Stone Cold Pimpin'

Remember that kooky little oil war we had last month? Apparently those ungrateful brown people keep dying! Why aren't they sipping lattes at a Baghdad Starbucks?

Shia mullahs take charge of hospitals to halt chaos
Sunday May 11, 2003
The Observer

Ten minutes pass and the gates of Chuwada hospital are again flung open by guards with machine guns slung over their shoulders. A rusting truck heaves through, and the latest bloodied arrival is hauled out.

This time it is Abdel Hussein, aged seven, injured by explosives he was playing with at the food market, which in Iraq's first month of freedom has expanded to include an arms bazaar. All morning there has been the crack of small arms fire cutting the distant heat haze.

'We're taking in about 150 casualties a day,' said hospital director Dr Mofawa Gorea, 'the same as during the war.'

This is the midday hour of impenitent sun at one of only two hospitals in a vast throbbing sprawl of four million people on Baghdad's edge that used to be called Saddam City, now reverted to its old name, Thawra City.

Gorea's morning rounds are a narrative of Iraq's war, and now its phoney peace. In ward 115, there is Basia Zukheir who was ripped open by a US cluster bomb; Abudi Kalim, shot when bandits came for his car, and little Fadel Kathem Khlef, caught in crossfire between looters and American troops.