Casualties of War

I am watching a CNN special called On Deadly Ground: Women of Iraq. I was hoping to find a video, but all I could find was the transcript. You need to watch it. Here are a few parts.....


YANAR MOHAMMED, THE ORGANIZATION OF WOMEN'S FREEDOM IN IRAQ: Having slept over the rooftops all night long. We always have to wake up at 8:00 a.m. It's the sound of an explosion. Today it was a very close. I think it was a bombed car. We don't see them. We have to go down. It's not safe here anymore. Then again, it's 8 a.m.

DAMON: Yanar heads the Organization for Women's Freedom in Iraq. What she basically set up as a watchdog organization to make sure that women weren't losing their freedom.

MOHAMMED: We need to have some breakfast now. Friends are coming over for Friday. Some eggs and we have electricity. We have electricity, we need to celebrate. When we started this organization, it was myself and two other women. The only thing that brought us together is that we are progressive women who believe that freedoms of women can happen only under secular situations. And we thought of ourselves as the avant- garde women of the society and we started it from there.

DAMON: A lot of women in Iraq will say this was a war that was meant to bring democracy. It was meant to bring freedom. It was meant to bring a better life and in fact, the bitter irony is had it brought exactly the opposite.

MOHAMMED: In four years, we have presented the unvoiced women in Iraq who want a free life. We see over the television, hundreds of officials who say that they have given freedoms to women. But you look at the streets and every single woman is veiled. She is veiled in white, in black, in colors and she cannot go to her education, cannot go to work. We demand that women of Iraq have to be free. We were able to save many women from unwanted killing. We documented hundreds of kidnappings and killings of women and we were able to help a few women to reach to safe havens outside Iraq. Two explosions today. One at 7:30, the other at 8:00. We are trying to get somewhere. It's not easy. All the streets are crowded and everywhere is closed. Barbed wire everywhere and we don't know whether somebody is shoot you if you are photographing or not. It takes hours to get anywhere, which is walking distance sometimes. Going to work is like taking a risk every day. The price could be your life.

DAMON: One of the striking things about Yanar is the realization that she doesn't have to be there. She had this entire life set up for herself in Canada. Today she splits her time between Canada and Iraq. She has dual citizenship right now and she left her son in Canada. She has basically given up watching her own child grow so that she can live in Iraq.

MOHAMMED: Canada for me is the support system that keeps my work possible. If I don't go there, if I don't maintain my sanity, if I do not gather some support to keep this place open, it's hard for me to survive this difficult scene.

DAMON: She has tried to create within her organization sort of an oasis or a sanctuary for those within Iraq that want to be free thinkers.

MOHAMMED: We feel that the only hope is in the youth. And that's why we are holding an event where we bring youth from so-called Sunni and Shiite areas and we just let them improvise poetry.

UNIDENTIIFED MALE: If my roots live in Baghdad, then my branches are in Kurdistan. They are Sunni or Shia or Kurdish or Arab or Sabean or Assyrian or Chaldean. This is who I am. I am Iraqi. I am a human being. I am a human being.

DAMON: There have been multiple occasions where large gatherings of people have been targeted, especially when you are talking about the politically charged issues.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We don't want the imam who worships the devil. And I denounce the Shana that slaughters the flower.

DAMON: And yet you see her and you see all these other people. The women, the youth, even the men who are part of her organization that are willing to accept that risk.

MOHAMMED: For me, it's not patriotism. This is not what brings me here. This is everybody I love. All the people that I love have been crushed. This cannot happen and should not happen. You cannot watch people being hurt and stay away from it.

She also speaks to a pediatrician who has chosen to live at the hospital she works at, away from her family, because she is a target for insurgents and she wishes to protect her son and her family.

DR. EAMAN AL-GOBORY: Now we are going to see where I am living. It's a small studio. The house could blown away. They gave to me.

DAMON: Dr. Eaman is a children's doctor who also works with the Iraqi government. But her main focus is helping Iraqi children.

EAMAN: I feel I am needed here. As long as I am helping people and changing their life, I feel it is a big commitment. I would like to continue doing it. So for that reason, I prefer staying in Iraq and help my people instead of being safe somewhere else.

DAMON: She has chosen to live at the hospital because she doesn't want to risk her son's life.

EAMAN: I have to keep myself away from all my loved people so they won't be a target.

DAMON: It might be hard to understand why anyone would target doctors, but it's because doctors are known to have money.

EAMAN: Iraq is my life. It's my country. I am working for a better Iraq and for a better future. And this is the chance. And I am not going to escape that.And he will have a new life. He can talk. He can do his life again. There is always need. As long as we are living here and until the time I will die, there is always a person in need. And I will be always there to help them.

DAMON: She has given up seeing her 8-year-old boy because she believes that other people, other children need her more.

EAMAN: I wish I can have him with me. Live with me. You know, raising him. Just show him how to do things better than anything else. (crying) I'm sorry. I miss him a lot. But for his safety, I will always be a little bit away.No mother on this earth do not miss her child. And he's my only one child. Definitely, I miss him every single moment.

DAMON: Despite Dr. Eaman's best efforts to keep her son away from danger, he was injured in an accident in October. There was a bonfire at school. A large fire.

EAMAN: They were burning the old torn books. And there was a lot of children surrounding the fire and he was one of them.

DAMON: And playing like little children play, another child pushed him into the fire.

EAMAN: He was 35 percent badly burned. Second-degree, third- degree and first degree. We were able to admit him to the American Cash (ph) Hospital and they are doing a tremendous great, great work.I don't know the future of my one child and how he is going to live. How he is going to depend on himself. But I cry a lot. And I wish by the help of everybody and by the help also of my God and supporting me of course that I can get him back to his life again. Helping other children just to keep him alive and happy that is what I am doing. I am doing a lot of -- in a way or another good things for God.For the sake of let him live and be safe. But this is unfortunately our life and this is what the war has give us that we cannot have a usual life to live.

Full transcript.