Fern Holland had a troubled childhood. She grew up in the small Oklahoma town of Bluejacket. The small town atmosphere helped prepare her for life in a small Iraqi village. Her mother was suicidal, and her father put her in an institution which upset Fern and from there gave her an attitude of self dependence.

Ms. Holland went to school to become a lawyer, and went on to do humanitarian work in Africa until she ran out of funding. Looking for new sponsors to send her back to Africa, she only found people willing to send her to Iraq due to the present conflict. Holland went to Iraq to fight for women’s rights. She, and her assistant Salwa Oumashi, worked to set up women’s centers with some of the money liberated from Saddam after the second Iraq war.

These women centers drew anger to Ms. Holland from the male population of Iraq. She finally pushed them over the breaking point when she got a judge to order the eviction and demolition of a male squatter’s residence on property claimed by two Iraqi women. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fern_Holland> That same day, Fern Holland, her assistant, Salwa Oumashi, Robert J. Zangas,and an Egyptian civil rights adviser, Adly Hassam, were ambushed and gunned down by Iraqi police. Of them, only Hassam survived.

Sources:

Rubin, Elizabeth. “Fern Holland’s War”.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fern_Holland