We thought we'd understand the system better if we visited a local warehouse, so we sought out Kimadia 13, the largest medical supply warehouse facility in all of Baghdad. The man in charge, Matt Golsteyn, a 23-year-old Army lieutenant from Orlando, Fla., gives us a tour of the warehouses. There are boxes of syringes stacked six or seven boxes high between the buildings. Parts for ambulances and elevators lie in broken crates, collecting dust. Inside we pass a row of free-standing air conditioners. "We had about 200 of those a couple of days ago," Golsteyn says. "But they all went out. Now we have about 50. I hope they went to the hospitals, but you never know."

He says drivers hired by hospitals come in daily with lists of requested items but they try to leave with much more. "I mean they try to run every kind of racket possible," he says. His platoon, which has been at the complex a month, only took full control a week ago. Now they check all the outgoing items against the requisition list.

"The first three days we were on the gate, we let out three vehicles that had the proper amount of stuff. We sent back about 15. It was a common occurrence for the wrong things to leave this site."

Many of these items -- latex gloves, hearing aids, IV bags and catheters -- which are normally given free to hospitals that need them, ended up in the black market.

But drivers skimming off the top was not the biggest problem at Kimadia 13, Goldsteyn says. It was the local Shiite groups who took control after the war and continued to use and exploit the medical supply complex even after the troops arrived. "The neighborhood was able to exert pressure on the managers by, pretty much, if they don't let them have their way, they'd kill them. So the management is corrupt in the sense that they got the knife to their throat all the time. The reason why things are going out the gate all the time is because the store managers have to look the other way."

Although Goldsteyn has fired some of the management and kicked out some workers who were extorting money from the drivers, corruption is still rife. "The administration that is running these warehouses now is the same one that was running it under Saddam. So this was and is his organization. This is going to change, but for now this is how they do it. Everyone here has dealt with some kind of corruption at one time or another. You just have to find the people you can work with."

We hear from a soldier who requested anonymity that the large warehouse for drugs and medicines, Kimadia 1, is in a similar but worse state as Kimadia 13, the supplies and equipment facility.

"The local Shiite militia are in charge of security there and they are running it like their own little fiefdom," says the soldier. They sell medicine that comes in the front -- U.N. supplies, Red Cross supplies -- to people out the back, he adds. "It's a case of the rats guarding the cheese factory."

What about security? we ask. Isn't the Army protecting the warehouse? "The United States military hasn't seen fit to do anything yet," says the disgusted soldier. "That's a decision that needs to come from some level above mine."

Even when medicine makes its way from the Kimadia, there is a problem with hospital staff taking it for themselves. Dr. Mahumuad Jassihm, the director of Habibia Children's Hospital in Sadr City, says his facility was lucky and got three months' worth of supplies directly from the Kimadia. But the well-groomed, care-worn man says it doesn't always mean his patients get the medicine. During a tour of the wards, we pass several mothers clutching vials of medicine, their hands resting in the folds of their black hijab. "We give the drug to the parents, and when the time comes for the injection, they call in the nurse, because we don't trust our nurses," Jassihm says. "What can we do?" Nurses have been known to keep the medicine and sell it on the black market, he explains. "We have a bad habit here," the doctor says sadly.

Recent Stories