Mohammad Kowthar of Al-Rahma network, Iraq
"I do this work for the love of my country, my family and my fellow citizens. My brother disappeared in 2006 and still hasn't been found. My father disappeared for four years during the Sadam regime. If I think about what happened to them, I want to try to do something to prevent disappearances in the future."
In the fragile state Iraq Mohammad Kowthar (head of his local organisation 'Al-Atar for Human Rights' and coordinator of the Al-Rahma network) tries to do something for the family members of the approximately 1 million disappeared persons in Iraq. "Due to the security situation it is often impossible to travel to family members of victims or to other organisations of the network. We get a lot of opposition from different political groups and militias who see us as the enemy. Therefore it is very difficult to perform our work."
In a land where before 2003 non-governmental organisations were forbidden, and therefore little experience with this kind of structure is present, the first NGO's that were founded after Sadam left were humanitarian. "First I headed the Al-Sallam Centre for Awareness and Civil Society. We gave different kinds of humanitarian aid to families of disappeared persons in my district, including computer courses. At the end of 2005 the security situation became worse for NGO's. We received letters with death threats. We needed to stop for a while, but in 2006 we started again under a different name: Al-Atar for Human Rights. Now we focus especially on awareness of human rights."
The disappearances in Iraq occurred during different periods and in different regions. During the Sadam regime there were political disappearances and genocide took place on specific ethnic groups, but the war against Iran (1980-1988) and the Gulf war (1990) also took place during that episode. After 2003 different parties were guilty of disappearing people: militias that opposed the invasion by the U.S.A., terrorists (Al-Qa'ida), police, army, American troops and ethnic and religious groups that fought each other. The huge number of disappearances cause enormous social problems, among which for example women that find themselves in an impossible situation because it is not clear what their status is: widow or married wife. Trying to find out what happened to all of these persons is an enormous and expensive project.
"In 2005 I met someone from Aim for human rights during a conference in Sarajevo. I was very interested in the idea of binding forces in a national network. In July 2007 visitors of Aim for human rights came to Iraq and helped us to set up the Al-Rahma network. Until that time I only worked in my district, but now we cover Iraq as a whole. The stories behind the disappearances in North- or South Iraq are different but we have the same goal. There are 13 organizations in the network with different backgrounds, who now try to focus and together gain more force. Our goal is to put the disappearances on the political agenda of the government. We are the bridge between the citizens and the government: we need to push the government to care about the agony of all those family members of disappeared persons and do something about it."
Mohammad is originally a computer engineer and has his own computer business. He does the work for both NGO's besides his job. "During the Sadam regime the human rights situation was so difficult and I lost so many friends and family members. After 2003 I felt that there was a good opportunity to change things in the society and I want to join doing that."
