Kidnapped aid official seen as tireless worker for Iraqis

LONDON, Oct 20 (AFP) - Margaret Hassan, the senior aid agency official who has been kidnapped in Iraq, has dedicated most of her working life to easing the lot of ordinary people in the country she calls home.
Very much opposed to the war last year to topple Saddam Hussein, the country director for Iraq of CARE International has worked tirelessly in humanitarian relief there for more than 25 years.
Born in Dublin, raised in Britain and married to an Iraqi, Hassan's friends and colleagues say that despite her British and Irish nationalities, it is Iraq she calls home.
"She's an Iraqi national, she's married to an Iraqi, and Iraq is her home," Grant Thompson, communications director of CARE Australia, which runs the Iraq operation and employs Hassan, told AFP.
"She has made numerous comments about the fact that she would never leave Iraq," he said.
"She's very passionate about the country and she's very passionate about the people living there that she was assisting."
Hassan, thought to be in her late 50s or early 60s and said to speak Arabic with an Iraqi accent, was put in charge of CARE International Iraq operations in 1992, a year after the aid agency began work there.
In January 2003 she travelled to New York and spent a week briefing members of the UN Security Council and UN agencies on the dire consequences of military action.
Hassan warned of a "humanitarian catastrophe" in the event of conflict.
"The Iraqi people are already living through a terrible emergency," she told a briefing in the British parliament.
"They do not have the resources to withstand an additional crisis brought about by military action."
She was one of the most experienced Iraq hands among aid workers in the country and opted to stay on to continue her work after the US-led offensive began in March 2003.
Throughout the conflict she led a team working to provide essential aid to hospitals and help restore vital power and water supplies.
As her team coped with the problem of looters and chaos in the streets, she fought for a return to food rationing.
"Margaret's decision -- indeed her determination -- to remain in Iraq and carry out emergency work throughout the conflict was typical of a truly remarkable woman," Sir William Deane, chairman of CARE Australia, said in a later interview.
According to CARE Australia, Hassan had recently been involved mainly with providing water and sanitation to Iraq's homes, schools and hospitals.
Hassan was an outspoken opponent of the United Nations sanctions imposed in the wake of the 1990 Gulf War, "a man-made disaster," she said in an interview in 1998.
"These people are really suffering," she said at the time. "Do people know what it's like for a mother to wake up each morning not knowing whether she can feed her child?"