American activist dies in Iraq blast

‘Wanted to learn about the world’
Leahy said he would speak about Ruzicka on the Senate floor Monday, and possibly help plan a memorial service for the woman in Washington.

“I said to her father this morning, ‘A lot of people spend their whole lives and do not begin to accomplish what she’s done,”’ Leahy said.

The young American had begun campaigning for civilian victims in Afghanistan in 2002. That work helped produce precedent-setting legislation in Washington, sponsored by Leahy, authorizing aid to Afghans who suffered losses in U.S. military operations.

Ruzicka got her start working for non-governmental organizations 10 years ago at the San Francisco-based human rights group Global Exchange.

Medea Benjamin, the group’s director, said Ruzicka was a “pretty, peppy, vivacious young woman who wanted to learn about the world.” Ruzicka worked on projects ranging from AIDS in Africa to the travel embargo against Cuba, she said.

“It’s a terrible tragedy and a tragic irony that somebody who devoted her life to helping the victims of war would herself become a victim of war,” Benjamin said.

Determined to ‘spread the word’
When the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq began in March 2003, Ruzicka was already in Baghdad with Code Pink, said Jodi Evans, co-founder of the women’s anti-war group.

Other activists decided to return to the United States to talk about how the Iraqi people were affected by the invasion, but Ruzicka made a commitment to stay, Evans said. She founded the group CIVIC that year.

“Marla thought she would be more effective staying, because once the bombs started falling, people would be hurt and she needed to help them get their lives back together,” Evans said.

Even as fighting continued to rage in sections of Baghdad in mid-April 2003, Ruzicka arrived back in the Iraqi capital, set up office in an unprotected hotel and soon was a regular visitor to the city’s makeshift newsrooms, encouraging media interest in the civilian-casualty story.

“Spread the word — it will be what we make of it,” she e-mailed friends as she began her Iraq work.

Ruzicka is among several foreign aid workers killed in Iraq. Others included Margaret Hassan, a British aid worker who was abducted in Baghdad in October and later shown on video pleading for her life, and four workers for a Southern Baptist missionary group who were trying to find a way to provide clean water to people in the northern city of Mosul.

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