Middle East

Mosul medics work to purge legacy of Isis from hospital

City is rebuilding despite most Mosul residents not being paid for more than two years

A displaced woman lies down at a field hospital beneath a billboard erected by Islamic state’s militants as battle continues in western Mosul. The billboard reads, “There is No God Only God. Islamic state Nineveh Governorate”. Photograph: Zohra Bensemra/Reuters

Erika Solomon in Mosul
Sun Mar 5 2017 - 18:32

In the charred hulk of the Ibn al-Atheer children’s hospital, medics recall how Isis militants commandeered the upstairs wing for what they believed were secretive exorcisms.

As Ali al-Rubaii and his colleagues treated cancer patients below, they could hear the sounds of ritualistic beatings, and the screams of runaway fighters brought up for “treatment”.

Now staff at the Mosul hospital are holding an exorcism of their own, as bit by bit they remove the traces of the lives they endured during nearly three years of Isis rule. In medical scrubs and plastic masks, they have been coming every day since the jihadis were forced out of the neighbourhood to wash, strip and rebuild the hospital. Iraqi forces recaptured the eastern half of the northern city in January.

“I have around 400 kids that I feel a personal responsibility to,” says Mr Rubaii, director of the oncology ward. “Some are waiting in their homes, others are being treated in hospitals in other provinces. In oncology there is a specific timeframe you have to treat people under – you can’t mess that up. We have to start working.”

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Many medics spent decades working at Ibn al-Atheer and immediately came together to pool donations, small and large: from locals who could only afford to give their time, painting or rewiring the electricity, to doctors who fled thousands of miles sending back expensive medical equipment. The campaign is part of a wave of communal efforts to revive areas the jihadis have been forced from at a time when the government is too distracted and cash-strapped to help.

Isis murals

In small villages outside Mosul, residents refurbish town squares and clean up trash. Inside the city, Iraq’s second largest, Isis murals warning residents to pay their taxes are being painted over with Iraqi flags, white doves bearing olive branches and the hashtag “Make it more beautiful”.

The drive to rebuild is happening despite the fact that most Mosul residents have not received a salary in more than two years – more than half the city is reliant on civil servant wages, which the government cut to prevent funding Isis and has yet to reinstate. Many residents say they are living off elderly relatives' pensions, the one state benefit Baghdad kept paying.

Mr Rubaii says his own house is bare after he was forced to sell his family’s possessions to survive. Long ago, he sold the chests of drawers and his bed. As the battle for eastern Mosul raged, he had to ask his wife to give up her wedding ring so he could buy rice and flour.

“I told her I would buy her 10 new ones someday to replace it,” he says. “But the emotional value is what you feel sad about.”

Government officials say salaries will be paid in coming months after civil servants are vetted to check for any affiliations with Isis. But privately, some say there is no sign Baghdad will pay up any time soon as it grapples with an economic crisis and soaring debts. Weeks after security forces drove the militants out of east Mosul, it has yet to bring back basic rubbish collection or water services. And now its focus is on ousting Isis from the city’s western districts across the Tigris river.

“The back pay alone is some $2.5 million to $3 million if you consider all of Mosul,” says one provincial official, who asked not to be identified. “The government is broke, and they are going to use this security issue for as long as they can.”

Political patronage

Like most Iraqis, medics at Ibn al-Atheer also worry about corruption – a huge problem in Iraq’s deeply ingrained system of political patronage. As a result, medics have urged donors not to go to the government but instead buy whatever supplies they want and donate directly – whether it is floor tiles or blood testing machines.

Hospital staff continued working until the last moments of jihadi rule, when they took patients and fled, sending those in critical condition on a perilous journey down the Tigris in plastic boats towards government forces.

They returned days later to find the hospital torched, its operating rooms no more than blackened walls with twisted metal bedframes.

“It was a really painful sight for me,” says Dr Nashwan al-Abbasi, a haematology specialist. “For those of us from this hospital . . . this is our home. If your home is destroyed, you come back and rebuild it.”

The memories of what they endured are bitter too. Mr Rubaii and Mahran, an oncology nurse who asked only to be identified by his first name, say they were not allowed to touch children older than eight. A female doctor treating bone marrow cases, who complained about Isis’s requirement that women wear a full face veil – even while conducting surgery – was given fifty lashes.

“We had to get special security permissions, and beg them to let us work for the sake of the patient, so they wouldn’t die,” Mr Rubaii recalls. “It was exhausting.”

About half of the original staff of 600 fled, died or disappeared, while about 50 come every day, Dr al-Abbasi says. Other medics whose facilities are in areas still under Isis rule also volunteer. The sounds of electric drills drone in the background as Bassem, a nurse whose hospital is in western Mosul, shows off the first ward they have reopened – about 11 blue hospital beds in a bare white room.

“It’s nice to feel like some people still love their city, that there is still good in people,” he says. “It’s been hard, but one of the reasons you stay is to serve your people.”

– (Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2017)

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