Moaffak Al Khafaji

Born in Baghdad, Iraq, Moaffak Al Khafaji would not know that at age 29, his life would forever be changed by disability and ultimately, be dedicated to the rights and needs of all persons with disabilities (PWDs) in Iraq.  Al Khafaji is currently the Managing Director and considered the “father” of the Iraqi Association of Disability Organizations (IADO), but the path that led him to this field of advocacy is marked with personal strife.

Upon his graduation in 1986 from the Department of Electronics at the Technological University, Al Khafaji joined the army as an officer specializing in anti-aircraft defense, also known as radar guidance systems. In 1991, during the First Gulf War, Al Khafaji’s unit was transferred to South Iraq in the Basra Governorate—a region that had been saturated with land mines and unexploded ordinances, remnants of the Iran-Iraq War. On January 29th of that year, Al Khafaji would lose his left leg and injure his right to one of these residual mine fields, while witnessing others in his battalion die before his eyes. He recounts his memory vividly expressing certainty of his own death and great despair at the thought of being separated from his mother, his father, his wife (3-months pregnant, at the time), and his three children.  More than his own injuries, Al Khafaji is still pained by the memories of his lost comrades and thoughts of their children. He recalls:

“For a long time, I dwelt on my wounds.  I remembered my comrades who had lost their lives.  Among them, I remembered one Kurd who had lost his life, Abu Ammad, who had been speaking with me moments before being killed. It struck me that he really missed his children, Ammad and Ahmad, and that forty days had passed without visiting his family because of the war.”

Both the physical and emotional rehabilitation would take time. He describes his recovery as a period of weak and ineffectual existence, damned to never be “normal” again.  However, his network of family and friends were able to assist him. He indicates that the support he was given made him feel human again and after adjusting to life with prosthetics, he began to see the normalcy of living with a disability. He could walk; He could drive; and he refocused his energy to disability issues.

As he recovered, Al Khafaji recognized a disparity regarding rights and services among PWDs—military, civilian, men, and women—as well as with their presence in society as a whole. Furthermore, after 2003 and the fall of Saddam Hussein, there was finally opportunity for the people of Iraq to organize, represent, and advocate for rights.  Al Khafaji and others began to promote and protect the rights and needs of Iraqi PWDs under the name of small organizations across Iraq. By 2008, Al Khafaji collaborated with others to officially form a national level network for PWDs—IADO. While the rights and representation of PWDs still falls low on the priority list of many politicians in Iraq, Al Khafaji and IADO have made great strides to effectively implement initiatives and to make the PWD presence known, acknowledged, and respected among both the political sphere and society at large.