Activist slain in Iraq `was an idealist'

BAGHDAD — On their first date, Michael Hastings and Andrea Parhamovich met for milkshakes.

Fifteen months later, she followed him to Iraq.

Hastings hoped they would spend their lives together.

But on Wednesday, Parhamovich died in a hail of bullets, ambushed outside a Sunni Arab political office in Baghdad.

Sunni Muslim insurgents linked to Al Qaeda in Iraq claimed responsibility Thursday for the attack that took the lives of the 28-year-old and three bodyguards -- a Hungarian, a Croat and an Iraqi. Two other security workers were wounded. None of these other victims' names had been released.

"She was an idealist," Hastings said of Parhamovich, who grew up in Perry, Ohio. "She always believed that people were good. Certainly, those ideals were put to the test when she came to Iraq."

Parhamovich, known as Andi, followed heart and ideals when she came to Baghdad. Hastings, a reporter with Newsweek, was working in Iraq. But Parhamovich was also drawn to political work in Baghdad, teaching Iraqis about voting and how to establish a functional government.

She worked first for the International Republican Institute, joining the National Democratic Institute a few months later.

On Wednesday, Parhamovich had gone to meet a group of Sunni politicians from the Iraqi Islamic Party. "She was really excited about the meeting," Hastings said.

The party headquarters is in Yarmouk, a west Baghdad neighborhood where shootings and executions are common.

After Parhamovich conducted her training seminar for the Sunni politicians, she left in a convoy with her armed guards. Moments later, the convoy was ambushed. The guards fought back but were outgunned by the attackers, whose arsenal included grenades.

"With God's assistance, we have succeeded in the destruction of two SUV vehicles belonging to the Zionist Mossad, killing all who were in them, attacking them by light and medium weapons," wrote the group that took responsibility, in a statement on a well-known Sunni insurgent website.

The group often refers to its targets as members of Israel's intelligence service.

But in fact, Hastings said, "they killed a wonderful, unarmed girl."

After graduating from Marietta College in Ohio, Parhamovich worked in the Massachusetts governor's office. In 2005, she got a job doing fundraising and publicity for Air America.