Crimes in Iraq

A Doctor’s Story

By Felicity Arbuthnot
Freelance Journalist – London

27/03/2004 

Dr. Gert van Moorter, from the Belgian NGO Medical Aid for the Third World, heard the explosion that destroyed Baghdad’s Mount Lebanon Hotel and identified the location from the plumes of smoke and flames leaping skywards, visible from behind the great turquoise and gold dome of the Mosque in Al-Firdaws Square, where Saddam’s statue was toppled on April 9th last year. With his colleague Marc, a Red Cross volunteer, they rushed by taxi to the scene to render assistance.

They were met by a scene of carnage and “chaos,” says van Moorter. “Cars… surrounding houses on fire… people looking for survivors in the debris.” Identifying themselves as medics to an Iraqi policeman trying to bring some order to the mayhem, with people literally falling over each other in their efforts to gain access and aid victims, the two were allowed in, whilst others were held back.

Firemen were desperately trying to bring the flames under control. Although the first ambulances had already left, no emergency medical post had been set up; and the two quickly worked out the most constructive course of action. To their relief, the American military arrived: constructive assistance and sophisticated medical facilities were now within reach, they assumed. It was not to be: “A soldier shouted at me that I had to go. I told him that I am an emergency doctor, checking to see if I could help. He pushed me roughly and repeated that I had to go. When I persisted, he shouted, ‘Show me your card.’” Van Moorter produced his Medical Aid for the Third World ID with a photograph. “He looked at it… then threw it on the ground, saying, ‘We do not need your help.’”

Van Moorter says he could “hardly believe” what was happening. “Is this the American way of helping people?” he asks. “Go one step further and you will be arrested,” the soldier told him. Now surrounded by four armed soldiers who were “very tense,” he decided it prudent to comply - “but inside I was boiling… such arrogance, such impoliteness…” and precious time being wasted.

“Whether the victims needed help was simply not of concern.” When a senior officer arrived, arrest seemed inevitable, but sanity was restored when he beckoned to them and took them to a nearby hospital, which was being evacuated, and requested that they help. It will never be known, however, whether there were precious lives that might have been saved in those lost minutes of man’s inhumanity, lives of those “it is not productive to [body] count” lying in the rubble - in US army vernacular, they are lesser beings - “Hajjis” and “Towelheads,” just as the Vietnamese (in another American disaster of historic proportions) were “gooks,” “dinks,” “dopes” and “slopes.”

At the hospital, an Iraqi doctor, himself injured in the leg, requested they take a patient who had just had a stomach operation to the Nafez Hospital. The request brought back memories. “Entering the ambulance, I remembered April 9th last year, as the US soldiers shot their way into the city. We were taking two wounded patients there. US soldiers shot at the ambulance. Both young men died of their injuries.”

At the Nafez the wounded were arriving, and van Moorter, finally able to utilize his skills in emergency medicine, asked for surgical gloves. “Maku” - (none). Bandages: Maku. He bandaged George, an Iraqi with a wounded arm, with the latter’s shirt. George had multiple injuries (in his head, ear and ribs), was fainting and nauseous, and needed plasma, to balance falling blood pressure, and medication, to prevent vomiting. Maku, maku. “A year after the fall of the regime, in the four hospitals I have visited [since returning to Iraq], there has been no improvement over the thirteen disastrous sanctions years. All vital materials are missing and old equipment is a year older; more has broken down irretrievably - and for the rest, there is just a lot of ‘maku.’”

George needed a comprehensive check up and - vitally - a scanner for his head injuries. Maku. An aged X-ray machine is just functioning. George constantly lost consciousness, and, in absence of the treatment he needed, van Moorter was reduced to slapping his cheeks to keep him awake, fearing that he would slip into an irreversible coma. “I asked him if he knew where he was. ‘In hell,’ he replied. ‘Then I am the devil,’ I said. He laughed, which was a good sign.”

The hospital received fifteen victims, two dead on arrival and two referred elsewhere for neurosurgery. Treating a less injured Lebanese victim for face wounds, an Iraqi nurse began to disinfect the cuts using a cotton wool swab - the same piece for each wound. Cotton swabs too: almost maku.

Near midnight they headed for their hotel. Unable to find a taxi, a passing motorist offered to drive them “for free.” He had worked for the American army for a while as an interpreter, but he later quitted. “They are crazy, those Americans.” Stopped at a checkpoint, he showed the soldiers something and was allowed to proceed with remarkable speed; what was the trick? “Easy. You show them something with an American flag on it.” He had a small case with the flags of the US, Great Britain and Australia, with “Operation Iraq Freedom” also written on it, and his driving permit inside. Iraqis are past masters at telling people what they want to hear - they have, after all, had generations of practice.

Van Moorter ponders on Iraq’s newfound freedom: “As we returned, shooting was again taking place.” Freedom has made the country one of the most dangerous on earth. “Freedom not to get appropriate medical care; freedom to get laid off; freedom of speech so long as you say the right things. Above all it is America’s freedom to control the oil, to shoot at whom and when they want, to stop a doctor treating the injured. What is the future of this country?”

At the hospital, the families of the injured thanked the two for their help. “I said we have to thank them that we were able to help them. It is always greater to be able to help than be helped.”

Shortly after the terrible events at Baghdad’s Mount Lebanon Hotel, a friend wrote to van Moorter about the two to three thousand strong demonstration, which Iraqis launched to mark a year since the invasion took place, and to demand that foreign troops withdraw. It began after Friday prayers. Van Moorter’s friend wrote, “I marched with them - first, with a group of Sunni Muslims,” then they waited for the people coming out of a Shiite Mosque on the other side of the Tigris river. “It was a beautiful moment to see important Imams of both religious groups joining hands.” This time the occupiers were not being told what they wanted to hear. Streamers and banners had harsh words about Iraqis’ plight and their feelings towards their “liberators.”

With some truly indomitable and courageous foreigners in Iraq who ask only to help, not to interfere, and with the near-unique Iraqi inventiveness, there will be future for Mesopotamia, this ancientest “land between two rivers.”

In the 1920s, when spying for the British, in another ultimately ill-fated Mesopotamian adventure, Gertrude Bell wrote of the Iraqis, “The enterprise, the rigours, the courage…” In spite of all, it is still undiminished. The US-driven embargo killed as many as Pol Pot’s victims, and this has been Iraq’s Year Zero; but the coalition of the arm-twisted and unwilling is unraveling, and - as throughout history - the invaders will have to leave. And Iraq will, once again, rebuild.

Felicity Arbuthnot is a journalist and activist who has visited Iraq on numerous occasions since the 1991Gulf War. She has written and broadcast widely on Iraq, her coverage of which was nominated for several awards. She was also Senior Researcher for John Pilger’s award-winning documentary - Paying the Price Killing the Children of Iraq.

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