Displaced Civil Servants Just Want to Get Back to Work

Every day, Iraqis show up at the Health Ministry, the Industry Ministry and other crippled government buildings, wondering when they will be able to work again.

There are no ministers, few department heads and the offices are in a shambles or worse as a result of fires and looting.

A key platform of the U.S. plan to rebuild Iraq calls for American advisors to be assigned to each ministry where they will reorganize and revamp the fundamental workings of Iraq’s government.

What they will find is physical devastation and people hungry and impatient to regain their lives and livelihoods.

Mohammed Riqabi, an accountant, is one of scores of Iraqis who have packed the Industry Ministry the last three days, trying to find out when it will reopen. The massive concrete building is badly charred, and its mezzanine level is sagging precariously, seemingly about to fall into the mound of rubble already stacked high. Looted safes litter the front yard.

“Managers and directors are nonexistent so far,” Riqabi, 33, said Tuesday. “We asked for the new minister. Any minister. Anyone in charge. So far, there is no information.”

The father of two young children pulled out a wad of 10,000-dinar notes, the last salary he received at the end of March. But there are rumors that many of the bills are counterfeit and worthless.

He said he’d welcome an American administrator -- anyone, as long as he would take charge and restore order.

“It doesn’t matter who comes here,” Riqabi said. “We want to get back to work. None of us can go back to work unless we get outside help.”

The ministry was looted, then torched, then looted again. First, the furniture was taken, and later the appliances, sinks and commodes, according to a U.S. Army lieutenant manning a tank at the ministry’s entrance. It happened despite Marine and then Army presence, he said.

“Just as soon as you turn your back,” Lt. William Lewis said. “The Marines didn’t have a big enough presence here. We barely do.”

The unguarded Health Ministry did not suffer structural damage. But every one of its 12 stories has been ransacked, stripped of valuables and buried in discarded files and dirt from flowerpots.

Employees were there again Tuesday, sifting through the debris and tossing out trash from the top floors onto the ground below; papers floated through the air like confetti.

Doctors from the Public Health Administration had climbed to their 11th-floor offices (no electricity means no elevators) and finished cleaning and organizing in order to begin work again. However, they have no indication of when that will be, despite three visits from a U.S. Army civil affairs specialist in medical care.

“Things have to go faster; this is moving much too slowly,” said Dr. Faiza A. Majeed, 52, who heads a breast-feeding center.

She and her colleagues pride themselves on their skilled management of medical care during difficult times in Iraq, including 12 years of sanctions. Although they could use U.S. help now, they don’t want an American takeover of their ministry.

“We prefer to do this ourselves,” said Dr. Naira Awqati, 60. “We know how to run it. We have been doing our job for the last 12 years, during sanctions, and there was no health catastrophe.”

The office had managed to eradicate polio in Iraq, the last case reported in January 2000, she said, and the nation was about to be declared free of the disease when war broke out. Now, in the postwar chaos, the doctors have heard rumors of a cholera outbreak in the south but can do nothing because there is no communication or ability to dispatch help.

The doctors said they have been assured by the Americans that the idea is to build on the system that already is in place, rather than starting anew. They say they will wait and see.

Amer Rashid Amin, a senior administrator in the Environmental Protection Directorate, also on the 11th floor of the Health Ministry, is convinced that the Americans wanted the building looted so that they could start from scratch. He came to the ministry Tuesday to salvage important documents; a folder with vital statistics on his staff was tucked under his arm.

Like many bureaucrats, Amin had squirreled away disks and files at home or in other safe locations before the war, and he hopes this material will serve as a basis for the new government.

“Right now, no one is making decisions. No one has come to put things in order and to tell us to begin work,” Amin said. “But we will begin again.”