By Daniel Hamon
While deployed in Iraq in 2003, then Captain Southworth met Ala'a, a 9 year old boy who had cerebral palsy. The police had found him abandoned on a street in Baghdad six years earlier. Southworth and Ala'a met at an orphanage run by the Mother Theresa organization.
Southworth was part of the Wisconsin National Guard's 32nd Military Police Company, a unit responsible for professionalizing the Baghdad Police in northeastern Baghdad. They also visited the Mother Theresa orphanage regularly during the following 10 months. During this time, Southworth and Ala’a grew close.
In her article Saving Ala'a Carrie Antlfinger writes:
Then, around Christmas, a sister told Southworth that Ala’a was getting too big. He would have to move to a government-run facility within a year.
“Best case scenario was that he would stare at a blank wall for the rest of his life,” Southworth said. To this day, he recalls the moment when he resolved that would not happen.
During a radio interview, Southworth says he felt that Ala'a's survival was at stake if he was transferred to a government orphanage, and he decided that "the right thing to do as a soldier, as a Christian man, was to make the effort to get him to the United States".
Southworth obtained permission from the Iraqi govt to bring Ala'a to the US for medical treatment. He also obtained a rarely granted humane parole from the US immigration service so that Ala'a could come into the country. Doctors and hospitals provided free medical care.
In June, 2007, Southworth's adoption of Ala'a was finalized. On that same month, a CBS report brought to light abuses taking place at a government orphanage in Baghdad. Apparently some of these children had been transferred there from the Mother Theresa orphanage, where Ala'a had been. One of the those children died. Southworth began an effort to bring these children to the United States for medical treatment.
The following comment, written by "jordan", elsewhere on the web, captures the essence of this story: "One more example of the caliber, character, strength and compassion of the American soldier. Thanks"!
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