-Caveat Lector-
- Original Message -
From: Blagovesta
Doncheva
Sent: Monday, July 19, 2004 5:44 AM
Subject: An Article
Enclosed I am mailing to you an article by R. Fisk (who keeps wondering all
through the article who are the killers - and even suggests that they are maybe
the Resistance Fighters! He is either half an idiot or is pretending at being
such!)There are talks in Bulgaria that more than 3000 Iraqi scientists are
deliberately killed after the fall of Baghdad.Besides the article of that
h-id R.F., I havent come across any articles or other materials on the
purposefully killing away of the Iraqi scientists, University lecturers and
professors, doctors - of the Iraqi intelligentsia!Please, do help me to get
articles on that subject - THANK YOU in advance!
Best regardsBlagovesta DonchevaThe Balkans19.07.2004
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15ItemID=5882
The War on Learning by Robert Fisk July 14,
2004 UK Independent
The Mongols stained the Tigris black with the ink of the Iraqi books
they destroyed. Today's Mongols prefer to destroy the Iraqi teachers of
books.Since the Anglo-American invasion, they have murdered at least 13
academics at the University of Baghdad alone and countless others across Iraq.
History professors, deans of college and Arabic tutors have all fallen victim to
the war on learning. Only six weeks ago - virtually unreported, of course - the
female dean of the college of law in Mosul was beheaded in her bed, along with
her husband.Just who the modern-day Mongols are remains a painful mystery of
our story. Disgruntled students they are not. Baathist-hunters some of them
might be - all heads of academic departments were forced to join Saddam's party
- but none of the murdered Baghdad university staff were believed to be anything
more than card-carriers.Even the former president of the university, Dr
Mohamed Arawi - a surgeon shot at his clinic a y! ear ago - was regarded as a
liberal, humane man. But professors now watch the doors of their lecture
theatres as carefully as they do their students. And who can blame them? After
all, Dr Sabri al-Bayatiy of the department of geography was shot dead only a
month ago, just outside the arts department, in front of many of his
students."He was gunned down just over there by the wall," one of his
colleagues told me yesterday. "Many students saw his killer but they could do
nothing. Two bullets. That's all."Talk to the academics at Baghdad
University, and the names roll out. Dr Nafa Aboud of the department of Arabic
was murdered just two months ago. Dr Hissam Sharif of the department of history
was sitting at the door of his Baghdad home when the killers came, shooting him
and two friends.Dr Falah al-Dulaimi, assistant dean of college at
Mustansariya University in Baghdad, was shot in his college office last
year."What can we do?" Saad Hassani of Baghdad University's Engli! sh
department asked me. "Just a month ago, my son Ali - a student in our biology
department - was kidnapped. He walked outside the campus on a hot day, took a
taxi and the driver offered him a drink of cold water. Then he lost
consciousness. When he came to he was in a dark room, blindfolded, and they beat
him and tortured him with electricity."Then he heard two groups of men
arguing, one lot saying, 'You've got the wrong one'. They threw him out of a car
beside a road. But at least they didn't kill him. He will not leave his home
now. He flunked his exams. What am I to think?"Other university staff
suspect that there is a campaign to strip Iraq of its academics, to complete the
destruction of Iraq's cultural identity which began with the destruction of the
Baghdad Koranic library, the national archives and the looting of the
archaeological museum when the American army entered Baghdad."Maybe the
Kuwaitis want to take their revenge for what we did to them in 1991,"! a
lecturer said. "Maybe the Israelis are trying to make sure that we can never
have an intellectual infrastructure here."Yes, you suggest it could be the
'resistance'. But what is the 'resistance'? We don't know who it is. Is it
nationalist? Why should they want to get rid of us? Is it religious? The arts
department has become a pulpit for Islamism. But these people are part of the
university."In the southern city of Nasiriyah, many departmental heads have
received threatening letters, ordering them to leave Iraq. At least one
professor in the university has been murdered. The dean of the college of law in
Mosul, murdered last month, was the most gruesome killing. "She was in bed with
her husband when they came for her," a Baghdad colleague told me yesterday.
"They coolly shot both of them in their bed. Then they cut off both their heads
with knives."Both arts and science faculty members have been victims. Dr
Abdul-Latif al-Maya was working in urban planning in th! e Baghdad University
geography department
