Kidnappings, murders push Iraq's universities to brink

[JoFerret]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20040917/wl_mideast_afp/iraq_unrest_universities&cid=1514&ncid=1480

BAGHDAD (AFP) - Iraqi universities, once among the most prestigious in the Arab world, are facing potential catastrophe, with rampant kidnappings and murders causing the post-Saddam Hussein intelligentsia to flee abroad en masse.

"Deans tell me their worries. I fear they will resign and that will lead us into a catastrophe," Higher Education Minister Taher Khalis al-Bakaa confessed to a news conference this week.

In the 2003-2004 academic year alone, Bakaa said 14 university staff members were murdered.

Iraq's university teachers' union handed AFP a list of 75 lecturers registered as killed or kidnapped over the same period.

<more>
The cradle of civilization becomes its graveyard

[JSJ]

1. first, we destroy iraq's history- now, we are destroying their teaching...

...of history.