Diary of a Baghdad anaesthetist

Ahmed works as an anaesthetist at a busy private hospital in Baghdad. The hospital specialises in maternity care and eye surgery. He describes his working life in the hospital, and his hopes that the Mehdi Army's control of the area he works in is coming to an end.

" Most of our patients come from Sadr City as we are the nearest private maternity hospital for them.

The patients are generally middle class people who don't want to go to government hospitals and who trust our 24-hour maternity care.

Our staff reflects the Iraqi spectrum; we have Shias, Sunnis, Kurds, Arabs, and Christians, all with different political views.

I would say most of the doctors here are liberal like me. The Sadrists [supporters of Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr] tend to be the workmen and porters and they come from Sadr city too.

We couldn't discuss our views as liberals with them because they have entrenched Taliban-like ideas - especially about women.

Some female patients come wearing the niqab, some allowing their eyes to show, others not.

I get the impression that for most women, the niqab has been imposed on them.

If I have to ask them to pull it back so I can administer an anaesthetic, they do so without hesitating, often removing their headscarf with a little "uff" - a sigh of relief.

One painful subject worth mentioning is the number of women giving birth, whose husbands have been killed during their pregnancies.

This is almost a daily occurrence. I counted 32 last October alone.

Moqtada portrait

But maybe times are changing. There used to be a photo of Moqtada Sadr stuck to the mirror in the hospital lift.

Each time I took the lift I would look at the picture and wonder when it would finally go, in the same way I used to wonder about Saddam's portraits.

But recently, some brave, unknown colleague has taken it down.

I envy this person's courage as I had secretly planned to do it myself. However, the lift boy is a fanatic Sadrist and he would report me if he saw me do it.

The result for me would be - at a best - a kidnapping, with a seven-figure ransom.

Being a doctor in Iraq is a burden - like being a journalist. We are envied by some people because they know the cultural gulf between them and us.

So we are targets for kidnap.

Things have been much calmer since the surge began in early 2007.

Mehdi army

After it started, we saw a sharp drop in the number of bomb injuries we were dealing with. That was until the recent Sadr City unrest.

It's currently the dusty season in Baghdad - it lasts from April until mid-May - and the Mehdi army are making use of the sandstorms to fire on the Green Zone.

They know the helicopter gunships won't be able to see them on the ground.

However, we hear that the American and Iraqi forces are sweeping sectors of Sadr City and taking control, so I think it's the beginning of the end for the Mehdi army. Here's hoping, anyway.

The Iraqi troops need a very long time to be able to take over. If the Americans pull out before the Mehdi Army has been properly disbanded, it will mean total annihilation for all intellectual life here.

I was born here and have lived a big part of my life here, but I am not so optimistic about staying.

I have had a lucrative job offer from Brunei. I think I might take it this time and let the Iraqis fight it out amongst themselves. "