Category Archives: Mustafa Salah

Project helps Iraqi children hurt by war all year round

Project helps Iraqi children hurt by war all year round
Is there something about this time of year that makes stories featuring children more poignant? Or is it just that as we get closer to the holidays, we naturally hear more about the plight of children who have to make do with less in a can't-get-enough world? I have to confess that this has been…
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Bringing the War Home

Bringing the War Home
Texas Observer At the time of this writing, 2,157 Americans have died since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003. The number of Iraqis dead and injured, though undoubtedly much higher, is unknown. In fact, although President Bush recently offered an estimate of 30,000, both U.S. and Iraqi authorities have gone to considerable lengths…
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One Family Shattered Twice by War

One Family Shattered Twice by War
On January 20, 1999, Mustafa (who was four-years-old at the time) was playing outside his home with his six-year-old brother, Heider, in the Al Juramya neighborhood of Basra in southern Iraq. At 10 in the morning, an American cruise missile landed in the street in front of their home — an artifact of the no-fly…
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Boy Hit by U.S. Missile Gets Medical Help

Boy Hit by U.S. Missile Gets Medical Help
NPR - Los Angeles 9-year-old boy wounded in a 1999 bombing attack in Iraq is now in Southern California, ending a years-long struggle by a Hollywood screenwriter and other Americans to bring the boy and his mother to the United States for much-needed medical care. As NPR’s Mandalit del Barco reports, Mostafa’s odyssey began four…
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Boy Hit by U.S. Missile Gets Medical Help

Boy Hit by U.S. Missile Gets Medical Help
NPR-Los Angeles 9-year-old boy wounded in a 1999 bombing attack in Iraq is now in Southern California, ending a years-long struggle by a freelance writer and other Americans to bring the boy and his mother to the United States for much-needed medical care. As NPR’s Mandalit del Barco reports, Mostafa’s odyssey began four years ago,…
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Boy Injured by US Forces Arrives in Los Angeles For Medical Care

Boy Injured by US Forces Arrives in Los Angeles For Medical Care
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. Nationalistic fervor swept the country. Mustafa received medical care and his mother an opportunity to tell her story…
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Young Boy Injured by US Missile Treated in Los Angeles

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. Nationalistic fervor swept the country.

Mustafa 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 a mother 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. The missile strike occurred on January 25, 1999.

Mostafa was the first child we brought to the United States. Our goal has been to create a model that could be used by others, and over the years we have demonstrated its effectiveness and viability. We have shown that people in ordinary circumstances could successfully evacuate children injured by US forces from the theater of war to the United States for medical treatment. Other communities have joined in to express their opposition to the US war of aggression against Iraq and solidarity with its victims. They are organizing now to help victims as the American militarists – using ever more infernal weapons – attack countries around the world.