Security at Iraqi hospitals is provided by the Facilities Protection Service (FPS), the security wing of the Ministry of Interior. Officially a 4,000 strong force created to free up coalition forces from static building protection duties after the looting in Baghdad, by 2006 it had reportedly bloated to over 145,000 men. Furthermore, around the same time, the FPS was connected to a number of sectarian death squads operating in Iraq. To rein in the FPS, the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior (MOI) has started incorporating all FPS units under a unified command.
Alive in Baghdad, a weekly video blog employing Iraqi journalists to produce videos on daily life in Iraq, has a piece on the FPS guards at the Ibn Al-Nafees Hospital in Bagdad’s Karrada neighborhood. Despite their negative portrayal in the media, the guards are shown to be dedicated civil servants. They protect hospital personnel, facilities, and ambulances, and sometimes even assist with medical treatments. But wait, how can the FPS be both a tool of militant death squads and the guardian angel of the Iraqi healthcare system?
The answer lies in the convoluted nature of the FPS. While FPS personnel are (atleast on paper) part of the Ministry of the Interior, most of the guards work for and are paid by the ministry whose facilities they protect. Thus, when Lt. Colonel Mu’ayad Abd Al-Hasssan Taqfiq, the FPS officer in charge of hospital security, speaks about working “in cooperation with the Ministry of Interior and the Army”, he shows that his hospital guards, while FPS, do not consider themselves part of the MOI but rather part of the Iraqi Ministry of Health.