Iraqi violence kills Edgewood woman who was there to help

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BALTIMORE (Map, News) - For Nicole Suveges, her “chance of a lifetime” ended violently amid the smoke and mangled debris of a bomb that ripped through a Sadr City district council building Tuesday in Iraq, killing her, a translator, two U.S. soldiers and six Iraqis.

Suveges was halfway through her last tour in Iraq as a government contractor.

“Her goal in life was to work in the policy arena, concentrating on the social and economic effects of government decisions,” said David Iverson, Nicole’s husband of seven years. “This was a chance of a lifetime to work on the ground level of an actual, working project — to help leaders understand the effects their policies have.”

Suveges, 38, of Edgewood, was completing her research for a doctorate from Johns Hopkins University while working with the Army’s Human Terrain Systems project, which helps the military understand and interact with local cultures, said Scott Fazekas, communications director for Rockville-based BAE Systems.

A former Army reservist with experience in Bosnia-Herzergovina, Suveges already had spent a year in Iraq in 2006, working as an adviser to the Army, then joined BAE in January before returning to Iraq in April, Iverson said.

“Her strength was that she could walk in both worlds, as a soldier and as an academic,” he said.

Mark Blythe, Suveges’ faculty adviser at Hopkins’ Department of Political Science, said her research in Iraq was on the transition process from an authoritarian regime to a democracy and how ordinary citizens are affected. In addition to helping strengthen local government, rebuild infrastructure and reduce violence, she was gathering the last of the data she needed for her thesis, Blythe said.

Laura Locker, a fellow graduate student who met Suveges at Hopkins in 2001, said other academics criticized Suveges for her support of the war effort, but she wrote in e-mails how strongly she believed her work could improve conditions there.

“She defended what she was doing very eloquently ... she believed in not just talking about change, but doing it,” Locker said. “She opened our eyes to what a lot of the conflict was about, that it wasn’t just black-and-white.”

Her funeral will take place near her hometown of Waukonda, Ill., Iverson said.

msantoni@baltimoreexaminer.com

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