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| | Issue #20.38 :: 09/19/2007 - 09/25/2007 | War Stories
Muslim Student Group Sponsors Wounded Iraqi Girl’s Talk at USC
| BY MINDY LUCAS
| Iraqi native Salee Allawe was 9 years old when she lost her legs in a U.S.-led air strike over Hasswa last year. Salee had been playing hopscotch outside her home when the missiles came. That was the story Salee — whose brother, Akram, and friend, Tabarak, were killed in the air strike — told to a packed and often hushed room on the USC campus on the evening of July 12.
As a video presentation showed on screen, the audience, made up mostly of USC students, fought back tears while a playful and smiling Salee sat next to her father and entertained herself with a mobile phone; her pink crutches resting against new prosthetic legs.
Both the presentation and the movement to help Iraqi children like Salee are the brainchild of community activist Cole Miller, founder of the Los Angeles-based nonprofit No More Victims. As he explained during a break at the USC event, Miller got the idea to form No More Victims in 2002 after creating a poster of another Iraqi child wounded in an air strike.
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| Ten-year-old Salee Allawee of Iraq talks to USC students at a Muslim Students Association-sponsored event on campus Sept. 12. Photo by Alisha Hime |
“I wanted to put a face to what is called ‘collateral damage,’” Miller said, adding that a large percentage of civilians who have been killed or wounded in Iraq are children. “Iraqi families tend to be large so there are children everywhere. So soldiers have told us, when a strike is made, it’s going to kill children. If the American people had even an inkling of what we’re doing, they would put a stop to this.”
Miller said air strikes would more than likely continue and escalate as the United States begins to withdraw, leaving many more casualties to come.
Since beginning No More Victims, Miller says the organization has grown into a network of independent community-based groups such as the one that brought Salee to South Carolina for additional medical care this summer. With the help of the Upstate Coalition for Compassion, Salee underwent surgery at the Shriner’s Hospital in Greenville and received two sets of prostheses: One for walking and general movement and one designed for running.
Ann Cothran, one of the founders of the coalition that worked to find doctors, resources and host families for Salee, said she got involved with No More Victims after becoming frustrated with her elected representatives.
“I got tired of writing letters … that didn’t seem to work,” Cothran said. “I was looking for some way to make a real or tangible difference.”
Ahmed Ali, president of the USC Muslim Students Association, said Salee’s story also had an impact on him and many other USC students.
“It definitely hit home,” said Ali, who was preparing for the month-long religious observance of Ramadan when Salee spoke at the university. The Muslim Students Association sponsored the presentation and asked members to fast on behalf of No More Victims for this year’s Ramadan observances. “One reason we fast is to experience what life is like for other people who have less than us,” Ali said. “It’s a way to be humble, to have piety.”
At the conclusion of Ramadan, members will end their fast with a dinner at the Russell House Ballroom on Oct. 4. Proceeds from the event will go toward helping children like Salee, whose progress and attitude has surprised even her doctors.
At the close of her remarks, one student asked, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” A shy but still smiling Salee shrugged, then through her interpreter said, “It’s too early to decide.” | |
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