‘Atrocious’ suffering hits home for N.H. mom, activist
The images are haunting, the lifeless children killed in Saturday’s heinous chemical attack in Syria.
“What is happening in Douma is absolutely unbelievable and the suffering is atrocious,” said Nadia Alawa, 46, a mother of eight who lives in New Hampshire and runs a nonprofit, NuDay Syria, that helps women and children living in the war-torn country.
“We really feel that the children of Douma feel like part of our extended family,” Alawa told me yesterday. “It doesn’t matter if we’re not related to them. Somebody is related to these children; they are somebody’s children. There are mothers waking up the next morning and their children are gone. It’s devastating for all of us.”
Alawa has family in Syria, mostly in the capital, Damascus.
“They have not been affected as badly as many, many, many other people,” said Alawa, whose husband and father are from Syria.
Alawa, whose youngest child is 7, said looking at the harrowing images of Syria’s children is very hard. She told me about the 1-year-old girl named Joudi who was killed in Saturday’s chemical attack.
“She hadn’t even ever eaten fruit because she had been living under siege for all of her life,” Alawa said. “She perished along with her 10-year-old brother and sister. They don’t know where the parents are. It’s whole families that are being killed. It’s awful.”
Alawa said the U.S. military has to intervene quickly.
“It has to happen over an extended period of time, working together with the coalition so Russia and Iran (don’t) totally take over,” she said.
Alawa said she refuses to feel hopeless.
“But it’s devastating,” she said. “We cannot look away.”
Five years ago, Alawa started her nonprofit, which runs schools in Idlib in northern Syria, where many families have relocated.
Her organization has shipped nearly 300 giant cargo containers through Turkey to northern Syria. They’re full of teddy bears, medical equipment, clothes, bedding, school supplies, soccer balls, infant formula and protein bars donated by local people. This weekend, two more containers will be shipped.
When she started her nonprofit, her fourth child, a son, was 13. He reminded her of a boy the same age in Syria, Hamza al-Khateeb, who was tortured and killed.
“For me,” she said, “I need to do something.”