The War On Aid Workers

By Phil Zabriskie Bobby Ghosh; Scott MacLeod; Michael Ware

What is the insurgents' purpose in going after humanitarian workers like Margaret Hassan, care's longtime country director in Iraq, who was taken hostage last week? As it turns out, the tactic has sometimes been used successfully by the Taliban in Afghanistan, forcing aid organizations to suspend operations and driving a wedge between the people and those trying to bring improvements to the country. That seems to be the thinking of insurgents in Iraq who have been targeting aid workers for abduction in recent months and who are now believed to be holding Hassan. "Please, please, I beg of you, the British people, to help me ... I don't want to die like Bigley," she said tearfully in a video released Friday, referring to British hostage Kenneth Bigley, who was decapitated by his captors earlier this month. Her heartrending plea may not help her abductors' cause with many Iraqis. "To humiliate a woman like this, especially an Arab woman, is unacceptable," says Saad al-Nasseri, a Baghdad businessman. "Whoever has her will get no sympathy from Iraqi people."

Born in Dublin, Hassan is married to an Iraqi, holds British, Irish and Iraqi citizenship and has lived in Iraq for more than 30 years. She has been a critic of sanctions over the years and a stalwart leader, before and during the war, of efforts to improve the country's faltering water, health and education systems. A few months before the war began, Hassan told TIME the sanctions against Iraq had helped create "a dependent society with little or no ability to improve its situation." Says Richard Downes, a reporter for Irish television station RTE who knows Hassan well and last saw her in February: "She blames Britain and America for what has happened in Iraq. The last time I met her, she was apoplectic with rage. She feared for the future of the country." To date, no foreign women kidnapped in Iraq have been killed. That is one reason for hope in Hassan's case. By Phil Zabriskie. With reporting by Aparisim Ghosh, Scott MacLeod and Michael Ware