| IN THE WHIRLWIND OF IRAQ'S VIOLENT HISTORY, THE ONCE-POWERFUL ACADEMIC CLASS HAS DISINTEGRATED |
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Iraqi workers build a private school in Baghdad on April 24, 2012. The Ministry of Education announced in February that Iraq needs 6,000 new schools to absorb the current number of students, but according to the allocated budget building this many public schools will take 20 years. [AFP]
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Istanbul, Turkey - Professor Saad Jawad, a 32 year old veteran political scientist from the University of Baghdad who now lives in London, greets five of his former students with a warm smile. These men are now professors at universities across Iraq, and have not seen their former advisor since he was forced to flee Iraq in 2008. They are members of Iraq's embattled intelligentsia, which has endured nearly 30 years of perpetual violence. "We are carved by suffering and gouged by resignation," one says.
Each professor represents a different side of the intelligentsia's new identity. Yusuf, from the North, wears American shirts over Jordanian pants because "he can't buy much clothing in Iraq with his teaching salary." Abdullah, from the South, smokes three packs of cigarettes in a day. Ahmad, a researcher from the capital, proudly describes his frequent commentary on national television news stations. His colleague, Ibrahim, perpetually masks worry about his friend with a half-hearted smile. Hakim, from Iraqi Kurdistan, sighs uneasily - he is relatively safe in Iraq's northern semiautonomous Kurdish region.
The men exchange stories under the ornamental lights strung across the street. "Doctor Saad was a drillmaster, but always cared about his students," Abdullah recalls. "Today many professors don't expect their students to succeed. Some are too afraid to stand up for them."
These professors tell the story of an underreported tragedy - the destruction of Iraq's once proud academia through 30 years of war, sanctions, and occupation. The intelligentsia has been sucked into the whirlwind of Iraq's recent experience. It is still in chaos.
Once the envy of the Middle East, Iraq's academies today are hollow memories of a proud past. Conflict, assassinations, diaspora, and suppressed freedom of speech have handicapped centres of higher education, gutted research facilities, and silenced the academics staffing them.
The toxic combination of destroyed infrastructure and lost faculty has left Iraq reeling, without the means to train those needed for national reconstruction.
Infrastructure in Ruins
Electricity cuts blight not only the capital, but every Iraqi city outside Kurdistan. A typical urban family receives about 10-12 hours of power each day, according to the Brookings Institution's Iraq Index.
At the universities, electrical infrastructure is especially rare. Before sanctions in 1990, Saddam Hussein provided astonishing levels of funding for his country's institutions, attempting to prove that Iraq was an international player. Students from every discipline received full scholarships for study abroad. Medical and computer facilities in the capital's best universities were amongst the most advanced in the region, boasting the latest equipment in laboratories and hospitals. Many doctors, scientists, and technicians trained in Europe, and had the tools in Iraq to put their foreign degrees to good use. University education was free.
When sanctions were imposed in 1990, the effects were devastating. New equipment was banned; foreign journals and magazines were blocked; domestic publications struggled without a steady supply of paper on which to print; when desks or chairs broke, they were not replaced. Some classes were held on the floor. Even sheet music was forbidden.
Computer Science students in 1999, for example, were using machines built in 1988, and most of their classes were theoretical. Some professors who left Iraq privately smuggled new machines back home.
Yet the basic infrastructure remained, and many academics hoped that once sanctions ended their departments, rebuilt, would again be the envy of the Middle East. One of the few Iraqi hopes in the weeks leading up to the 2003 invasion was that US leaders would revitalize the country.
After American tanks rolled through Baghdad in April 2003, looters stripped copper wiring from the walls at universities across the city. Still fighting 36,000 Republican Guards, American marines looked on dejectedly, often with disgust, but rarely acted. Computers, projectors, heart-rate monitors, blood pressure pumps, refrigerators, and entire air conditioning units were stolen. Libraries burned.
Andrew Erdmann was the new American Senior Advisor to the Iraqi Ministry of Higher Education - a position created, he says, "by chance, not by plan." He remembers feeling the impossible weight of his task - restoring "essential services" to institutions across the country - during these early days.
