Fiske- War on Learning -professors, deans, tutors targets in Iraq

[Rose Siding]

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.
...
Both arts and science faculty members have been victims. Dr Abdul-Latif al-Maya was working in urban planning in the Baghdad University geography department when he was killed at his home. Professor Wajih Mahjoub was murdered in the College of Physical Education in April last year as US troops were entering Baghdad.

"Dr Arawi told me only two days before he was murdered that he had nothing to fear," a friend of his recalled yesterday. "He said, 'I never hurt anyone. Everyone respects me.' On the day of his death, the killers came claiming to be patients. They shot him in his surgery."

In the early weeks of his occupation proconsulship, Paul Bremer fired all senior academics who were members of the Baath party. "They went home and tried to leave the country," another Baghdad arts professor complained. "But those who stayed are now mostly too frightened to return because they have been named - and they fear for their lives."

Yesterday morning, I visited one arts department at the university to find it entirely empty of staff. Each teacher's room was closed with a large padlock.

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15&ItemID=5882

[madrchsod]

1. to destroy a people you

destroy their culture ,their social institutions,their infrastructure and their legal systems..the usa and england have tried to do all these things in the name of "freedom" which is being proved everyday has failed..the destruction of the museums was the first clue that the anglo powers wanted to destroy iraq so they could rebuild it in their image... history has shown us that great armies have drowned in the sea of sand that is iraq and the latest great anglo armies of the west are meeting the same fate.

[punpirate]

2. I remember a Fisk article from...

... the time of the end of the war, in which he mused about a connection between the looting of cultural museums and the appearance and disappearance of buses in those areas, suggesting that someone was organizing that destruction.

In the case of assassinations of college instructors, in most countries, the most dependable source of political dissidence are the universities, and both the CIA and MI6 would be aware of that. Complicating any assessment of who might be responsible is that the Wahabbi probably aren't very pleased about quasi-secular higher education, either.

Clearly, though, it hasn't been a priority of the US or the provisional government to protect academics, and one has to wonder why.