Neglect Follows
Siege Of Fallujah
By Dahr Jamail
01 December, 2004
dahrjamailiraq.com
BAGHDAD,
Nov 30 (IPS) - The Iraqi ministry of health is failing to provide enough
support to hundreds of thousands who fled Fallujah.
Doctors in Baghdad
are perplexed why there has been little or no assistance from the health
ministry to residents or refugees.
During the
Najaf fighting this summer things were not like this, says Dr.
Riad Hussein, a resident surgeon in Baghdad. There were mobile
operating theatres and plenty of help for them. But for Fallujah they
have done next to nothing. Why?
The doctor said
the decision appeared to be political.. The minister of health
is a Shia, he said. And I'm not so sure he is motivated
to help a Sunni city like Fallujah.
Some doctors said
a deliberate decision had been taken not to help people in the besieged
city.
The ministry
of health instructed us not to provide aid for Fallujans, says
Dr. Aisha Mohammed from Baghdad. But then they have not done anything
to help them during the siege, and very little at the refugee camps
in Baghdad.
Dr. Mohammed said
she and several doctors from her hospital had struggled to get supplies
from the ministry of health to refugees stranded in camps around Baghdad.
Only when
we fought them did they allow us to have some supplies, she told
IPS. What they eventually let us have after we demanded it, is
still not nearly enough for all of the camps. We are in a crisis.
Abel Hamid Salim,
spokesman for the Iraqi Red Crescent (IRC) in Baghdad told IPS that
while the MOH (ministry of health) gave their approval to transport
aid to the refugees of Fallujah, they had provided the IRC no support
of materials. He said they had no word yet when refugee families
will be allowed to return to Fallujah.
Musir Khasem Ali
who heads the public relations department of the health ministry says
there are more than 400,000 refugees from Fallujah. He was unable to
provide any details about how his ministry was assisting the refugees
who are now spread all over central Iraq.
Fellow Iraqis rather
than the government or even non-governmental organisations are providing
most of the aid the refugees need.
The ministry claims
to have done the necessary. We provided everything the refugees
needed, says Shehab Ahmed Jassim who is in charge of managing
the refugee crisis for the ministry of health. We sent 20 ambulances
to the general hospital in Fallujah.
But none of these
ambulances actually entered the city area. The Fallujah general hospital
remained a no-go zone for people in the city trapped in their homes
until very recently.
The refugees meanwhile
continue to suffer. We are aware that in the camps now there are
severe problems of diarrhea, colds, flu and lack of electricity and
clean water, Jassim said.
As children at a
refugee camp on the University of Baghdad campus carried plates of rice
from the small mosque around which the camp is located into nearby tents,
Um Aziz, a mother of five small children said even though we don't
have enough of anything, most of what we have is coming from families,
with not much from the ministry of health.
Another refugee,
Mohammed Abdel Shukir, 43, said that last night I managed to cover
myself with five blankets and I still shivered through the night.
Pointing to the tents around the mosque he said, Where can we
go when the Americans have bombed our city to the ground?
Sheikh Abu Ahmed,
another refugee at the camp said that Humvees carrying U.S. soldiers
and members of the Iraqi National Guard had come to search their camp
for wounded fighters.
I told them
we had no wounded fighters, but they went tent to tent and took their
guns into the mosque, he said. Of course they found no one
but they terrorised children and women. Is what they did to our city
not enough for them?
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