Iraq's academics and medical professionals are being murdered and abducted in an unofficial war on the country's brain power, reports Ahmed Mukhtar from Baghdad Professor Salah Alawi of Al-Mustansiriya University has every reason to be concerned. According to Alawi, deputy dean of the college of sciences, Iraq has been caught up in a wave of killings targetting academics and medical professionals. Alawi's predecessor, Falah Hussein, who was killed in May 2003, was the first victim of this violence. "He was sitting right here in this chair," says Alawi. "To this day, we don't know why he was killed." Hussein's murder was followed by the assassination of Dr Mohamed Al-Rawi, president of Baghdad University, in July of last year. These two killings marked the beginnings of what appears to be a spate of organised murders aimed at stripping Iraq of some of its most valuable resources. "They want to kill every brain in this country and we might be next in line. The question is just when," said Alawi. Employees of Al-Haitham Hospital in Baghdad went on strike last week to protest against the killings. They were demonstrating against the abduction of hospital director Dr Faris Al-Bakri. According to witnesses, Dr Al-Bakri was kidnapped by several masked men who raided his private clinic. While Al-Bakri's family declined to give press interviews, his son Hamza expressed concern for his father's life. Iraqi doctors say that very few options are available to them. "We can either quit our jobs and stay at home, work under these circumstances and endanger our lives, or leave the country altogether," said Dr Mohamed Al-Baghdadi, an Iraqi surgeon. While it is hard to pin down a definite figure, coalition authorities estimate that up to five Baghdad intellectuals are killed each month. This does not include attempted killings of academics, which can range between five and 10 per month. The Iraqi police say that at least 1,000 people may have been killed in the past year, although the some doubt the figure is so high. But who is behind these killings? Some believe Baathist insurgents are responsible while others point towards disgruntled students or even the US forces themselves as perpetrators. "We don't know why this happens, but there is a deliberate effort to kill scientists," says Alawi. "As a teacher and as a scientist here, I think that they want to stop us from learning." Many of Iraq's top medical specialists were targetted in a recent wave of kidnappings. No definite figure exists as to the extent of the problem, but health officials estimate that as many as 100 surgeons, specialists and general practitioners have been abducted from their homes, clinics and public hospitals since the beginning of April. Some were beaten and tortured; others were released after ransom was paid. Several doctors who spoke to Al-Ahram Weekly said that many professionals who received death threats have left the country. "We are losing the brain power of our most brilliant doctors," said Dr Sami Salman, director of the Special Care Hospital at Baghdad's Medical City complex. "You just can't replace them overnight." Health officials say that Iraq's fragile healthcare system is the first casualty of this war that goes largely unreported. Hospitals already lack basic medical supplies, and while many university professors have been the victims of violence, it is the healthcare network that has suffered the most. Money, it seems, is not always the motivation behind these crimes. In many cases abductors have ordered the doctors and physicians to leave the country, some even setting a deadline for their departure. Iraqi officials fear that the abductions and threats are an organised attempt to cripple the country's healthcare network, likening such tactics to terrorist attacks on the country's oil pipelines or electricity plants. The targeting of Iraqi medical stuff has taken its toll on the medical studies departments of Iraqi universities. According to Dr Hassan Rubaie, deputy dean of Baghdad University's medical school, many doctors were planning to take leave for a year, thereby dramatically cutting the number of working teachers. In response to this, the number of students accepted to medical college has decreased. According to Zuheir Al-Maliki, a judge at the Iraqi Central Criminal Court, only three recent cases of kidnapping have been investigated. One such incident involved members of the Iraqi National Congress (INC) chaired by Ahmed Chalabi. The recent raid on INC offices in Baghdad was partly in response to one doctor's claim that three INC members, Sabah Nuri, Aras Habid and Amer Mohamed, had been involved in his kidnapping. There is yet another victim of this: free speech. On the campuses of Iraq's universities, the killings have created a climate of fear so pervasive that many professors flatly refuse to speak about them or admit that they are happening. "It is limiting our freedom of speech and that's why you find people from London and Paris, and the Gulf states speaking out more readily on Iraqi politics than people inside Iraq," says Dr Saad Jawad, a professor at Baghdad University's political science college. Several months ago, a colleague of Jawad received a death threat scrawled on a scrap of paper and pushed under the door of his garage. Such threats are common in Baghdad these days, but Jawad's friend did not wait to find out if it was genuine or not. He took the note to the minister of higher education and the head of the university, both of whom told him there was nothing they could do. Terrified, he fled the country, leaving a junior professor to take over his post. In late January, Abdul-Latif Al-Mayah, a middle-aged professor of political science at Al-Mustansiriya, was murdered. Dr Mayah had been interviewed the night before his death on the Arabic-language satellite television station Al-Jazeera. A human rights advocate and longtime pro-democracy activist, he spoke in favour of holding elections in Iraq by 30 June, the date set for transfer of sovereignty. Less than 24 hours later, he was gunned down on his way to the university.
