Mustafa Salah

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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 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.

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.