Lingering effects of Baghdad blasts on Iraqis

"Everything was blown to pieces," Saad Mehdi, another security officer, who was inside the building when it was bombed. "We come to work but we don't do any work."

Navigating bureaucracy can be a lengthy process in Iraq, where many government records are kept by hand and not computer. People often have to go from office to office to find the right person to sign off on their request and provide the all-important stamp required to validate a decision.

During a recent tour of the Foreign Ministry, Iraq's chief diplomat Hoshyar Zebari said 43 employees were killed and more than 500 of the ministry's 1,200 staff were injured. Pictures of the slain employees hang in the lobby. More than 20 employees of both the provincial administration and the Justice Ministry were killed, officials said.

"The emotional damage is huge," said Abdullah Jabar, a director of the Justice Ministry's Budget Department. "We can work in the destroyed building, no problem, but we can not bring back those who died here."

Sinan Hussein Abdullah, who works at the court in the Justice Ministry, was in his office when the blast brought the ceiling down on top of him and showered him with broken glass.

With a fractured arm strapped to his chest and bandages on his nose and forehead, he now works feverishly in the piles of rubble to minimize the backlog in cases, which are building up because the courtroom was destroyed.

"It's our duty to stand defiant against destruction," he said.

As of two weeks after the blast, only about 100 of the 1,000 Justice Ministry staffers were showing up to work, said ministry undersecretary Bosho Ibrahim about two weeks after the blasts.

One area where there will be no slowdown, ministry officials say, is the handover of prisoners from U.S. to Iraqi custody. The Americans are scheduled to transfer all the prisoners in its custody — currently about 9,000 — by year's end.

The Iraqis must decide whether to free them for lack of evidence or press charges. Ibrahim said the reviewing process is continuing despite the bombings. The U.S. government has promised to help the ministry in the wake of the bombing with supplies including office furniture, computers, four armored cars and 20 SUVs, he said.

Ibrahim said the people who bombed his building and others are trying to undermine the whole government.

"If they want to rule, they should run in the elections," he said.

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