Iraq allows doctors to carry guns for security

Iraqi doctors will be permitted to carry guns for personal protection, the government has decided, in a desperate bid to encourage the return of the 7,000 physicians who have fled the country. It is a decision which baffles and enrages those doctors still in Iraq. "Shame on the government for doing this," says Dr Ali Mahmoud, a thyroid specialist, in al-Kindi Street in west Baghdad. "What use will a pistol be to me if I am attacked by seven or eight gangsters in two cars carrying Kalashnikovs and PKCs [assault rifles]. The government should improve the security situation in general." The Health Ministry says 618 medical employees, including 132 doctors, have been killed since 2003. Well-known doctors have been the prime targets of kidnappers, often seized when responding to a spurious emergency call. Some 600 doctors who had moved to Jordan and Syria have returned to Iraq, heeding government claims that security has improved over the past year. They are also tempted by increased salaries. But even doctors who have stayed in Iraq warn colleagues not to come back. Dr Fatin Mohammed, an ophthalmologist, says: "I still feel unsafe. Doctors abroad should stay where they are because the situation there is a hundred times better than it is here." Iraqi doctors, and other professionals, concede that security in Baghdad is much improved, but the city remains the most dangerous in the world. Last Sunday, not a particularly violent day by Iraqi standards, two bombs killed 13 people in the capital, including two schoolchildren beside the road. Snipers killed two soldiers in the center of the city. The main news of the day was that two suicide bombers had blown themselves up in Mosul and 3,750 Christians had fled the city. Baghdad is also one of the strangest cities in the world. In some respects, it has ceased to be a city and has become a series of fortified townships surrounded by tall concrete blast walls with closely guarded entrances and exits. Checkpoints every few hundred yards cause traffic jams. Soldiers and police wield a device that looks like a transistor radio and is meant to detect vapor from explosives. Unfortunately, it also responds to alcohol, perfume and even after-shave lotion, leading to endless delays as cars are searched. Persuading doctors to return would be an important achievement for the government. The Iraqi heath service has largely collapsed because of the mass flight of medical staff. For almost any medical operation, Iraqis now go to Syria, Jordan, Iran or sometimes Iraqi Kurdistan where some doctors have taken refuge. The most highly qualified and best-known doctors find it easiest to find work abroad and know that they are the most likely targets of kidnappers if they return. The government and the US military greatly exaggerate the extent to which Iraqis can live a normal life. Shia who fled from Sunni-dominated Anbar at the height of the sectarian killings in 2006 and 2007 are told it is now safe to return but strongly suspect it is not. The attitude of people in the capital usually depends on where they live. Senior government officials mostly live in the Green Zone where they are well-defended and have permanent electricity. The rest of Baghdad mostly gets by on a maximum of five hours electricity a day. Not surprisingly, the elite are optimistic about the future. The Shia are usually more optimistic than the Sunni. "The security situation is good because of the co-operation of the people with the Iraqi security forces," says Jafar Sadiq, a Shia businessman in the Shia-dominated Iskan area. But the Sunni were the main losers from the fall of Saddam's Sunni-dominated regime in 2003 and the sectarian strife that followed. Omar Abdul Latif, a Sunni engineer with a well-paid job in the Housing Ministry, said that after an al-Qaida sniper killed a soldier recently "the security forces arrested 23 local men and they have just released 17, all of whom were tortured. One had his teeth smashed and another had his arm broken."