By Daniel McGrory
The Times, UK, 11 May 2006
COLLEAGUES were astonished when Hussain, a nurse at Kadimiyah Hospital in Baghdad, turned up for work in a new suit with a pistol strapped around his waist and announced that he was now in charge.
A doctor who ridiculed the idea of this 34-year-old appointing himself administrator of the 700-bed hospital was slapped across the face by his new boss, who ordered armed security guards to escort the medic from the building.
The expulsion was a brutal warning to other staff who might question the right of the al-Mahdi Army, a Shia militia, to install one of their own to run the hospital.
The same is happening in schools and colleges, the Civil Service and government ministries and leading businesses as Baghdad’s middle classes are sacked to make way for militia apparatchiks. For many professionals this assault on their livelihoods and expertise is the final straw, and they are leaving Baghdad in droves.
Since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein they have put up with random violence, curfews, kidnappings, rising prices, petrol queues and the misery of surviving on two hours’ electricity a day. But they see little point in staying in Iraq if they cannot continue with their work.
Saddiq al-Medhi, a dentist queueing with his wife and two daughters at the city’s airport yesterday, had his clinic hijacked by militiamen. “I kept telling myself things would get better, but when?” he said. “This is my home. I want it to work, but you can’t have the nonsense of uneducated, inexperienced people being put in control just because some cleric with a militia says so.”
Moqtada al-Sadr, the militant Shia cleric who commands al-Mahdi Army and whose party is expected to be given at least four Cabinet jobs by the end of the week, refuses to allow any British or US experts to set foot inside the ministry buildings he controls, including the Health Department.
Nurse Hussain won promotion at the Kadimiyah Hospital simply because his father was appointed to a senior position in Mr al-Sadr’s head office in east Baghdad. On his first day in charge, the inspector general of the Health Department accompanied the nurse on a tour of the wards. Several staff were fired without any reason being given. Senior figures who objected were overruled and ordered to clear their desks.
At the main hospital in the west Baghdad district of al-Shula, the new regime recently sacked several anaesthetists even though there were already serious shortages of operating staff. Threatening letters from unnamed militias were sent to the homes of others telling them to move, prompting an exodus of skilled medics.
One woman doctor working at the hospital, who asked not to be named, said: “We can’t fathom their logic. Why harm your own neighbourhood by driving away anaesthetists so we can’t do operations, unless they want to sabotage everything and drive people to all-out civil war?” One unlikely consequence of this takeover is that the militias have greater access to scarce medical supplies. Senior staff at the Kadimiyah Hospital had been requesting new equipment for months. The new boss sidestepped the Health Ministry, went straight to Mr al- Sadr’s office and delivery was guaranteed the next day.
Head teachers complain that they have been usurped by militia loyalists who do not have the necessary qualifications or experience. They say teachers are afraid to discipline children of militia gunmen, or give these youngsters anything but the highest marks. The headmistress of a junior school in Gazaliyah, west Baghdad, was murdered for rebuking the ten-year-old son of a local militia leader. Her husband was waiting at the school gates to drive her and their daughter home. Two cars ambushed the family and shot dead all three in full view of other parents.
A Baghdad University professor, who is too afraid to give his name, said: “We are all victims of this new thought police. No longer content to intimidate us with violence, these militias want to control our every move, so they appoint the administrators and managers while dissenters lose their jobs.”
Private businesses, particularly those with lucrative government contracts, have seen senior staff replaced by men with militia links. Mustapha al-Ali, 46, who runs a trucking company, showed up at his office in Sadr City last week to find a new “managing director” in his chair accompanied by two gunmen.
Mr al-Ali had spent months concealing his importation of health equipment for the Health Ministry as that would make his company a target for Sunni insurgents. Now the Shia militia have supplanted him.
“It’s no good going to the police to complain, because in my area they daren’t cross the Mahdi Army,” he said. “The militias are the new rulers.”
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Citation: Daniel McGrory. "Exodus of the Iraqi middle class," The Times, UK, 11 May 2006.
Original URL: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,173-2174643,00.html