Monday, January 23, 2006
Iraqi RhetIraq: Various Professionals
Who: Various Doctors, see article below
Source: The Washington Post
Quotes: From article titled, "Professionals Fleeing Iraq As Violence, Threats Persist"
The office of Iraq's most eminent cardiologist is padlocked. A handwritten sign is taped on his wooden door in the private clinic in Baghdad: Patients of Dr. Omar Kubasi should call him in Amman, Jordan.
"I think it's part of the plan for the country's destruction," Kubasi said by telephone. "The situation in the last six months has gotten so bad, we couldn't continue."
Ahmed Meer Ali, a 27-year-old resident doctor, is left alone to man the private hospital where Kubasi's office is locked and shuttered. Most of the specialists who worked there, providing care to patients and guidance to Ali, have left.
"They are the ones with specialties from England or the U.S.A. They were the ones teaching me," he said. "Now, some patients even go to Iran to get care. In the past, no one in Iraq would go to Iran."
An official at the Interior Ministry's statistics office said the number of Iraqis traveling overland to Jordan held steady at about 200 to 250 a day from July 2004 to June 2005. Since last July, however, the number crossing the border -- excluding truckers and traders -- has ballooned to 1,100 a day, according to the official.
Um Mustafa and her husband, a businessman, had hoped to stay. But they abandoned that goal when thieves burst into their bedroom, held their young son in a headlock, with a gun to his head, and demanded that his parents hand over all their gold and jewelry.
"We didn't want to leave," said Um Mustafa, 27, who still fears attack and asked not to be fully identified. "We were a very happy family. Wealthy. My husband had a good job. We had money, a house, car and servants."
"I've been through four wars. I never, never felt like leaving before," Um Mustafa said. "Now, life in Iraq has become unsafe. I don't feel safe in my own bedroom -- or in the whole country."
Source: The Washington Post
Quotes: From article titled, "Professionals Fleeing Iraq As Violence, Threats Persist"
The office of Iraq's most eminent cardiologist is padlocked. A handwritten sign is taped on his wooden door in the private clinic in Baghdad: Patients of Dr. Omar Kubasi should call him in Amman, Jordan.
"I think it's part of the plan for the country's destruction," Kubasi said by telephone. "The situation in the last six months has gotten so bad, we couldn't continue."
Ahmed Meer Ali, a 27-year-old resident doctor, is left alone to man the private hospital where Kubasi's office is locked and shuttered. Most of the specialists who worked there, providing care to patients and guidance to Ali, have left.
"They are the ones with specialties from England or the U.S.A. They were the ones teaching me," he said. "Now, some patients even go to Iran to get care. In the past, no one in Iraq would go to Iran."
An official at the Interior Ministry's statistics office said the number of Iraqis traveling overland to Jordan held steady at about 200 to 250 a day from July 2004 to June 2005. Since last July, however, the number crossing the border -- excluding truckers and traders -- has ballooned to 1,100 a day, according to the official.
Um Mustafa and her husband, a businessman, had hoped to stay. But they abandoned that goal when thieves burst into their bedroom, held their young son in a headlock, with a gun to his head, and demanded that his parents hand over all their gold and jewelry.
"We didn't want to leave," said Um Mustafa, 27, who still fears attack and asked not to be fully identified. "We were a very happy family. Wealthy. My husband had a good job. We had money, a house, car and servants."
"I've been through four wars. I never, never felt like leaving before," Um Mustafa said. "Now, life in Iraq has become unsafe. I don't feel safe in my own bedroom -- or in the whole country."
