Slain aid workers were following true calling in Afghanistan

MONTREAL -- Jackie Kirk's latest humanitarian world tour was launched in late July, when she went to Aceh, Indonesia, to advise teachers working with boys and girls still displaced by the 2004 tsunami.

Her upcoming stops were supposed to be Syria and Jordan, where the Canadian education expert would help find the best methods to teach Iraqi children seeking refuge from war.

The globetrotting Montreal aid worker's mission was ambushed on a dusty stretch of road south of Kabul yesterday, where she, two fellow aid workers and their driver were killed by Taliban gunmen claiming they were targeting the agents of foreign invaders.

Kirk, Shirley Case of Williams Lake, B.C., and Nicole Dial, a dual citizen of the United States and Trinidad, were traveling with an Afghan driver when their white sport utility vehicle marked with the emblems of their organization, the International Rescue Committee, was riddled with bullets.

The vehicle was traveling in an area considered relatively safe.

Jackie Kirk's husband Andrew said his wife was aware of the risks and believed she was working in a safe area. But she also worried that insurgents might increasingly attack civilian aid workers.

"She was concerned, I think, that with the military doing more humanitarian work, there comes a blurring of the lines, and there is a danger of making humanitarian workers targets, or seen as legitimate targets by people like the Taliban," Andrew Kirk, a professor at McGill University, said in an interview.

But he scoffed at the notion that anyone could mistake his 40-year-old wife, with her constant smile, warm manner and tireless work, as a foreign aggressor.

"She just had this magic," Kirk said. "Especially with children. We used to joke that I have to compete with the millions of girls who go without school because of conflict." He said his wife believed the military mission is necessary to create basic security in Afghanistan and added that he hopes humanitarian groups won't flee the country because of the killings.

Before traveling to Afghanistan, Case had worked the past two years for CARE Canada. She was a "warm" and "deeply compassionate" person who worked around the clock in spots all over the world, including Indonesia and Chad, said Kevin McCort, president of the aid organization.

McCort said aid workers have been increasingly targeted by insurgents in Afghanistan in recent months, and that yesterday's shooting will likely further reduce the "humanitarian space" in the country and make it harder for organizations to attract staff. CARE currently operates in 12 provinces in Afghanistan.

Dial's family and friends remembered the 31-year-old as a brave and dedicated humanitarian who moved to Kabul in May to work for the IRC.

"My sister was one of the few people who were happier in places without electricity or running water," her brother Sean Dial said yesterday. "She felt a true calling to completely give herself to great causes. Afghanistan needed humanitarian assistance. So that's where she went."

Angie Peltzer, a friend of Dial's, said the woman was a "social butterfly who loved everybody." Peltzer said Dial told her earlier this year that she was excited to move to Afghanistan to take her "dream job."

The Kirks, originally from Britain, came to Canada in 1996 when Kirk became a engineering professor at McGill.

Because her initial visa did not allow her to work, Jackie Kirk was unable to resume teaching elementary school. She studied education and international development, completing her Ph.D. in 2002. Her career took off from there.

"The whole area of education in emergency situations is a relatively new one," said Claudia Mitchell, a McGill education professor and one of Kirk's early mentors. "Dr. Kirk is one of a relatively small number of specialists in the world who have been developing this area."

Soft-spoken and reserved, Andrew Kirk showed off an electronic photo album yesterday of his wife traveling and skiing. Each photo showed her face lit up with a smile as she tackled a slope, posed with an elderly Afghan man or played with children.

"She was definitely the more outgoing of the two of us," Kirk said.

Her last trip with her husband of 16 years was to Panama last year.

"She always wanted to see the canal," he said.

"I don't know what I'm going to do without her."

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.scrippsnews.com)