Tag: Dahlia Wasfi

Crushed to death by a bulldozer (Liberate THIS, Part 6)

Posted on by kathiemm

[Engaging Peace continues the serialization of Dahlia Wasfi’s book, Liberate THIS.]

After reading the headline, “Crushed to death by a bulldozer,” I thought about someone other than myself for the first time in quite a while.  Also for the first time in a while, I felt an emotion other than depression.  I felt anger.

Rachel Corrie blocking bulldozer in Gaza
Rachel Corrie attempts to block Israeli bulldozer from destroying Palestinian homes. Photo by Joe Carr, released for public use.

Having been completely immersed in news of the imminent attack on Iraq, I felt blindsided by this report that seemed to come out of nowhere.  What the hell is going on here?  What happened?  From the article:

In a matter of months, Rachel Corrie went from the orderly peace movement of this small liberal city [Olympia, Washington] to a deadly world of gunfire, violent political conflict and the bulldozer that crushed her to death.

Crushed to death by a bulldozer?  I felt my stomach turn and I tasted nausea.  What kind of horrific torture did she endure?  My God.  What the hell is going on in this miserable, Godforsaken world?  Who was she?

Corrie, 23, a student at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, died Sunday in Gaza while trying to stop the bulldozer from tearing down a Palestinian physician’s home.

I sat staring at the monitor, the words of the USA Today article blurring as I tried to make sense of the news.  She was so much younger than I.  She had no apparent ties to the Arab World. Why was she there?  Why was she halfway around the world in Palestine, while I sat in the comforts of the U.S.A.?

Then the crux of the mystery hit me like a slap in the face:  Why was SHE dead when I—who wanted to die—was alive and kicking and reading about her passing?  The horror was unjust; it was nonsensical; it was illogical.  The loss of Corrie, someone I’d never known of until that morning, was just stupid.

I became indignant. I knew I had to do something.

Dr. Dahlia Wasfi

“We should blow up the countries” (Liberate THIS, Part 5)

Posted on by kathiemm

Part 5 in our continuing series by guest author, Dahlia Wasfi

Most medical residencies are abusive, and this one was no different. But the environment became even more hostile following what happened on September 11, 2001.

“I don’t want to operate on any Middle Eastern people,” one attending physician muttered.

“We should blow up the countries of each of the hijackers,” another said vengefully.

Shock and awe cartoon
London graffitti; photo by Michael Reeve. Used under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

These were my supervisors—medical professionals who had taken the Hippocratic Oath.  One of the foundations of medical ethics is supposed to be “Primum non nocere”:  First, do no harm.

I wasn’t feeling that sentiment in what these doctors were saying.  And based on the hostility they were directing towards “Middle Eastern people,” I worried about potential backlash against me if they learned what my background was.

I swallowed the lump in the back of my throat, along with my voice, and continued to work under them, business as usual.  Protecting myself within my workplace took priority for me that day over speaking against injustice.  I condemned these physicians for their hypocrisy, but my silence was dishonest as well.

By early 2002, the U.S. had invaded Afghanistan, and the American government was telling lies to build support for invading Iraq. My relatives, from whom I still was separated, had been starving under sanctions for more than 12 years. Now, we were going to shock and awe them. My tax dollars would help foot the bill.

“We should just nuke ’em,” my attending physician proclaimed.

In September 2002, overwhelmed by the hypocrisy without and the painful conflict within, I couldn’t continue business as usual. I burned out. I was hospitalized.

Dr. Dahlia Wasfi

One million malnourished children (Liberate THIS, Part 4)

Posted on by kathiemm

[Note from Kathie Malley-Morrison:  Today we continue our series of excerpts from Dr. Dahlia Wasfi’s book.]

Most of my cousins were born after my immediate family left Iraq in 1977.  I had never met them, and I had only faint memories of aunts and uncles, as well as my paternal grandmother who had already passed away in 1979.

