As I blogged here and here, Iraq's professional class, especially the medical professionals, have been the targets of kidnapping and assassinations. This has always been the way it works. Kill the smart people. Stalin in Soviet Russia, Hitler in Nazi Germany, Pol Pot in Cambodia.
This Christian Science Monitor piece gives us an update on the new Iraqi Ministry of Health. [Emphasis mine.]
"The ministry was in a miserable situation before the war, then it was looted," he adds. "That was the real struggle till now."On March 28, this Iraqi ministry became the first to be granted full control by US authorities, who celebrated its turnaround after "more than 30 years of neglect and isolation." Ministers now have control of eight of Iraq's 25 ministries, with more being transferred each week as officials gear up for the June 30 handover of sovereignty.
Health officials like to weigh their spending today against that of Saddam Hussein, whose 2002 health budget of $16 million for 25 million Iraqis amounted to just 64 cents per person. The 2004 budget is $948 million, with an additional $793 million coming directly from the US - all told, a 100-fold increase.
[...]
Jalal Abed Ali, a doctor at Al Kadhimiya, says he is optimistic, though he has yet to see much improvement. "I have a feeling inside that things are in the right hands, but it needs time," he says. "Germany took two years to reunify. Iraq needs more than that, because of physical and psychological damage."
During the Hussein era, he says, guards used to burn medical supplies, deliberately keeping national stocks low to highlight the negative aspects of UN sanctions. Storekeepers kept drugs until well past their expiry date.
"Rome wasn't built in a day, and you can't take a Baath system with a lot of corruption and fix it in a day," says David Tarantino, a US medical adviser to the ministry. "[Iraqis] have become more optimistic, and are increasingly energized."
At the March handover, CPA and ministry officials said they had delivered 30,000 tons of drugs and medical supplies, 30 million doses of children's vaccines, and achieved "at least prewar" levels at 240 hospitals and 1,200 primary health centers. Officials also say they are on track with plans to halve high infant mortality rates by 2005.
I don't get it. What does improving the health care of Iraqis have to do with oil?
Seriously though, security remains the #1 issue.
More challenging has been a surge in the past month in kidnappings of doctors and surgeons for ransom that is fueling fear about the future, and pressuring some simply to leave Iraq."All of us share the same experience of hating to be kidnapped," says one doctor who asked not to be named, speaking in his Baghdad clinic. Several colleagues have been kidnapped, terrorized, and squeezed for upward of $20,000. All paid; most have left - an option this doctor never considered till now. "We are very soft targets," he says. "A patient enters your exam room, and while you examine them, their partner puts a gun to your head."
Attackers have become increasingly sophisticated. One neurosurgeon - the doctor's close friend - was driving with three other professionals when a black BMW blocked their way. Gunmen asked by name for the surgeon, who was driven off. Four days of negotiations were full of threats before he was released.
"There is no remedy," says the doctor. "The police are weak; the Americans are not stopping it - they only protect themselves."
Three weeks ago, the young son of a surgeon was kidnapped from the car that had picked him up from school. The father was shocked when the head of the gang met him openly to count ransom money. Satisfied, the man promised he and his sons would not be kidnapped again.
"The obvious thing is money," says the anonymous doctor, who adds that his surgeon friend took his terrified son abroad.
"In the past 40 years, I have never been this concerned," he says. "Probably things will improve, but in the next year they will go from bad to worse. People think: If the Americans are here, and things are so weak, what will happen when they leave?"
That is a question that will dog Iraqis until July 1. "It's true there is occupation, but ... we feel that better is coming," says Hamid al-Amiri, deputy director at Al Kadhimiya hospital. "It's the term 'occupation' we want to disappear. But we prefer occupation to Saddam Hussein."
50/50. Good news and bad. That's the way it's going to go for the near future it seems. But we'll never hear the good stuff in the MSM (mainstream media), so we'll have to seek it out on our own.
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