Good medicine for Iraq

RALEIGH -- "Success is not measured by the heights one attains, but by the obstacles one overcomes in its attainment." -- BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

One million babies are born in Iraq every year. I'm associated with a group of obstetricians from the United Kingdom and the United States who continue to work with Iraqi obstetricians to decrease the high number of infant and pregnant mothers' deaths there.

Just recently an obstetrician from the Royal College in England and I were invited by our Iraqi colleagues to go out into the city of Baghdad and teach them by operating in their hospitals.

There's been much hope here at home that improvements in security in Iraq will create an environment in which Iraqis will have the opportunity to stabilize their country so that our troops can come home.

My most significant observation on this trip to Iraq, my fifth, was how much my colleagues there have overcome, and their change in attitude. As recently as six months ago, I would not have described them as defeated, but many were despondent. Now they are energetic, passionate and exhibit the attitude, "We are tired of this and we are not going to take it anymore."

Jim Haveman, former senior health adviser to the Iraqi minister of health in 2003-2004, was back in the country while I was there. He says "The Iraqis have stared into the abyss and did not like what they saw. They now struggle with wanting security and freedom ... can they have both or do they have to choose?"

Much of the credit for the changes goes to our troops, who have gotten out of their vehicles and forts and moved into neighborhoods like cops on a city beat and have come to know the Iraqis. However, Iraqis themselves have clearly changed. As one said to me, "The terrorists tell you it is about religion, but they do not fool us anymore -- it is about power and we are not going to give it to them."

It is surreal to watch local obstetricians challenge and complain to the minister of health, even more so to have him come back the next day to listen to their complaints. Eight years ago, the Iraqis tell me, if someone dared to complain, he would disappear, and his family would never know what happened.

Out in Baghdad at rush hour, traffic was bumper to bumper and it took us an hour to go 5 miles, surrounded by Iraqis going to the souk (marketplace). Iraqis provided our security, the checkpoints are all manned by Iraqis and there were no American troops in sight.

After so much sacrifice by so many, the changes are gratifying, but this is still Iraq. The next day, the minister of labor's convoy was attacked, and 11 Iraqis were killed on the same street by a suicide bomber.

As my British colleague said, "Nobody can ever really stop it all, can they?" There are a lot of guns and bombs left in Iraq yet. And as Ken Pollack points out in his new book "A Path Out of the Desert," peacemaking takes time, and if you demand change immediately, you'll find that "if you want it bad, you'll get it bad."

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MY BRITISH COLLEAGUES HAVE GREAT SPORT with the speech patterns of those of us from the South. All the Iraqi physicians with whom we work speak English, and after one of my lectures, I was asked about this amazing Dr. Yall about whom I kept talking.

When my British colleagues queried further, the Iraqis responded that Dr. Randall says: "Y'all might do this" or "Y'all did a great job." Who is this Dr. Yall?"

Once this was cleared up, the British doctors summed it up with, "The British and Americans, two nations separated by a common language."

As our military stands down, the road to peace in Iraq will require more sacrifice and commitment from the Iraqis, humanitarian organizations and people of good will from all over the world. As an Iraqi told me, "The help we need from you for our people cannot be mailed to us. We need you to help us in person."

We all long for peace, but in the meantime, as I tell my British colleagues, y'all just be sure and come back in the spring when we return to help our friends in Iraq. In the year ahead, I think that we will find what John Foster Dulles once said about our country is still true, "You have to take chances for peace just as you must take chances in war."

(Randall Williams, M.D., is an obstetrician and gynecologist in Raleigh.)