Ba'athist minister forced out as doctors rebel
Rory McCarthy in Baghdad
Monday May 12, 2003
The Guardian
Iraq's newly appointed health minister resigned suddenly yesterday amid mounting criticism over his career as a senior Ba'ath party official.
His departure represents a significant embarrassment for the American authorities who chose him as the first minister in the post-Saddam government. It also brings another costly delay in the already slow reconstruction process.
Iraqi medical sources told the Guardian that Dr Ali Shnan al-Janabi quit yesterday morning and was not likely to be replaced. The health ministry will instead be run by a large committee on which all doctors, nurses and hospital staff are represented.
"His resignation is the first step on the way to success," said Dr Alla'a al-Shumari, 32, an anaesthetist at the Mansur teaching hospital in Baghdad. "We need people we respect, chosen by us."
As the number three at the ministry under Saddam Hussein, Dr Janabi was regarded by doctors as complicit in the appalling corruption and mis management of the decrepit health system. Yet hours before he resigned, senior US officials continued to defend him as a man of "honesty" and "great courage".
Hundreds of doctors and medical staff gathered outside the ministry last week to protest at his appointment. "Clean this corrupted ministry," reads the graffiti on the wall surrounding the building.
Dr Janabi ignored the disapproval over his appointment and on Saturday held day-long meetings with Jay Garner, the retired general appointed to lead the reconstruction of Iraq, and Stephen Browning, a US special adviser to the health ministry.
The minister, along with all the doctors and ministry staff at the meeting, was required to fill out a form renouncing his membership of the Ba'ath party and denouncing it and the Saddam regime.
At a news conference afterwards, Dr Janabi said he was no longer a party member, but he defended it. "I didn't commit a criminal act against humanity or against the children of Iraq," he said. Asked if he would denounce the party, he refused. "You will find a lot of the ideology is very, very good," he said.
Mr Browning said the minister was "a respected doctor and administrator... Association with the previous regime is not necessarily a reflection of one's character."
But Dr Khoder al-Falluji, 33, a neurologist who represented 18 Baghdad hospitals at the weekend meeting, said doctors "mistrusted" Dr Janabi.
"This is one position that all the doctors have asked to be changed," he said. "Everyone who was in the Ba'ath party at a high level, is not clean."
Doctors allege that during the Saddam regime, senior hospital administrators held back medicines from patients and sold them on the black market, pocketing considerable profits. Dr Harith Hussain, a paediatrician at the Mansur hospital, said managers who were still employed there illegally charged haemophiliac patients exorbitant prices for the factor VIII protein, which aids blood clotting.
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