Poverty, political infighting plague Wasit

[unhappycamper]

Poverty, political infighting plague Wasit
By Michael Gisick, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Thursday, February 14, 2008

FORWARD OPERATING BASE DELTA, Iraq — It’s been almost six months since the daily mortar attacks on this coalition base near the city of Kut came to an abrupt end, but every time Dr. Husam Mateed makes the trip to the base, he says, his life rests in God’s hands.

“The militias believe that if you come here, you are a spy,” Mateed says in lightly accented English. “We try to give them the idea we are coming here to improve our medical skills. Maybe that’s why we live until now.”

The twice-weekly seminars with a group of American doctors from the Army Reserve’s 948th Field Surgical Team draw a small crowd.

Mateed is one of a half-dozen local doctors who attend; many more from the city were too frightened, he says.

And while attacks on the contingent of American and international troops stationed in Wasit province stopped in August — coinciding with a cease-fire ordered by radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr — Mateed and the others bring stories of a Shiite-dominated province still far from peace.


Rest of article at: http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=52458