• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

Daily Says 17,000 Academics Left Iraq Since Saddam Fall

Posted on: Sunday, 26 February 2006, 18:00 CST

Text of unattributed report "From Sawt al-Iraq website: Why does the migration of Iraqi professionals continue?" carried by Iraqi Shi'i seminary Al-Hawzah al-Ilmiyah al-Natiqah al-Sharifah paper Al- Hawzah on 22 February

There are various motives behind the interest in the causes of the emigration of Iraqis professionals and its negative influences on economic and social development. By professionals, we mean not only those Iraqis who have university degrees, but also artists and journalists, whether they have academic degrees or not.

According to initial statistics by the Arab Work Organization on the strategy of work force development, dealing with the migration of Arab intellectuals to the United States and Canada, the emigration of Iraqi professionals from 1966 through 1969 reached 4,192 to the United States and 254 to Canada, with 975 of them becoming naturalized US citizens. The migration after this date doubled in an unprecedented way, including large numbers of physicians, university professors of law, computer sciences, management, statistics, and accounting, and engineers who worked in Iraqi establishments, and other specializations that constitute a national treasure. A recent study by Dr Abd-al-Wahab Hamid shows that more than 7,350 Iraqi scholars emigrated between 1991 and 1998, and joined scientific establishments in Europe and Canada. Sixty- seven per cent of them are university professors and 23 per cent work in research centres; 83 per cent of the total number studied in European and US universities, while the rest studied in Arab or East European universities; and 85 per cent of them are working in their specializations.

It should be noted that the migration of Iraqi professionals has increased due to the former dictatorial regime, which placed various restrictions and prohibitions on sources of knowledge, and neglected academic freedoms in order to apply its oppressive policy and establish its despotic philosophy in the channels of free thinking and forms of creativity, writing, and scientific research. In addition to this, the regime adopted the so-called "militarization of culture," which was based on fear and worship of the individual, because freedom of thinking, creativity, and lifting the limitations from sources of knowledge was the first enemy to the former dictatorial regime and the source of danger on its existence. Since human beings, especially professionals and academics, are disposed to freedom, searching for truth and knowledge, and getting rid of restrictions that oppress human thinking, so thousands of Iraqis departed in search of security and freedom, looking forward to practicing their human right of living in peace and stability. Add to this the cultural and economic elements, which in turn led to another migration of professionals to developed Western countries, especially the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, and Australia.

The basic question that we should concentrate on is this: why does the migration of Iraqi professionals continue despite the disappearance of the dictatorial regime? Here I concentrate on three elements which might deepen the discussion later, to clarify the conditions that the country is currently witnessing. First, it should be emphasized that Iraq is characterized by an abundance of all the elements necessary for a scientific boom, such as internally available qualified manpower, plus the required money and resources. The security disorder in the country and terrorism have turned the country into a field of darkness and stray wolves, and negated the need for academics, who bring headaches to the heads of the ignorant by tackling what these ignorant people do not understand. Knowledge is the toughest enemy for those who want to control people and brainwash them with myths and superstitions which God did not sanction (Your life costs us only one bullet, so shut your mouth). It doesn't take much imagination to envision the picture of the gloomy future of a country whose creative and intellectual potentials have been destroyed, or envision this terrorist ghoul thrusting its claws into the bodies of Iraqi intellectuals, who represent the capital of the new Iraq, causing their death or driving them to migrate. Targeting the Iraqi intellectuals and competent people is a premeditated and organized process and does not come within ordinary crimes. According to report, about 1,000 assassinations have taken place until now, and nobody can estimate for sure the number of professionals who were obliged to leave Iraq due to terrorism.

