One million malnourished children (Liberate THIS, Part 4)

[Note from Kathie Malley-Morrison:  Today we continue our series of excerpts from Dr. Dahlia Wasfi’s book.]

Most of my cousins were born after my immediate family left Iraq in 1977.  I had never met them, and I had only faint memories of aunts and uncles, as well as my paternal grandmother who had already passed away in 1979.

Child in Iraq war
Child victim of Iraq war (Image in public domain)

I knew I had many relatives suffering under desperate conditions in Iraq, but I was emotionally, as well as geographically, distant from their pain.  With English as my one and only language, I couldn’t speak with them on the phone even if U.S. and U.K. forces hadn’t bombed the telecommunications centers.

I condemned the hypocrisy of my government for starving the Iraqi people while claiming to punish Saddam Hussein.  But the hypocrisy I despised was within me.  I continued my life, business as usual, graduating in 1993, and moving on to medical school, with a sadness I could not explain.

Between 1991 and 1997, I finished my Bachelor’s degree at Swarthmore and earned my medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania.  During the same time period, economic sanctions achieved the chronic malnourishment of nearly 1,000,000 children in central and southern Iraq.[1]  According to Philippe Heffinck, then UNICEF Representative in Baghdad, “It is clear that children are bearing the brunt of the current economic hardship.”[2]  By the following year, the mortality rate of Iraqi children under five years old was a shocking 500,000 deaths higher than predicted since 1991.[3]

I knew these figures, but I didn’t have time to think about them.  I had begun a surgical residency, first at the University of Maryland, and then back at Penn for a year of research.  I was constantly working, ever more sleep-deprived, and miserable. Yet, I remained unconscious of the internal contradiction fueling my unhappiness.

After three grueling years, I believed that changing fields would bring me contentment.  I switched to a training program in anesthesiology at Georgetown University Hospital, where I began working in June 2000.  My experiences there would prove to be the final straw.


[1] http://www.unicef.org/newsline/97pr60.htm

[2] Ibid.

[3] http://www.unicef.org/newsline/99pr29.htm

Dr. Dahlia Wasfi

My government rained down terror (Liberate THIS, Part 2)

[Note from Kathie Malley-Morrison: Engaging Peace is pleased to publish the second in the ongoing series from Dahlia Wasfi‘s book, Liberate THIS]

My father was born and raised in Basra, Iraq. Graduating from Baghdad University, he earned a government scholarship to study in the United States.  He completed his graduate studies at Georgetown University.

Weapons cache in Basra
Weapons cache in Basra (Image in public domain)

While in DC, he met and married my mom, a nice Jewish girl from New York. Her parents had fled their homeland of Austria during Hitler’s Anschluss and emigrated to the United States. Was it love at first sight? I don’t know, but my sister was born in 1969, and I arrived in 1971.

To pay back his scholarship from Iraq, my father taught at Basra University from 1972 to 1977.  Thus, my early childhood was spent in both Iraq and the United States. For me, the bombing of Basra was equivalent to the bombing of Yonkers, New York. I had family in both places.

Upon returning to the Swarthmore College campus for the spring semester, I was dumbstruck by what I remember to be a mostly pro-war atmosphere.  The militancy was in stark contrast to the peaceful traditions of its Quaker founders who established the school in 1864.

The Quakers, a Christian denomination also known as the Religious Society of Friends, are known as a peace church, because of their teachings’ emphasis on pacifism.  While Swarthmore no longer has any religious affiliation, it prides itself on being an institution that still reflects many Quaker values.  As the current brochures describe, “Foremost among [these values] is a commitment to the common good and to the preparation of future leaders who will influence favorably a changing and complex world.”

In the early months of 1991, as far as I could tell, Swarthmore was a breeding ground for warmongers. Flags and pro-military banners hung from the dorms of Parrish Hall, the main building on campus. Their messages remain burned in my memory.  On a white sheet, students had written, “By Air, By Sea, By Land:  Bye-Bye, Iraq.”  Hanging from the next window:  “U.S. Troops:  Simply the Best.”  They made me cringe.  The blatant disrespect for the lives of Iraqi victims was sickening to me.

I thought, what the hell is going on? Why didn’t the best and brightest understand that war is unacceptable, no matter who is directing the tanks? Why was the anti-war sentiment drowned out at this “liberal” institution?

Internally, I condemned the hypocrisy of militancy on a campus that purported to reflect peaceful traditions.  But the Swarthmore disconnect between image and reality was mirroring the hypocrisy that I despised within myself.  I was living the American dream at one of the top—one of the most expensive—schools in the nation.  Meanwhile my government rained down terror in the form of cruise missiles on Iraqi families.

Dahlia Wasfi

From the Nile to the Euphrates (Stories of engagement)

Today we are happy to share the story of our latest portrait in moral engagement: Dr. Dahlia Wasif. Over the next few months, we will provide excerpts from her dramatic and engaging book-in progress. Stay tuned.Dahlia Wasif

Dr. Dahlia Wasfi is an internationally known speaker and activist. Born in the United States to an American Jewish mother and an Iraqi Muslim father, she lived in Iraq as a child, returning to the U.S. at age 5.

After graduating from Swarthmore College with a B.A. in Biology in 1993, she earned her medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1997.

Dr. Wasfi has made two trips to Iraq to visit her extended family since the 2003 “Shock and Awe” invasion, including a three month stay in Basrah in the spring of 2006.

She has brought her eyewitness account of life under occupation to 23 states  in the U.S.; Capitol Hill in D.C.; Toronto and Vancouver, Canada; Madrid, Spain in 2007; and the 3rd International Iraq Conference in Berlin, Germany, in March 2008.

Based on her experiences, Dr. Wasfi speaks out in support of immediate, unconditional withdrawal of American forces from Iraq and the need to end the occupation “from the Nile to the Euphrates.” She is currently working on a book.

Her website is www.liberatethis.com. Please also watch this short YouTube video of Dr. Wasif giving a presentation on Iraq to Congress:

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology