The Morning Blend
Welcome
Complete Media Kit
AL MOCHID VILLAGE, Iraq — Dr. Fadil Monhoush Deub al-Zawbori knows the horror of terrorism firsthand.
Two years ago the Iraqi physician was the victim of an ambush that nearly cost him his life.
Bullets hit him in his left upper chest, he said, showing the scars he will carry to the grave.
“It was al-Qaida in Iraq. They wanted me dead,” he said.
  
|
The doctor has never hidden his disgust for the foreign fighters operating in what was called the Triangle of Death, a rural agricultural area south of Baghdad.
“They came into the area and frightened the people to doing what they wanted done,” Fadil said.
There were initially many supporters of the group in the area, he said.
But al-Qaida in Iraq, or AQI, as the group is known, became overly intrusive in the local residents’ lives until the people took matters into their own hands and began working with Americans.
As for him surviving the attack, without hesitation the physician said, “The Americans saved my life.”
To this day he believes he was a target for being anti-AQI, and because he was the only physician in an area with a population of more than 20,000.
With him out of the way and not able to work at his two clinics and out of his home, the foreign fighters would have control over that part of the people’s lives.
Today, his two clinics are barely standing.
The ravishes of war has taken its toll on the structures.
An clinic near an elementary school, where the doctor goes in the mornings to look after the 525 students and two dozen staff, would be condemned if it were in the United States.
Bullet-pockmarked walls, broken windows, a cluttered examining room with a non-sterile mattress on a metal frame with an IV drip hanging from a nail is the physician’s office and examination room.
An old stethoscope hangs around his neck, and his other medical supplies easily fit in a small metal container marked with a Red Crescent, the sign in the Muslim world of an organization similar to the Red Cross.
Some surgical instruments are inside the container.
Unlike an American physician’s wall, with framed medical degrees and membership in this or that medical society, Fadil’s credentials — in Arabic and English — are his medical school’s transcripts placed behind plastic sheets.
They note the various courses he has taken, including obstetrics and gynecology.
He delivered two babies just a week ago. One survived, the other didn’t.
“I had no oxygen for one. I didn’t have the right equipment,” he said, noting the baby was premature.
In the afternoons he works at his second clinic, and at night he is on call at is home, where people come to be seen.
“I’ll see anyone who can make it (to his clinics or home),” he said.
While the Iraqi Ministry of Health is supposed to provide free medicines, obtaining them is hard because he would have to travel to Baghdad and go into an area where Sunnis like him are not welcomed.
That means he has to buy on the black market.
But there is something optimistic about Fadil.
He is looking forward to rebuilding his clinics. The one behind the school has a small pharmacy, with medicines covered in dust.
The physician also is looking at hiring Iraqi nurses to help him.
There are many medical professionals who want to go back to work in the health industry, Fadil said.
As part of re-establishing his practice in better conditions, he has applied for a number of micro-grants. He is waiting on approvals, which he hopes will come soon.
Looking around the clinic near the school, the physician said he doesn’t know how much longer it will remain standing before it collapses.
Fadil has another goal.
He would like American medical schools to open their doors to Iraqi physicians and nurses to help them learn — for free — the most modern procedures to raise his nation’s standards.
As for what would happen two years ago, if someone tried to attack him again, Fadil smiled and held up a pair of surgical scissors and opened and closed them as if he was defending himself.
Herald/Review senior reporter Bill Hess can be reached at 515-4615 or bill.hess@svherald.com.
Facts wrote on Jan 7, 2008 9:23 PM:
Sadam wasn't an Al-Quida supporter. "