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Mostafa in Iraq, 2000

Photo by Alan Pogue

Mostafa in Los Angeles

Mostafa

No More Victims brought Umm Haider and Mostafa, an Iraqi mother and her injured son, to the United States in early April 2003. The bombing was well underway and the corporate media dutifully celebrated US military power. The boy received medical care and his mother had the opportunity to tell her story to the American public. It is a story about the death and mutilation of children, told by someone who has lived under the American bombs.

Mostafa was outside in the street near his home in Basra when a US missile struck. He was four at the time, walking with his six-year-old brother Haider to buy sweets at a nearby corner market. Haider was killed. Mostafa's four-year-old body was riddled with more than 130 pieces of shrapnel; he lost two fingers from his dominant hand, and half of his liver had to be removed. The missile strike occurred on January 25, 1999.

We had planned to bring Asra'a, the child in the poster, to the US at the same time. But her passport was delayed; one was not issued until March 18, one day before the invasion began. So we worked to secure medical visas for Um Haider and Mostafa, and later made plans to return for Asra'a, which we did successfully in 2004.

Mostafa was the first child we brought to the United States. We wanted to create a model that could be used by others. We wanted to demonstrate that people in ordinary circumstances could manage to bring an injured child out of the war zone and secure treatment for him or her in the United States. Other communities have joined in to express their opposition to the US war of aggression against Iraq and solidarity with its victims. 

Projects are developing in Los Angeles, San Diego, Seattle, Spokane, Greenville, South Carolina, and at Stanford and Yale Universities. Four children have received treatment thus far -- in Pittsburgh, Orlando, Houston, and Los Angeles.