Kurdish doctor in Belgium wants wounded Peshmerga treated in adopted homeland

By Salwa Nakhoul Carmichael

BRUSSELS, Belgium – Doctor Dior Ghafil, an Iraqi Kurd forced into exile under Saddam Hussein, wants to bring Peshmerga fighters who have been wounded in battles with the Islamic State (ISIS) group to be treated in his adopted homeland of Belgium.

Ghafil, 49, aims to model his plans on the care he and other doctors in Belgium provided scores of Libyan civilians who were wounded during the civil war that followed the overthrow of Colonel Moamer Kadhafi.

However, he first needs to obtain an agreement similar to the one that existed recently between the Libyan and Belgian governments to treat the wounded in all Belgium’s public and private hospitals.

 “This is what I want to do for the injured Peshmerga fighters. I want to create the same kind of agreement between Kurdistan and Belgium to be able to bring the injured Peshmerga and treat them here to and operate on them,” he said in an interview in Brussels with Rudaw.

Right now there is such an agreement between Germany and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG).

In a bid to make his plan a reality, Ghafil has contacted the administers of Parc Leopold clinic, where he now works, as well as the healthcare institution that was instrumental in arranging for Libyans to be treated in Belgium.

The orthopedic surgeon and trauma specialist treated them at Saint-Pierre University Hospital in Brussels, where he worked for 14 years.

Ghafil wants to help in other ways too, by traveling to Kurdistan to share his knowledge with doctors and medical students there.

 “I think I can bring them something,” said the doctor, a wiry, mild-mannered and modest man who speaks calmly.

Even though he is sure “these doctors are doing their best,” he said, most did not have the chance to leave Iraq to attend congresses and improve their techniques in medicine and surgery.

Ghafil said he has contacted the head of the KRG mission in Brussels, Delavar Ajgeiy, to help him find the partners he needs to organize medical treatment in Kurdistan.

He also wants to consult with patients there and return a few months later to operate on them.

Two years ago he managed to send medicine to Kurdistan through a British organization because he could not find any similar organization here in Belgium.

Ghafil’s exile started 34 years ago when he and his large family -- his father, mother, four of his six brothers and a sister -- first came to Poitiers, France to visit his two older brothers who were studying at the university there.

“Two weeks into our vacation my grandmother called us from Baghdad to tell us not to come back because the situation was very bad for Kurds in Baghdad,” he recalled.

She also warned that “it would be especially bad for us because Iraq was in a war with Iran,” and Saddam Hussein’s Baathist regime would put the family in prison until the older brothers returned from France to serve in the army.

Indeed, one month after the phone call, his grandmother, aunt and uncle were jailed for one month and then expelled to Iran, after the regime decided they were effectively Iranians because his great, great grandfather had been born in Iran.

This part of the family lived in Tehran for a few years before immigrating to Sweden.

In the meantime, his father decided to apply for the family to obtain political refugee status in France and a few months later it was granted. All their names were changed as a result of mistakes in the paperwork.

His real name is actually Diar Ghafil Darra, but Ghafil became his family name and his first name was changed from Diar to Dior. He joked that at least Dior is a famous brand known internationally.

 He added that even if he decides to change it on his passport he would not be able to do that on his medical diplomas. However, the rest of the family later corrected the mistake.

“So now there is nothing on paper that proves that we are related, since our names are different.”

Ghafil remembers the first months in Poitiers as difficult, because they survived on the money that his father had managed to send to France while running an export-import business in Iraq.

Life became easier when the French government helped them financially once they were granted political refugee status.

All the children were students at university or high school and their father could not land a job because he did not speak French.

“Education was very important for my dad. He used to say ‘continue your education no matter how much it costs and I will manage to help you,’“ he recalled. “He was so proud of us studying and getting an education,” he remembered wistfully, as his father died only several months ago.

Ghafil’s own path to success began inauspiciously when he entered a French public high school in Poitiers.

”I was 16 and they put me in a school with French kids and I did not speak one word of French. I used to sit at the back of the class -- I was like an alien,” he said. But it turned out to be the best way to learn a new language.

Upon graduation from high school, he entered the University of Poitiers as a biology student but stayed for only a year and ended up entering the medical school at ULB in Brussels. He made his fateful decision because ULB was a better university and he no longer had any family attachment to France because most of the family immigrated to Norway and his remaining brother married an American woman and moved to the United States.

He did not follow them because he did not want to learn a new language.

After seven years at ULB where he got by financially on odd jobs and help from his father, he graduated in 1995 as a general practitioner.

He then began six years of specialization in orthopedic surgery while finally earning a salary and marrying a Belgian woman he met during his first year at ULB and who has become a gynecologist.

“We had a civil marriage and then we had to go to Norway for a Kurdish marriage. My mother would not accept otherwise,” he added with a smile.

“I am very grateful first to France because they allowed us to stay in the country,” he said. “I will never forget that. And second to Belgium for allowing me to do my medical studies here. I am proud to be Kurdish and Belgian.”

He said he would not hesitate to return to a future independent Kurdish state if he were single, but it would be much more difficult now that he has a wife and children who all would have trouble adapting to a complete Kurdish way of life.

“I think it is very important now more than ever for the Kurds to break away from the rest of the country and have their own independent country,” he said.

Although it was a good thing for the Saddam dictatorship to be overthrown, he explained, it was replaced by another sectarian regime that is only spreading chaos.

He is glad his father and the rest of the family always stood their ground with Saddam’s regime while they were in Baghdad, despite the risks.

“We are very proud of the fact that we resisted till our last days in Iraq to becoming members of the Baath Party,” he said.