FRIDAY, JUNE 18, 2010


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The World A19 Iraq ill-equipped to cope with a psychiatric epidemic psychiatry from A1


gent bombings. Now the violence has subsided to a lower but still frightening level, and many Iraqis struggle to deal with the trauma of their past and the uncertainty of their future. Last year, Iraq’s health ministry began to incorporate psychiatric treatment into primary-care hos- pitals to keep up with the trauma people have suffered, said Naama Humaidi, the general secretary of the psychiatric association. “The violence, aggression and turmoil in Iraq is directly connected to the increase in mental problems,” he said. “There is an exceptional, threatening situation that cannot be understood by any other soci- ety. It made a thumbprint on each person in our country.”


Poetry and psychiatry On a recent Monday, Humaidi


sat inside the rehabilitation cen- ter at Al-Rashad hospital, the walls decked with patients’ paint- ings. The gloomy institution is more than 50 years old and rises on the horizon in a deserted area outside the poor and sometimes dangerous slum of Sadr City. It stands away from other buildings, forgotten and neglected. About 80 percent of families abandon their relatives once they commit them here, doctors said. When patients are ready to rejoin society, they of- ten have nowhere to go. At a long work table, Humaidi


gathered the men and women to sing and to recite poetry. The songs often circled back to grief, abandonment and fear. Some wept as they sipped on pink soda, painted portraits and ate sweet cakes. Some who have been here for decades have lost a sense of time and place, while oth- ers came after the trauma of Iraq’s latest war. Eight doctors, includ- ing Humaidi, care for about 1,300 patients. There is no bed space for more, and the facility needs more than a dozen additional psychia- trists to function properly, he said. A young girl named Fatma, pe- tite and sad, screamed the words of an 11th-century Iraqi poet. Her family, exhausted by her mental illness, dropped her here recently when her father died. “What have I seen in this world? And its wonders?” she re- cited. “I try to give them positive re- inforcement and the tools to re- join society,” Humaidi said. As Humaidi walked through the barren wards with their dingy white walls, women cried out. “I want to go home,” a woman


begged, tears streaming down her face.


“Sing me a song,” he asked her.


The tears dried, and she began to sing. The pink curtains and plastic flowers don’t mask the sadness of this place: the metal bars on every door, the television locked in a


U.S., Europe target Iran investment, trade


Sanctions intensify, but negotiation is still goal, officials say


by Glenn Kessler


The United States and its allies are swiftly tightening an eco- nomic cordon around Iran by im- posing new strictures that could inflict far more economic pain on the Islamic republic than previ- ous sanctions. On Thursday, European Union


governments agreed to ban com- panies from investing in or other- wise assisting Iran’s oil and gas in- dustry — measures that went well beyond a U.N. Security Council resolution last week that reiterat- ed international demands that Iran forswear nuclear weapons. Along with the United States, Australia, Japan, South Korea and other countries are set to adopt or strengthen their own sanctions against trading with Iran. The cascading effect appears to


validate the Obama administra- tion’s strategy of accepting a wa- tered-down U.N. resolution, with a less-than-unanimous vote, to move to the next stage in the con- frontation with Iran: tough uni- lateral sanctions imposed by indi- vidual nations. The goal, Western diplomats


and U.S. officials say, is still to get Iran back to the negotiating table. But there are important second- ary goals: deterring an Israeli military strike against Iran’s nu- clear sites, which could inflame the region; reassuring Arab allies that the rise of Iran is being checked; and signaling to other countries considering building a nuclear weapon that there can be real costs to doing so.


Costs and benefits


So far, Iran’s leaders have shown no inclination to negotiate seriously over its nuclear pro- gram, which they say is entirely peaceful. But some U.S. officials detect what they say are exploit- able fissures within Iran’s leader- ship. “The sanctions are not an end unto themselves; they are a means to an end,” said Robert Einhorn, the senior State Depart- ment official in charge of imple- menting the sanctions. “They will make it harder for Iran to support their nuclear and missile ambi- tions, and hopefully they will alter Iran’s calculation of costs and benefits and encourage them to negotiate much more seriously with us than they have in the past.” U.S. and European officials ac- knowledge that the administra- tion’s gambit faces uncertainties. China, for instance, could swoop into Iran to replace West- ern investors. “China is the ele- phant in the room,” one diplomat said, but the hope is that China will face political pressure not to appear to profit from an interna- tional pullout. Officials also say China cannot replicate some of the technologies and products produced in Europe. The E.U. sanctions are poten- tially significant because Europe


is Iran’s biggest trading partner. There is more than $30 billion in annual trade between Iran and the 27 E.U. nations, in contrast to the minimal trade with the Unit- ed States. The Europeans acted with un- usual dispatch, a week after the U.N. vote and with a goal of craft- ing the final rules by July 26. Gen- erally, it has taken Europe seven to eight months to write laws im- plementing a U.N. sanctions reso- lution. But officials said that the Obama administration’s unre- quited efforts at engagement with Iran, the exposure last year of an- other secret Iranian nuclear facil- ity and the bloody crackdown on post-election demonstrations in Iran had combined to shift atti- tudes in European capitals.


