By Janet Reitman. Embassy, the Iraqi Parliament and other offices of the new Iraqi government. Outside of the Green Zone, in Baghdad itself, the security situation changes hourly. A route that was safe at noon could be unsafe at 1 P. A neighborhood that was peaceful at dawn could be in flames by lunchtime. The Kill Team: How U. Soldiers in Afhghanistan Murdered Innocent Civilians. A petite, blond, twenty-eight-year-old humanitarian-aid worker from Northern California, Ruzicka knew the volatility of Baghdad as well as anyone.
She was virtually the only American aid worker in the Iraqi capital. She was the founder of a small nongovernmental organization called CIVIC β the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict β which assisted families whose lives had been ripped apart in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Passionate and driven, Ruzicka worked seven days a week, eighteen hours a day, driving around the city with her Iraqi colleague Faiz Ali Salim. It was revolutionary work β virtually no other aid group or worker has negotiated with the U.
Ruzicka, who had begun to demonstrate some of the classic symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, was preparing to leave Baghdad the next day for a vacation in Thailand and then a long rest back in the United States. Leaving was difficult. Now, talking on the phone with McMahon, Ruzicka sounded upbeat. In the past few days, she had obtained a document that was her holy grail: a detailed report showing that the U. To get there, she had to drive on the notorious airport road, one of the most dangerous thoroughfares in the world.
It is a frequent site of suicide bombings, ambushes and other insurgent attacks. The airport road is banked on both sides by housing complexes, heavily populated by people with military training and access to weapons.
