ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — A woman lies in a hospital bed, ill after contracting the coronavirus. She is attached to a ventilator. It’s a sadly too common scene during the global pandemic. But unlike most ill people, this woman picks up her phone to tweet criticism at the Swedish foreign ministry for its relations with Turkey.
Swedish-Kurdish humanitarian Dr. Nemam Ghafouri, 52, had a reputation as fearless and outspoken, talking truth to governments, the United Nations, and big aid agencies alike. She had her own unashamed vocabulary for what her and other Kurds have gone through. “We became refugees to Iran, one part of a series I call ‘selling out the Kurds,” she said in a 2018 interview. “We have seen it again and again, how the Kurds have faced ethnic cleansing and genocide.”
She passed away on Thursday in a hospital in Stockholm, Sweden. She fell ill while working near the Iraq-Syria border and was hospitalised in Erbil. Her family flew her back to Sweden where her condition fluctuated, but they held onto hope that she'd recover.
Born in a cave, Ghafouri hoped that she would be of the last generation of Kurdistanis to be born in war. She wasn't. She lived comfortably in Sweden as a cardiothoracic surgeon, but when she saw what was happening in Iraq and Syria at the hands of the Islamic State (ISIS), she headed straight into the belly of the beast to do what she could to help.
She set up the charity Joint Help for Kurdistan (JHK) in 2014. Its work centred on Bajed Kandala camp in the Duhok province of the Kurdistan Region. The camp is home to around 11,000 Yazidis who fled the ISIS’ reign of terror in Shingal (Sinjar), their heartland, in the summer of that year. Those who survived and made it to Bajed Kandala were often orphaned, physically and mentally scarred, and, in the case of many girls who were subjected to sexual abuse, ostracised from their community.
Calvin James Sweeney, CEO of non-profit SCOOP Foundation, met Dr. Ghafouri in Manbij in 2016, when Kurdish forces were trying to take the town back from ISIS in fierce fighting, civilians trapped in the middle. Sweeney was volunteering as an ambulance driver and Ghafouri had two tonnes of aid donated by Yazidis in the Kurdistan Region to take into the town.
She asked Sweeney if he wanted to come along. "I just thought, 'this woman is absolutely bananas', but I liked her," Sweeney told Rudaw English from Ireland.
Ghafouri returned to the Kurdistan Region a few days later, where she and Sweeney would eventually reconnect.
In collaboration with SCOOP, she set up IT classes for residents of Bajed Kandala, part of her efforts do whatever she could to bring some joy and stability for the kids in the camp. One young man who took the classes is now applying for refugee status in Hamburg and is starting an online degree.
"He was a product of what ourselves and Nemam were able to pull together," Sweeney said. "Nemam was able to inspire young people."
The Iraqi government has been trying to shut down the camps, but many former residents of Shingal say it is still too unsafe to return home, almost seven years after they left. Though Ghafouri herself would often venture into danger to provide aid for those in need, she was careful when it came to other people working in Shingal, Sweeney said. And though JHK has been able to do impactful work, she was frustrated about what much bigger organisations were failing to do.
"She was never afraid to ask questions, never afraid to stand up to your hypocrisy,” Sweeney said. He recalled coming out of a meeting where she had let rip about a doctor suspected of raping young Yazidi women in his care and still allowed to work. They walked out of the building to find her tyres slashed. "If it was anyone else, they would have said 'I've had enough'... But she didn't care at all."
Even with strangers she was kind and thoughtful. When she was in Italy for a conference, Sweeney recalled her chatting leisurely to waiters and passers-by. "We'd be four of us walking, then you'd turn around and there'd be three of us," Sweeney said. Ghafouri stop in the middle of the street, talking to people.
Ghafouri took pride in her family, mentioning the bravery of her Peshmerga father and her grandfather in interviews. Her family too is proud of what she achieved. "You came into this world amidst war, born in a cave, lived your life to the fullest like a hurricane of hope and you left this world with strength," her brother Karwan Ghafouri said.
The effect she had was enormous, even the commander of the Syrian Democratic Forces in Rojava tweeted in memory of her.
In the pandemic era, she was instrumental in reuniting Yazidi mothers with their children this year.
The reunification was criticised by some, who said it would mean the mothers would now be ostracised from their community. But Ghafouri had been planning to reunite the mothers and children for years. "She said the only thing that ever made her cry was Yazidi women being parted from their children," said her niece Mattina Hiwaizi.
Despite the division the reunification might cause, Ghafouri did not let apprehension get in the way and "found a way to make it work," Sweeney said.
"Nobody had the confidence she had... Nobody would ever fill her boots, ever," Sweeney said. "But she's been that inspiring to everyone who has ever worked with her... it will be a very, very hard void to fill, but we have to continue her legacy."
There are more than a hundred orphans and widows at Bajed Kandala who need help, said Salih Hamo, team leader for JHK at the camp.
"Is there anyone to help us after the departure of Dr. Nemam?" Hamo asked. "Who can help us so that we can continue to provide assistance to orphans and the poor and take care of them?"
