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Zainab Salbi was 11 when her father became Saddam Hussein's personal pilot and her family's happy home life abruptly ended. The family was forced into close companionship with the dictator, accompanying him on trips and often dining at his table.
"Being close to the devil is not a good thing," Salbi said. "It makes you that much closer to danger. You could actually be sitting at a dining table with him and talking about normal things and he would suddenly talk about how he killed his best friend the other night."
As Salbi got older, Hussein began to eye her, and her mother sent her to the United States in 1991 to escape his attention. Then the first Gulf War ensued.
Within two years, Salbi started an organization dedicated to helping women in war-ravaged countries rebuild their lives. It was a deeply personal endeavor because, before leaving Iraq, she had lived through the war with Iran, losing neighbors and friends as bombs fell on their homes.
Last week the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation honored the group's achievements, announcing that Women for Women International would receive its $1.5-million annual prize, which it calls the world's largest humanitarian aid award.
"From the jurors' perspective, they were extremely impressed: The main thrust of the prize is to alleviate human suffering, and when you look at the suffering that these women -- women who have been subjected to rape, to ethnic cleansing, many times losing their children, their husbands, their homes -- no one can dispute that the suffering is extreme," said Judy Miller, vice president of the Hilton Foundation and director of the prize.
In Iraq and the other eight countries where the Washington, D.C.- based Women for Women International operates, the nonprofit works to maintain women's rights on...