For many people Shannon Airport is the only connection between Ireland and the war in Iraq. But some Irish people have a direct link with the ongoing conflict. Mark Little meets two Irish men with very different relationships with Iraq and very different opinions of the war.
Right in the centre of Baghdad is a hospital that links Ireland’s past with Iraq's present.
These are images of Ibn al-Bitar, the city's main cardiac hospital. You may remember the hospital because it was run by Irish medical staff through the 1980s and into the 1990s.
Among them was former physiotherapist Pearse Stokes. 'Saddam Hussein himself frequented the place on a number of occasions,' Mr Stokes says. 'Or, perhaps, one of his doubles! But it certainly looked like Saddam Hussein.'
Irish staff at Ibn al-Bitsar were trapped in Baghdad during the first Gulf War in 1991 and that ended Irish involvement.
Ibn al-Bitar itself has survived– but only just. During the invasion of Iraq four years ago, much of the hospital was destroyed by American bombs.
'About 70% of this hospital was damaged during the war,' says Dr Muwafaq Hamu, its deputy director. 'We have a report written by the coalition forces. They suggested that this place is not fit to be a hospital anymore.'
The hospital clung on to life, despite the lack in space, and the struggle to find supplies and equipment. But doctors and nurses have paid a heavy price for their commitment to Ibn al-Bitar.
Half the staff have fled Iraq – some in search of better lives in places like Dubai – but others because their lives were threatened.
'We are part of this society and we suffer as the rest of our people do suffer,' says Dr Hamu. 'So yes, we do get threats, as everybody else does.'
The images of war in Iraq, scenes from Ibn al-Bitar, tend to fade into the background for many people but not for Pearse Stokes.
'We know that possibly 2,000 Iraqi doctors have been murdered in the last few years' he says. 'I really have a deep connection with the place and a continued deep sense of outrage at what has happened. I think it is spectacular that the equivalent of the population of Ireland has been displaced.'
Connections between Irish life and the war in Iraq rise up to meet you in unexpected places. Outside civic offices in the city of Ramadi, we spot US soldiers unloading computers shipped from home (below right).
And later, we come across Irishman Kieran Cuddihy who left a good job in the Irish movie industry to join the US army. The day before he shipped out to Iraq he became a US citizen.
'I found that a very moving experience for me', says Cuddihy, a combat cameraman. 'An Irishman comin' over to America, joining the army, and then being sent right out the door right after that.'
The war Kieran Cuddihy has seen in Ramadi is very different to the one in Baghdad. The insurgency has been driven out of the city and the focus of US efforts is reconstruction.
'It's not too often that a person gets the opportunity to come and live through something like this. And, hopefully, come out here and make a difference,' he says.
But ask about the morality of this war, Irish protests at US policy, and Kieran Cuddihy gives a soldier's answer. 'If we are all focussed on the right and wrong out here, it would get in the way of doing our jobs.'
War in Iraq inspires different emotions in different people, different judgements. And that is certainly true of two Irish people whose lives have been changed by their encounters with a country split apart by war.
- Mark Little
