[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 10]
[Senate]
[Pages 14150-14151]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                    DEATH OF NICOLE SUVEGES IN IRAQ

  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I have just learned of the death in Iraq 
of an extraordinarily brave woman from my State of Illinois who died 
this week in a bombing in the Sadr City section of Baghdad. Nicole 
Suveges was a civilian assigned to the 3rd Brigade Combat Team for the 
4th Infantry Division.
  She was a political scientist from Illinois and a doctoral student at 
Johns Hopkins University. She was participating in a program that 
embeds academics into military units to help personnel in Iraq and 
Afghanistan navigate difficult local environments.
  She chose to go to Iraq for her employer, BAE Systems, because she 
was interested in learning how people make the transition from an 
authoritarian society to freedom; that was the focus of her doctoral 
dissertation. She hoped she might use her knowledge to help Iraqis 
develop the habits and institutions of democracy.
  When she died in a bombing on Tuesday, she was helping local 
officials mediate disputes in Sadr City. Also killed in the blast were 
two U.S. soldiers and a State Department Foreign Service Officer.
  Iraq was not the first war zone Nicole had worked in. She served as 
an Army Reservist in Bosnia in the 1990s.
  Nicole graduated from the University of Illinois in Chicago in 1992. 
She was 38 years old. She was one of more than 180 American civilians 
to die in the war in Iraq. Their deaths are in addition to the 4,113 
members of the U.S. military who have lost their lives in Iraq.
  Nicole Suveges represented what is best about America. She used her 
considerable courage and knowledge to try to help heal a badly scarred 
nation and help Iraqis create for themselves a freer, more secure 
future. Her death is a loss to Iraq, to America, and to the world.
  We extend our condolences to her husband and family, and her friends 
and colleagues. I ask unanimous consent that a CNN account of Nicole 
Suveges' life and work be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                   American Grad Student Dies in Iraq

       An American graduate student who went to Iraq to find ways 
     to help ordinary citizens persevere in a transitioning 
     government was one of two American civilians killed in a Sadr 
     City bombing.
       Nicole Suveges' a married political scientist from 
     Illinois, was part of a program that embeds academics into 
     military units to help personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan 
     navigate the local environment, according to her employer, 
     BAE Systems.
       Suveges, who started her tour with Human Terrain System in 
     April, had been assigned to support the 3rd Brigade Combat 
     Team for the 4th Infantry Division in ``political, cultural, 
     and tribal engagements,'' a statement from the program said.
       She was one of four Americans to die in the Sadr City 
     bombing Tuesday. Two U.S. soldiers and a State Department 
     employee, Steven Farley, who worked with the provincial 
     reconstruction team, also were killed in the blast.
       ``Nicole was a leading academic who studied for years on 
     how to improve conditions for others,'' Doug Belair, 
     president of BAE's Technology Solutions & Services, said in a 
     written statement. ``She came to us to give freely of herself 
     in an effort to make a better world.''
       Suveges was the second BAE employee to die in a combat zone 
     this year. Michael V. Bhatia, 31, a social scientist from 
     Medway, Massachusetts, died in a roadside bombing May 7 in 
     Afghanistan, BAE said.
       Scott Fazekas, BAE's director of communications, said 
     Suveges and Bhatia were among three dozen social scientists 
     hired by the company and its subcontractors to support the 
     program.
       The Johns Hopkins University graduate student was also 
     working toward a doctorate in political science with an 
     emphasis on international relations. The focus of her 
     dissertation was on the transition from an authoritarian 
     regime to democracy and how it affects ordinary citizens, the 
     university said.
       ``Nicole was committed to using her learning and experience 
     to make the world a better place, especially for people who 
     have suffered through war and conflict,'' William R. Brody, 
     president of the university, said in a message Wednesday to 
     the campus community. ``She exemplifies all that we seek to 
     do at Johns Hopkins: to use knowledge for the good of 
     humanity.''
       Mark Blyth, Suveges' primary faculty adviser, said that 
     when Suveges came to Johns Hopkins, she planned to write her 
     Ph.D. dissertation on how ideas move across borders from 
     society to society, exploring how radical Islamic ideas 
     filtered through Western European mosques.
       After the outbreak of the Iraq war, Suveges decided to 
     shift her focus to the experience of ordinary citizens under 
     a transitional government, said Blyth, a topic that

[[Page 14151]]

     had interested Suveges since her experience in Bosnia with 
     the SFOR/NATO Combined Joint Psychological Operations Task 
     Force.
       ``She was a very bright, engaging, sweet person, very 
     intellectually curious,'' Blyth said Wednesday.
       BAE said Suveges' experience, which included a tour in Iraq 
     as a civilian contractor and a stint in Bosnia in the 1990s 
     as an Army reservist, made her especially valuable in efforts 
     to improve the lives of Iraqis.
       A Human Terrain System statement said Suveges and others 
     were attending a meeting of the District Advisory Council on 
     Tuesday to elect a new chairman.
       The officials were helping mediate disputes among the Sadr 
     City leadership and ``facilitate the development of a more 
     representative local government,'' the statement said.
       The attack was blamed on a Shiite insurgent cell.
       Suveges graduated from the University of Illinois at 
     Chicago in 1992 and received a master's degree in political 
     science from George Washington University in 1998.
       She had delivered papers to international relations 
     organizations and served as a graduate teaching assistant, 
     the company said.
       At Johns Hopkins, she was managing editor for the Review of 
     International Political Economy, the university said.
       Maj. Mike Kenfield, spokesman for the Army's training and 
     doctrine command, said that the program was credited for 
     ``reductions in non-lethal operations'' and that there had 
     been talk about expanding the purview of the team to outside 
     Iraq and Afghanistan.

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