.
Single but with parents to support, he lives in fear of being killed after receiving death threats from unknown sources.
“Helping people can be dangerous in my country. Every day when I go to a displaced camp to deliver aid, I have a premonition that something bad will happen to me.
“I’ve been doing humanitarian work since 2003. In the beginning it was safe and we were doing amazing work; helping people who were displaced after the war, people who’d had their houses destroyed in Baghdad. Later on, we started to help families displaced in Anbar province because of fighting in the area. But since then we’ve become targets for many armed groups.
“We could get caught in crossfire between insurgents and US forces or could be targeted by militias.

“I wake up early every morning to go to work in the Mansour district of Baghdad, which is about 15 minutes by car from Karrada district, where I live. If I go early, I can avoid traffic jams - as attacks usually happen when traffic is at a standstill. The attacks do not distinguish between children, women, men or the elderly, so no one is safe and anyone can become a victim.

“I wear normal clothes and carry my aid worker shirt with me to avoid being attacked because some people might see the name of my NGO on my shirt and decide to attack me.
“I have been threatened three times, one time by a phone call and two times by letters left at the door of my house telling me to stop helping displaced families. But I can’t stop doing what I do. Recently, some colleagues were kidnapped. Because of that, we’ve now been forced to have a low profile in our work. The result of this has been delays in the delivery of aid to many desperate families as we cannot move as freely as before.
“I love seeing families who are in urgent need receiving food supplies, medicines and clothes. It’s amazing to know that you’re helping a human being survive in such hard circumstances, even though you also know that your life is in danger.
“We are always welcome in displacement camps. You can see women shedding tears of happiness because when they see us they know they will get food for their children. Because of our work, heads of families, mostly unemployed, can sleep well at night without having to worry about how they will feed their families the next day.
“Once, I was delivering aid to a camp with some colleagues when armed men stopped our convoy and forced us to get out of the truck. They hit two of my colleagues with a piece of wood and said we couldn’t go to a certain area to help some families who were from a different [Muslim] sect to theirs. They put a gun to my head and told me that if we resisted, they would turn us into food to feed the ants.

“We went back to Baghdad and since then we’ve stopped going to any displacement camp without full authorisation and protection from every armed group operating there. I know we could be seen as siding with one group or another but the reality is that we are victims of people who have no heart.
“When I leave home for work, I pray to God asking for protection because I never know if I’m going to be the next murdered aid worker on the front pages of newspapers.”
as/ar/ed
see also
Red Crescent gradually resumes its work

Source: IRIN Middle East IRAQ: Fae’ek Ahmed, Iraq, “Helping people can be dangerous”