Who is to blame for Iraqi Civilian deaths

Analysis:

The story consists of mostly stories about children who have been injured in Iraq from bombs. Each of the children has had plastic surgery in an attempt to repair the damage caused. Besides the victims as sources in the story the only other perspective in the story is that of an Iraqi surgeon who is with the Iraqi Assembly for Plastic Surgeons who states that “we’re seeing more sophisticated ballistics resulting in more serious casualties.” There are also 2 photos included in this story, both of wounded children, which in many ways is rare, since the US news media has been reluctant to show the human cost of the war in Iraq.

In the fifth paragraph is states that 20 of the 34 plastic surgeons registered in the country before the US-led invasion in 2003 have been killed by Islamic extremists or have fled the country due to deaths.” The source cited for this is the Iraqi Assembly for Plastic Surgeons. What is interesting about the statement is that it puts the blame at the feet of Islamic extremists and that no where in the article is there any mention of civilian victims at the hands of US military attacks. According to the Iraq Body Count, at least one fourth of all civilian deaths have been attributed to the US military, 9% to insurgent forces and the rest are to criminal violence or unknown. It seems ironic that in one of the few stories that looks at civilian casualties in Iraq would make no mention of how many civilian deaths the US military is responsible for.

Story:

BAGHDAD — Teba Furat, 4, still has the scars from a roadside bomb that scorched her face and hands, and charred most of the hair from her scalp.

Allah Shaker, 25, says she rarely sleeps because it hurts to lower her eyelids, which were singed when a sabotaged propane tank blew up in her family’s kitchen. The face and hands of her 14-year-old sister, Khauffan, were so warped from burns that she refuses to return to school.

Ayat Jamal, 10, was driven into the ground and badly burned when a car loaded with explosives detonated in a frenzied Baghdad bus station. Unable to walk on her broken left ankle or hold a crutch in her damaged right arm, Ayat has been confined to bed the past year.

These cases are just a teardrop in an ocean of civilian combat casualties here that require the type of extensive reconstructive and plastic surgery most Iraqis are unlikely to ever receive.

According to the Iraqi Assembly for Plastic Surgeons, 20 of the 34 plastic surgeons registered in the country before the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 have been killed by Islamic extremists or have fled the country due to death threats.

Meanwhile, officials at the government-run Hospital for Specialized Surgery in Baghdad’s Medical City complex, the main facility for reconstructive and plastic surgery in Iraq, say about three-quarters of their patients now arrive with grave blast or bullet wounds.

“We’re seeing more sophisticated ballistics resulting in more serious casualties,” says Zakaria Arajy, 54, a plastic surgeon at Medical City who has treated patients for nearly three decades.

“This war is by the far the worst one. The battles once took place on the front lines away from civilian society, but today the front lines are at our doorsteps.”

For the most severely injured, the odds are made worse by Iraq’s instability.

Ali Shaham, head of plastic surgery at al-Kindi Hospital in central Baghdad, says it simply is “difficult to schedule multiple surgeries over several months when you can never be certain if you or your colleagues will still be in the country.”

Teba Furat was 19 months old when an improvised explosive device tore through the back seat of the taxi she and her 3-year-old brother, Yousef, were in Sept. 2, 2003, in Baquba, 40 miles north of Baghdad. The blast killed Yousef. Teba sustained second-degree burns to her face, scalp and hands.

“I would sell everything I own in order to take care of her,” says her 27-year-old father, Fahdel, who was riding in the front of the cab and sustained only minor injuries.

Fahdel worries his daughter’s deformities will trouble her when she begins school next year.

“Sometimes she gets jealous of the friends she plays with, because their faces are unblemished and they have hair,” Fahdel says. “She’s already asked about getting a wig.”

The Shaker sisters have similar concerns.

They were critically burned after a propane canister erupted in the kitchen of the family house Dec. 4, 2004, in the Dora district of southern Baghdad, an insurgent stronghold. The explosion killed their parents and 18-year-old sister while inflicting second-degree burns on the left foot and leg of Allah’s 10-day-old daughter, Horan.

Today Allah hobbles on her burned legs but says the public scrutiny often is even more uncomfortable than the physical pain. Neither sister leaves the house except out of necessity, she says.

“People are always gazing at us,” Allah says. “Even my own family stares and asks many questions.”

For her sister Khauffan, a teenager whose entire face is scarred, the psychological damage is almost too much to endure.

“It’s very bad for her,” Allah says. “She’s a clever girl, but she’s too depressed to return to school.”

Ayat Jamal, the 10-year-old who has been bedridden since the Aug. 9, 2005, attack on the bus station, is more hopeful. She is confident that one day she will begin fifth grade.

“I will be able to use my arms and legs again, once the operations are done,” Jamal says, sitting upright in her bed.

Four operations lie ahead of her at al-Kindi to mend her broken bones, and Jamal also believes physicians one day will restore her scarred flesh.

Text from the original article ommitted from the Grand Rapids Press version:

“I feel uncomfortable looking at my burns now,” she says. “But the doctors tell me once the operations are done, they can perform the surgery to fix my skin.”

Doctors say such expectations present a challenge.

“Some people think we can perform miracles,” Shaham says. “In some cases, especially with third-degree burns, there is no possibility to return them as they were before their injury — not here, not in America, or even on the moon.”

Ahmed al-Jawae, 58, director of the Waseti Hospital for reconstructive surgery in central Baghdad, says deficiencies at home also lead many Iraqi families to harbor “unearthly expectations” of the care they might receive abroad.

“There is tremendous pressure on physicians now to refer patients outside of the country,” al-Jawae says. “Some patients think once they leave the country, wonders and works of magic can be done.”

The reality for most, though, is that they will not be able to leave the country for any kind of treatment. Their best option, the doctors say, might be patience.

“Emergency cases are given priority and are handled first,” says Arajy, the plastic surgeon at Medical City. “For non-emergency cases, we’re making appointments today for July 2007.”