Siege mentality grips Iraq hospital
February 22nd, 2008 Posted in Pet GamesInside the low-slung, brown stucco building that is the al Rashad psychiatric teaching hospital in a Baghdad neighborhood of the same name, employees wonder what will happen next.Already they’ve seen an administrator resign after his son was kidnapped. In December, the hospital’s director was gunned down. Then, 10 days ago, U.S. troops arrested the acting director on the suspicion that he supplied female mental patients to insurgents to become suicide bombers.A siege mentality has set in among the eight doctors and nearly 20 staff members at the hospital, which treats about 1,200 mental patients and is one of only two institutions of its kind in Iraq. They no longer allow their patients to leave the hospital grounds for fear of how they’ll be treated outside. They won’t give their names to a reporter for fear that they’ll be targeted next.”I’ve got friends who come to my clinic, and they say, ‘Why are you doing this?’” one doctor lamented. “My friends and even doctors tell me this, so what about ordinary people?”The siege of the al Rashad hospital began after a pair of suicide bombings in Baghdad pet markets killed 99 people on Feb. 1. Within hours, Iraqi authorities said the bombers had Down syndrome, based on photographs of their detached heads.Since then, a U.S. military official said that the women had been seen at either the al Rashad hospital or the Ibn Rushad psychiatric hospital, according to their medical histories, and were treated for bouts of depression and schizophrenia.Al Rashad’s acting director, Dr. Sahi Aboub, was detained on Feb. 10 for his alleged role in helping to set up the attacks. Hospital workers said the allegations that Aboub provided mentally disturbed patients to al Qaida in Iraq are without merit.First, they said, the hospital doesn’t treat the mentally retarded or those with severe mental impairments.Second, they said that the hospital is controlled by forces loyal to Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada al Sadr and that Aboub is a Shiite who’s unlikely to be in league with a Sunni extremist group such as al-Qaida in Iraq.Doctors also said that Aboub has no background in psychiatry and that, unlike those already on staff, he had no say in when patients would check in or out of the hospital.”He’s not crazy enough to risk his life and job by cooperating with al-Qaida,” one doctor said.On Tuesday, the Iraqi Interior Ministry ordered police to begin rounding up beggars, homeless and mentally disabled people from the streets of Baghdad and other cities to prevent insurgents from using them as suicide bombers.The people detained in the Baghdad sweep will be handed over to social welfare institutions and psychiatric hospitals that can provide shelter and care for them, Interior Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf said.Also Tuesday, as many as 15 Iraqi policemen responding to an attack against U.S. bases were killed when rockets, set to be launched from the back of a truck, exploded before the officers could defuse them, officials said.Four U.S. soldiers were wounded when the initial rockets slammed into their outposts in the capital, the military said, the second rocket attack against American targets in as many days.
Tags: ash, depression, kha, Pet, target, welfare