Returning home is suicide
They are not doing anything to protect their doctors, but have made many similar false promises in the past five years.
IRAQI doctors in Bahrain say they have no plans to answer an appeal for them to return home, describing any attempt to go back as suicide. Their reaction follows a conference in Baghdad late last month, which focused on ways to persuade hundreds of Iraqi doctors who fled the fighting to return.
Iraqi doctors have been regularly targeted by insurgents since Saddam Hussain was overthrown, but the government’s Committee to Protect Doctors is now trying to entice them back - saying 400 had returned this year thanks to a drop in violence and better wages.
However, Iraqi doctors here claimed it was a trap and said they had no intention of risking their lives or their families’ safety.
“Most of the doctors I know are convinced it is a trap,” said a 44-year-old consultant paediatrician, who is originally from Iraq but now has Bahraini citizenship.
“Iraq’s Health Ministry is literally emptied of its Sunni staff.
“For sectarian reasons we are threatened, forced to resign, kidnapped or murdered by certain groups.”
Another doctor, a consultant orthopaedic surgeon at a private hospital in Bahrain, also said he thought it was a ruse to lure doctors to their death.
The 49-year-old, who also asked to remain anonymous, has lived in Bahrain for five years with his wife and two children. He said one of his former colleagues was killed just a week ago and one of his relatives was recovering from a shooting.
“This request by the Iraqi government asking its doctors to come back is rubbish,” he told the GDN.
“I will not go back because the country is not a safe place to work or live.
“I have my brothers and sisters there, but I arrange to see them once in a while in Dubai.
“Recently, my brother-in-law was hit by a bullet while he was on duty and is still recovering.
“One of my closest friends and ex-colleague was killed last week at the hospital where I used to work.
“Less than a week ago the medical director of a famous hospital was kidnapped and murdered.
“So don’t believe the government when they tell you they’re doing everything they can to bring peace to the country. “It is a sad situation because I have my own private clinic in Iraq, but can’t be there to run it.”
Another Iraqi doctor in Bahrain, who has been unemployed for the last 18 months, said she would rather stay on the jobless list than return home to a job with good pay.
“I don’t think it is the correct move by the Iraqi government to call us back because we fled for our lives,” said the 33-year-old, who asked only to be identified as Dr Nadia.
“They are not doing anything to protect their doctors, but have made many similar false promises in the past five years.
“I came to Bahrain because my parents are settled here, but have not managed to find a job yet because I am not a specialist.”
Dr Nadia said her sister and brother-in-law, both doctors working in Iraq, also had plans to leave the country if they get a good offer overseas.
“My brother-in-law was kidnapped nearly two years ago, but they released him after asking for a ransom,” she said.
“I will not return to Iraq for many years because I left due to the violence, as well as the pathetic living conditions.”
Salmaniya Medical Complex (SMC) Accident and Emergency Department chief resident Dr Zuhair Mahmood left Iraq in 1993, but says he would be a walking target if he went back now.
“I was in Libya for the first years before I settled in Bahrain,” said the 53-year-old.
“But the last time I went back to my country was in 2003 and I decided this was not the place I wanted to work or live.
“There’s so much violence there that I cannot think of raising a family peacefully.
“I will be especially targeted because I am a Sunni doctor.
“Highly educated and professional people like doctors and engineers cannot live there peacefully.
“I am very eager to go back to Iraq, but due to the violence and insecurity I am forced to stay here.
“I am happy here with my wife and two children.”
The official Iraqi Doctors’ Syndicate said last December that 60 to 70 per cent of 2,327 registered medical specialists with 15 to 20 years’ experience had left Iraq.
However, it had no new figures on how many doctors had returned. The head of Iraq’s Committee to Protect Doctors, Rasheed Al Nassiri, told last week’s conference that at least 176 Iraqi doctors had been killed in the past five years.
Doctors are reportedly targeted because of their profession and because they are considered to be among society’s elite. They are easy targets for militants seeking to create a climate of fear and kidnappers demanding rich ransoms.
Those at last week’s conference in Baghdad called for protected residential compounds to be built for doctors at hospitals to keep them safe.
They even suggested doctors should be allowed to carry weapons to protect themselves, while the Iraqi government said it was “ready to address all the issues raised by the conference”.
Among those at the event was Bahrain-based Iraqi Dr Aakif Al Alusi, who works at a private hospital here.
He left the war-torn country at the height of the sectarian violence in late 2006 after receiving a death threat.
“The security is much better, but doctors still get threats from criminal gangs,” he said.
“It is still difficult to press charges in the police station and say: ‘I am being threatened or I am being followed by a car.’
“There is a problem of individual security since the doctor is a prominent figure in society. My sons want to return, their future is here (in Iraq).
“God willing, we will return.”
The Iraqi Embassy in Bahrain declined to comment.
Source: Gulf Daily News: Returning home is suicide By BEGENA P PRADEEP MANAMA
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