Wounded Iraqi soldiers languish, awaiting government help

[IndianaGreen]

Wounded Iraqi soldiers languish, awaiting government help

By Heath Druzin, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Tuesday, September 8, 2009

BAGHDAD — For two years now, Pfc. Qusay Aziz has risen each morning in the dank confines of a metal shipping container, rolled off a stained, torn mattress, put on his right leg and reported for duty.

He and three other severely injured Iraqi army soldiers live in the container on the edge of an Iraqi National Police base in Baghdad’s Khadamiyah district and, like many of their wounded comrades, struggle to pay medical bills and have been repeatedly refused retirement by the Iraqi government.

“I feel very bad, very angry,” said Aziz, 31, whose leg was ripped off by a roadside bomb in 2004. “The people who are now in government are there because of the army and what the soldiers sacrificed.”

Throughout Iraq, the toll of the war is visible in empty sleeves, jagged scars, pronounced limps. Iraqi soldiers are especially vulnerable, often patrolling without body armor or armored vehicles.

Solid casualty numbers for the Iraqi security forces are hard to come by, but they almost certainly dwarf those of their American counterparts. A conservative estimate by the independent Web site iCasualties.org puts Iraqi security forces’ deaths at more than 9,000 since the U.S. invaded in 2003, more than twice as many as the United States. If injury numbers follow suit that would put the number of injured Iraqi soldiers at more than 60,000.

Unlike the U.S., though, Iraq does not have a medical network for the war wounded. Nor is there any coherent program for medical retirements and soldiers say they pay for medical expenses out of pocket. On a typical Iraqi soldier’s salary of around $600 per month, paying for medical care in Iraqis shattered, expensive medical system can be daunting.

http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=64630