Child in Iraq war
Child victim of Iraq war (Image in public domain)

I knew I had many relatives suffering under desperate conditions in Iraq, but I was emotionally, as well as geographically, distant from their pain.  With English as my one and only language, I couldn’t speak with them on the phone even if U.S. and U.K. forces hadn’t bombed the telecommunications centers.

I condemned the hypocrisy of my government for starving the Iraqi people while claiming to punish Saddam Hussein.  But the hypocrisy I despised was within me.  I continued my life, business as usual, graduating in 1993, and moving on to medical school, with a sadness I could not explain.

Between 1991 and 1997, I finished my Bachelor’s degree at Swarthmore and earned my medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania.  During the same time period, economic sanctions achieved the chronic malnourishment of nearly 1,000,000 children in central and southern Iraq.[1]  According to Philippe Heffinck, then UNICEF Representative in Baghdad, “It is clear that children are bearing the brunt of the current economic hardship.”[2]  By the following year, the mortality rate of Iraqi children under five years old was a shocking 500,000 deaths higher than predicted since 1991.[3]

I knew these figures, but I didn’t have time to think about them.  I had begun a surgical residency, first at the University of Maryland, and then back at Penn for a year of research.  I was constantly working, ever more sleep-deprived, and miserable. Yet, I remained unconscious of the internal contradiction fueling my unhappiness.

After three grueling years, I believed that changing fields would bring me contentment.  I switched to a training program in anesthesiology at Georgetown University Hospital, where I began working in June 2000.  My experiences there would prove to be the final straw.

[1] http://www.unicef.org/newsline/97pr60.htm

[2] Ibid.

[3] http://www.unicef.org/newsline/99pr29.htm

Dr. Dahlia Wasfi

Shattering my world (Liberate THIS, Part 3)

Posted on by kathiemm

[Note by Kathie Malley-Morrison:  Today we are pleased to publish the third in our ongoing series from Dr. Dahlia Wasfi‘s book, Liberate THIS.]

The missiles that trailed across the Arabian night sky that January of 1991 fractured the calm over Iraq, like the war itself shattered my world and my memories to pieces.

Marine fighter planes during Iraq war
Marine fighter planes during Iraq war (Image in public domain)

There was no question that the regime of Saddam Hussein was politically repressive. But now, Iraqis suffered under brutality from within and aerial bombardment from without.

Iraqi families were under attack.  My fellow students were celebrating.

Yet, even though I had insight that no one else could have, I said and did nothing for our victims.  At the time, assimilation was a higher priority for me than speaking the truth.  I reeked of selling out.

More than 100,000 Iraqis perished during the 42 days of Gulf War I, but I was lucky.  My blood relatives survived. The worst was yet to come, however, because our aerial assaults had purposely targeted Iraq’s electricity plants, telecommunication centers, and water treatment facilities.  These attacks were in direct violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the protection of civilians in war[1].

In a matter of days, life became desperate. There was no potable water, no electricity, and with economic sanctions in place, there soon would be no means of rebuilding.

Severe economic sanctions had been imposed on Iraq four days after Iraqi troops entered Kuwait, on August 6, 1990.  (In sad irony, that date was the forty-five year anniversary of another Western targeting of a civilian population, the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan.)  All of Iraq’s exports and imports were banned in order to induce Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait.[2]

Though withdrawal was completed by the end of the 1991 Gulf War in April, those brutal sanctions remained in place for years.  Once stored resources were depleted, Iraqis began to starve.  It was a stringent medical, cultural, intellectual, and nutritional embargo that victimized the already-suffering Iraqi people.

I knew the direct correlation between my government’s actions and human suffering.  I did nothing.

Dahlia Wasfi

[1] http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/INTRO/380  Convention (IV) relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War. Geneva, 12 August 1949.

[2] Herring, Eric.  “Between Iraq and a Hard Place:  A Critique of the Case for UN Economic Sanctions” in Falk, Richard, Irene Gendzier, and Robert Jay Lifton, eds.  Crimes of War:  Iraq. Avalon Publishing Group, Inc.  New York, NY.  2006. p .223.