Therefore, the issue extends beyond the planning of ordinary people. Initial evidence indicates that those criminals are committed to a pre-conceived agenda to prevent the employment of these intellectuals in a country that is trying to rise from scratch. Those criminals also know well that spreading an atmosphere of fear created by assassinations and threats will silence the moderate voices that are needed at this stage to help Iraq move to the right track. At least, this is the view of the academic Sa'dun al-Dulaymi, professor of sociology, who returned from 17 years of exile to his country after the fall of Saddam Husayn's regime. Al- Dulaymi says: "Extremists have the most evil schemes to control Iraqi minds," believing that the threat of death that he received came after criticizing the takfiri [those individuals who declare other Muslims to be infidels] extremists on a certain satellite TV channel. This message is clear enough, for it indicates that Iraqi academics should choose their words carefully in televised speeches, and they should use their own methods to protect themselves from kidnapping.

As a matter of fact, no Iraqi city or university can keep itself away from such assassinations, and terrorism is keen to distribute its "justice" on everybody. The picture is more tragic than some imagine, for the state of panic has pervaded Iraqi academics due to organized crimes that obliged more than 17,000 academics to emigrate since the fall of Saddam's regime. What is worse, the Iraqi government announced that 80 per cent of the killings were committed for political motives. Crime certainly has other faces, for not all terrorist attacks against Iraqi academics have the flavour of political conspiracy. There are the acts of kidnapping for money, which deepened the atmosphere of terror in an unprecedented way.

The final picture of a future Iraq will be the killing of every hope to restore ordinary life to a people that are in dire need of clinging to a glimmer of hope to emerge from the darkness. The Iraqi academics who were treated as soldiers in a big camp and felt marginalized during the former regime, now feel themselves as prey and do not know when and where they will fall into the trap of stray wolves. One may be unable to remember a single occasion in history in any society when physicians were targets for killing and kidnapping. During the previous two years about 25 physicians were killed and many others kidnapped, while hundreds of people from different specializations preferred to leave the country in search of safe shelter away from terrorism. According to estimates by the Iraqi Medical Association, about 10 per cent of the 32,000 registered physicians in Baghdad were obliged to leave the country, and migration accelerated in recent months to include the most celebrated specialists.

The other factor is education, namely, the emphasis on creativity as a basis for scientific change. The great number of Iraqi university graduates, researchers, and doctorate holders is very strongly connected to the financial resources allocated to scientific research and the facilities provided for them to join institutions that give them opportunities for scientific research. If these conditions are lacking, these people will consider joining more developed institutions, in one way or another, but this time outside the country.

As for the Iraqi professionals abroad who decide to return to their country, they face dangerous problems related to security adaptation. The most prominent obstacle in most cases is perhaps the insufficiency of resources. The scholar-researcher needs a stimulating cultural environment to develop a new course for work and innovation. Dedication to study and research is the way in which society works to develop understanding of its problems. Despite some development in university research and education in previous years, the financial allocations for research and development indicate that the efforts exerted until now are not proportionate with the demand, or that the major available sources of information and analytic studies are still foreign.

The third element that we should dedicate ourselves to analyse fully is related to the technological policies in Iraq. Let me not forget to refer to an axiom which says that any attempt to develop the Iraqi society will fall within the formation of the country's development policy. Iraq's reconstruction process requires involving Iraqi scientific and academic potentials in the building process. The resort to the services of foreign companies and institutions in planning and implementing reconstruction projects paralyses the work of existing national institutions, and consequently encourages the migration of competent Iraqis, who constitute the work force in the fields of sciences and engineering. Add to this the fact that "isolating" the national institutions from undertaking this task will necessarily lead to "isolating" the competent Iraqis and limiting their role in the reconstruction process, and eventually gives predominance to depending on foreign engineering and consultancy companies.

In brief, the great damage done to the Iraqi society due to the continuous migration of intellectuals and the inability to attract them involves great dangers, most important of which is losing a historical opportunity to start a comprehensive and real development process in future Iraq. Anyone who perceives the danger has to keep on warning and looking attentively.

Source: BBC Monitoring Middle East

More News in this Category