PHA-Exchange> Baghdad diaries Belgian doctors

[Bert De Belder]

Baghdad Diaries, April 4-5 
 

Dr. Geert Van Moorter and Dr. Colette Moulaert (Medical Aid for the Third World) through satellite telephone

 
"Time is on Iraq's side"
 

Friday April 4
 

Dr. Geert Van Moorter: "I had to stay in the hotel today: sick, diarrhea, low-grade fever. Colette was able to go around the city. She said everything was relatively calm. There were no indications of people fleeing the city. I learned from journalists here in the hotel that they had been able to meet five different Iraqi ministers in just one day. I don't have a crystal ball but it gives me the impression that the Iraqi government is not in a state of panic and still is on top of the situation."

 

"Colette visited the hospital and the headquarters of the Red Crescent. Both had to endure aerial bombings. The hospital was recently fixed up and painted. Now almost all windows are shattered and there is a lot of damage to the equipment. Targeting the internationally recognized symbol of the Red Crescent and medical infrastructure is forbidden by international rules of war but the attackers don't give a damn about that."

 

"Colette also paid a visit to a women's group in a popular neighborhood. The women are organized per neighborhood and also take up responsibilities in the defense. The women Colette met were organized in a cooking collective catering to 250 members of the people's militia."

 

I tell Geert that we would be trying to send a new team of two doctors tomorrow with medicines and surgical supplies. Geert is excited about the news, but also very practical: "They can bring some stuff to facilitate our work here: Batteries for my flashlight; a small screwdriver, insulating tape and splitters so we can tap electricity when there is a power outage; mini-disks for our documents and pictures; liquid soap because when there's no electricity the hotel's laundry service is also closed; medicines for the journalists over here, you never know; and a cable to connect my video camera to my laptop."

 

Saturday April 5
 

Colette calls her husband Bob Roeck. She is also excited about the arrival of two new doctors. We selected Dr. Claire Geraets and Dr. Harrie Dewitte, Colette's colleagues in Doctors for the People. Three weeks in Baghdad, and 17 days under aerial bombings, are starting to weigh on Colette. But she is still in high spirits as usual. As soon as the new team arrives, the four of them will decide whether somebody will try to go back to Belgium with the pictures, video footage, articles and interviews because they haven't been able to send any of them since Baghdad was shut off from the internet. It is a source of big frustration for Geert because it has become his obsession to get concrete information about the war in the media as fast as possible. "You got to understand," he grumbles, "we're seeing the atrocities of this war every day. And every day there are more civilian casualties!"

 

At 8 p.m. I have Geert on the line again. If Harrie and Claire already called from Damascus? That's a little impatient. They haven't even landed in Damascus! So back to the sories of the day. Geert: "I was able to join a bus with journalists. We toured the city for one and a half hours and saw big parts of Baghdad, crossing two bridges over the Tigris without any problems. Cars were queuing at the gasoline stations. Fuel seems to be rationed now. In the upscale neighborhoods the doors and windows of some houses were barricaded with bricks to prevent looting. On the street corners members of the militia were digging themselves in. But everywhere the people remain friendly as usual!"

 

And what about the advancing U.S.-troops? "We didn't notice anything," Geert answers, "but a team of 'human shields' has been evacuated for some time by the Iraqi authorities from Dora, a neighborhood in the southwest of Baghdad where also some power plants and oil refineries are located. Apparently the area has come under fire although many ordinary people are living there. They found it too dangerous for the 'human shields' to stay there but now they have already gone back."

 

So it doesn't look like a city that is about to fall? "I had a long discussion with Dr. Khaled Bayomi who works at the Peace and Conflict Research Institute of Lund University in Sweden. He argues that the Americans want to be on too many places at the same time, trying to undermine the morale of the Iraqi population. But the Iraqi military are shrewd and aren't easily lured into unfavorable battles. Iraq is not in a hurry and time is on their side. The fact that Basra still hasn't fallen into the hands of the British gives Iraq a lot of confidence. You can even notice that in the exchange rate of the Iraqi dinar. Yesterday it fell to 4000 dinar for a dollar instead of the normal rate of 3000 but today it rose again to 3400."
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