Marla Ruzicka's Legacy

Last Saturday my friend Marla Ruzicka was killed by a suicide bomber in Baghdad. Just 28 years old, Marla was one of just a handful of foreign human rights workers to set foot in Iraq this year.

A lot has been written about Marla's effervescence, her courage, and the way she wore her heart on her sleeve. Far less has been said about how her canny approach to advancing the military's responsibility toward civilians has the potential to change the future of warfare. In a way, Marla has been as underestimated in death as she was in life.

I'll be the first to admit that I failed to fully understand and appreciate the political importance of her work. Several times over the last few days I've asked myself: Why didn't I do more to help Marla while she was still alive? Why didn't I get the big picture?

Not that what she was doing didn't amaze me; she documented civilian injuries and deaths while, at the same time, successfully worked with U.S. military commanders to understand the human dimensions of their actions. The ultimate goal was always seeking reconciliation through financially compensating victims and their families.

Marla made an early, detailed Iraqi civilian death count of 2,000 -- mostly by going door-to-door interviewing survivors. Human rights groups and news organizations today say that between a total of 17,000 and 20,000 Iraqi civilians have died in the extended fighting. In the days before she was killed, Marla was raising money for Rakan Hassan, a child from Mosul who had been orphaned and partially paralyzed by gunfire from a U.S. helicopter. Marla thought she could find a donor to pay to fly Rakan to Oakland, Calif. to get surgery.

Marla had a powerful and graceful way of describing her work. "A number is important not only to quantify the cost of war, but as a reminder of those whose dreams will never be realized in a free and democratic Iraq," she wrote.

I knew about Marla's work, but, at the same time, I didn't really comprehend how her research and her advocacy for victims could affect U.S. military policy.

Knowing I had to take a closer look, I called up a few of the folks I knew she admired and worked with a couple of days after she died: Bill Arkin, a civilian casualties expert and military analyst with NBC News; Marc Garlasco of Human Rights Watch; Sarah Sewall of Harvard's Carr Center for Human Rights Policy. Arkin, Garlasco and Sewall explained how much they had benefited from Marla's research into civilian casualties, which they believed was ultimately about setting a precedent for greater military accountability to noncombatants.

Garlasco explained to me how far we had come. "Until World War II, civilians were the objects of war," he said, which reminded me of the way the U.S. deliberately bombed civilians in Dresden, Tokyo and Hiroshima.

Today, by almost all accounts, the U.S. military tries to minimize civilian casualties, both for moral reasons and to win over hearts and minds. According to Garlasco, the Air Force makes estimates of the number of civilian casualties it expects particular strikes will create, often changing or calling off strikes that will kill or injure too many civilians. "But once the war is done they never go back and check," he added. "Marla's work was important because the Air Force could go back and figure out if their models are correct."

Said Harvard's Sewall: "Marla knew how arbitrary and opaque the system was. She saw cases being denied for lack of a piece of paper, or a witness. Marla's data collection, her house-to-house surveys, offered a way to contribute to the understanding of when, where and why civilians died -- that's forward-looking."

That kind of talk makes many in the U.S. peace movement nervous. Where's the line between advocating human rights and helping the military to wage war?