Human rights issues Some European nations most


skeptical of sanctions, such as Sweden, are also concerned about human rights. “There has been a dramatic change in the last year,” said Patrick Clawson, deputy di- rector of research at the Washing- ton Institute for Near East Policy. “Human rights in Iran has really caught on in Europe.”


European leaders for the first time dropped any pretense that the sanctions should be limited to Iran’s nuclear and missile activ- ities and ordered the develop- ment of sanctions that would in- clude banking, insurance and shipping restrictions, visa bans and asset freezes on the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The oil and gas measures include bans on transfers of refining, liquefac- tion and liquid-natural-gas tech- nology. The E.U. sanctions do not in- clude a curb on gasoline sales to Iran, which lacks refining capac- ity and imports about one-third of its gasoline. Such a ban is expec- ted to be included in U.S. legisla- tion, but oil traders have said that a thriving black market in gaso- line could help Iran evade such measures. Many oil companies have al- ready left the Iranian market, so the main impact of the new sanc- tions will be on the small- and me- dium-size European companies that provide equipment to keep Iranian facilities running. Mark Dubowitz, executive di-


rector of the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of De- mocracies, said the European sanctions, depending on how the final language is crafted, “could be consequential” because a loop- hole in existing sanctions allows the transfer of technology and en- gineering services. Western diplomats and U.S. of-


ficials insist that there has been no serious discussion about a con- tainment strategy if the sanctions fail to pressure Iran. “It is good to be skeptical about


sanctions,” said one Western dip- lomat, speaking on the condition of anonymity to communicate more freely. “I don’t think we have any assurance that by doing this, we will be sure they will enter a serious negotiation. But if we don’t do this, we have one assur- ance: We will never get to a seri- ous negotiation.” kesslerg@washpost.com


thing that understands him, he said. To this day, despite the drop in violence, the only places he plays are at the hospital and in his liv- ing room with a fellow artist. “I feel the whole universe is shroud- ed in darkness, without hope, without life. I even hate to walk out the door,” he said. Hardan is philosophical about the violence of the past seven years. “Everything that is bad we threw on the occupation,” he said. “But if we shook hands and were united, this wouldn’t have hap- pened to us. I hope our country can finally have some rest.”


LEILA FADEL/THE WASHINGTON POST


Dhia Hardan suffers from manic depression; he treats it with medication and music, which Shiite militias have forbidden.


cage and the fluorescent lights that flicker above. The women stare out the windows waiting for something to change.


Dangerous therapy


Dhia Hardan, 38, suffers from manic depression. He comes to the hospital for very short stays to play music for the patients and collect his medication. He hears the whispers in the streets about his illness. He sees the looks of passersby worried they could catch what he suffers from, as many people here believe. Hardan was always prone to depression, but his music helped.


When the sadness comes, the Shi- ite Muslim pulls out his ornately carved oud, a pear-shaped string instrument, and pours his grief into his songs. But after the U.S. invasion, the civil war and the militant sectarianism that fol- lowed, he stopped talking to peo- ple and he rarely left his home, the art teacher said. The Mahdi Army, a Shiite mili-


tia that enforces a prohibition on music, controlled the streets of his poor Shiite neighborhood. Hardan worried he would be killed or reprimanded for his mu- sic, as so many others were. He put away the instrument, the only


A psyche shattered For Shaker’s family, there is no


rest. The first bombing in 2005 destroyed their home and their store and took her husband’s leg. But it was the second bombing, which also struck the family home last year, after they had made repairs, that left Shaker mentally ill, family members say. No place was safe, she concluded, and she soon became inexplicably violent. Two days after that attack, she


walked into her son Muntathar’s room and held a knife over him. Her husband, Raad Fadhil Ali, wrestled it from her arms. She threw the television into the wall. She ripped out an electrical sock- et before running into the streets. Her husband took her to the hos- pital the next day.


After two weeks of treatment, she came home calmer. Things would be okay now, her husband thought. Their home was near a Shiite mosque, which was fre- quently targeted, and he moved them to a new Baghdad neighbor- hood. They left behind the family store they had borrowed money twice to repair and resettled into a rented two-room shack. About two weeks ago, a third bomb was planted, this one in a nearby coffee shop. As her hus- band and son recalled it, the glass in their house blew in, and as the dust settled, Shaker screamed. “They followed us here?” she sobbed. “We’re going to die.” Her husband sought help from faith healers across the country, then returned her to the hospital. At home, he takes care of Mun- tathar alone, hobbling on his re- maining leg. Outside, he set up a small, street-side business selling cigarettes and drinks. Inside, in the stark living room, a picture of the couple during better times is propped near the family’s only bed.


fadell@washpost.com


Special correspondents Aziz Alwan and Jinan Hussein contributed to this report.


on washingtonpost.com


Therapeutic music from an Iraqi artist


To watch a video of Dhia Hardan playing his oud,


go to www.washingtonpost.com/ world.


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