Anita Datar, Indian-American aid worker, killed in Mali attack

WASHINGTON: She dedicated her life to promoting healthcare and education in some of the poorest regions in the world, believing it will prevent violence and terrorism. Violent, brain-dead terrorists eventually took her life when she was doing what she loved most.
Anita Ashok Datar, an American aid worker of Indian-origin was among the 27 victims of the terrorist massacre in Bamako, Mali, the Obama administration confirmed on Friday, even as world powers closed ranks at the United Nations to defeat the terrorist group ISIS.Pressed by the French in the aftermath of the Paris carnage, they voted to redouble and coordinate their efforts to prevent further terrorist horrors by the group and eradicate its safe havens straddling parts of Iraq and Syria.
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But it did not matter for Datar, 41, and others who were mowed down in the attack on the Radisson Blu Hotel in distant Mali, believed to have been undertaken by Al-Mourabitoun, which is split between affiliation to al-Qaida and ISIS. If anything, the speedy ISIS-specific UN resolution, in the absence of a broader protocol on terrorism covering all groups, revealed the weight of big powers where it concerned incidents affecting them.
Datar, a senior manager at Palladium, an international development firm with offices in Washington, was in Bamako as part of her 18-year beat in global health and international development that began with a stint in the US Peace Corps in Senegal in the late 1990s. Her work took her to countries such as Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, Philippines, South Sudan, Tanzania, Zambia, Guatemala, and Guyana, Bangladesh, and even her ancestral India, many of them afflicted with poverty, violence - and terrorism.
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Aid worker Anita Datar 'represented the best of America's generous spirit', says Hillary Clinton
"Everything she did in her life she did to help others - as a mother, public health expert, daughter, sister and friend. And while we are angry and saddened that she has been killed, we know that she would want to promote education and healthcare to prevent violence and poverty at home and abroad, not intolerance," her family said in a statement.
"We are devastated that Anita is gone - it’s unbelievable to us that she has been killed in this senseless act of violence and terrorism. She was one of the kindest and most generous people we know. She loved her family and her work tremendously," they said, seeking privacy at this moment of grief.
Mother of an elementary school-age son Rohan, Datar lived in Takoma Park, a liberal enclave just outside Washington DC that is often referred to as the Berkeley of the East. Her Facebook page is filled with photos of her and Rohan in the many woods and creeks in the area, expressing pride in an activist neighborhood that she referred to as a "shire" - the British term for a pastoral county.
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Born in Massachusetts, she also wore her Indian heritage with pride and comfort, often dressing in traditional Indian apparel along with her son. Maceo Thomas, a longtime friend in Washington DC who met Datar when both were serving in the Peace Corps in Senegal, recalled to the Washington Post how she chased him down one day as he was leaving a volunteer center thinking he was an Indian.
"She sprinted toward me — I was like, ‘Who is that?’?" he remembered. "She thought I was Indian, and she was just happy to see another Indian there."
More recently, she served as a founding board member of Tulalens, a nonprofit group aimed at helping poor women in Chennai make informed choices about where to seek health care. Datar called it the "Yelp for underserved communities." One of her most recent tweets, with a photo on November 13, showed how information and communications technology was empowering women in India.
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Datar grew up in New Jersey, graduating from the Mount Olive High School in Flanders before going to Rutgers for her undergraduate degree and then attending Columbia University for a master’s in public health and a master’s in public administration.