When Violence Comes To Campus

By Bobby Ghosh/Baghdad

On May 3, when the members of Iraq's new government were sworn in, Masar Sarhan al-Rubaiyi, 24, a pharmacy undergraduate at the University of Baghdad, decided to throw a party. As a supporter of a Shi'ite political party, al-Rubaiyi was celebrating the ascent of the country's Shi'ite majority after decades of repression under Saddam Hussein. But the revelry turned sour after officials at the college of pharmacy asked al-Rubaiyi and his friends to break up the event, saying it violated a university policy banning sectarian gatherings on campus. The students refused the request, and al-Rubaiyi scuffled with the bodyguard of the dean of the pharmacy college, Mustafa al-Hiti, before heading home. He never made it. A few hours later, he was shot and killed by unknown assailants on a street near his house.

It's what happened next that has put the school on edge--and induced worries that al-Rubaiyi's death could spark a wider, bloodier conflagration. In the aftermath of the killing, mobs of Shi'ite students rioted at the college of pharmacy, blaming al-Hiti and his bodyguard--both of them Sunnis--for al-Rubaiyi's murder and vowing revenge. Al-Hiti and his bodyguard deny having anything to do with the murder. As the violence spread to a cluster of adjacent colleges, Sunni faculty members had to be evacuated by security guards, colleagues and students. When the rioters showed up, they trashed classrooms and teachers' offices. Then came the reprisals: the next day, a Shi'ite law student who was close to al-Rubaiyi was found dead, fueling suspicions of an organized attempt to silence prominent Shi'ite voices on campus. "The atmosphere is now very tense," says Meitham, a pharmacy student who, along with others, does not want his full name used. "There is a sense that anything can happen, at any time."

For millions of Iraqis, it's a familiar concern. The country has been facing its most deadly spasm of violence in a year: last month alone, attacks killed more than 600 Iraqis, many of them Shi'ites targeted by Sunni jihadis bent on sowing civil war. The country's universities have long served as the bulwark of Iraq's secular society, refuges from the sectarian strife that threatens to rip the country apart. But now violence has come to the campuses. A rocket attack on an engineering college in the heart of Baghdad two weeks ago killed two students and injured 17 others. Bombs have been found at several colleges, leading many universities to institute full-body searches at their gates. Radical religious groups have infiltrated many student bodies, intimidating students and teachers alike. Some prominent Iraqis say the surge in extremism on campus holds grave portents for Iraq. "Once this poison enters the campus and infects the minds of our young people," says Mohammad Jaffer al-Samarrai, a geography professor in Baghdad, "then all hope is lost for society."

The climate of fear has settled over Iraq's universities at a time when the country needs them most. Iraq's higher education system is slowly being rebuilt, with the aim of training the country's best and brightest to reconstruct a society shattered by tyranny, sanctions and war. But violence has jeopardized those hopes. Academics have become a favored target for terrorist groups aiming to destabilize Iraq and for kidnapping gangs looking for soft targets. A recent nationwide U.N. study says 48 academics have been assassinated. Taher al-Bakaa, who was Iraq's Minister for Higher Education under former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, puts the number at 66. Just last week a deputy dean at Baghdad's Mustansiriya University was killed along with three bodyguards, and a Basra University professor of agriculture was kidnapped and killed. Scores of teachers have been kidnapped for ransom, and many more have received death threats simply for doing their jobs. Many top professors have quit and fled the country. As a result, only 28% of those now teaching have a Ph.D., according to the U.N. study; several colleges have been forced to suspend postgraduate courses and reduce the number accepted for undergraduate study. "Who would want to teach here?" says al-Bakaa. "It takes a brave man, a patriot, to teach in this country."

The job has been made even more perilous by the venom directed at faculty members by students themselves. Across the country, Shi'ite students have demanded the ouster of Sunni teachers, especially those who were senior members of the Baath Party during Saddam's rule. Many professors protest that they were forced to join the party, but some students suspect they remain loyal to Saddam and favor like-minded pupils. "There are still professors here who openly praise the previous regime and encourage [Sunni] students to sing songs about Saddam," says Haider, a Shi'ite pharmacy student at the University of Baghdad. "Such people should be driven out of the universities." Attitudes like that don't make for happy classrooms. "Students openly disrespect some professors, shout at them and insult them," says University of Baghdad President Mosa Aziz al-Mosawe. "Many of my professors tell me their students are getting out of control."

The unruliness is being fueled by militant religious political groups, many of which oppose secular education and what they perceive as Western cultural influences. In March, extremist Shi'ite followers of the radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr beat up several hundred engineering students in the southern city of Basra. Their offense: attending a picnic at which both sexes were present. Female students have been harassed for "inappropriate" clothing; a majority now wear the hijab, or head scarf, to school--a sharp contrast to the prewar period when Islamic dress was rarely seen on campus. "We see it as our duty to advise female students to wear the hijab," says Abdel Kader Ibrahim, 23, an anthropology student at the University of Baghdad and leader of a student committee backed by the Association of Muslim Scholars, an influential Sunni clerical group. "Saddam suppressed the voice of religion on campus, and our job is to revive it."

The biggest danger is that in the process, the radicals will succeed in igniting simmering ethnic and religious tensions--and mirror the divisions already apparent outside the university walls. Sectarian groups were barred from running for student-union elections earlier this year, but many simply set up parallel "committees" that carry greater clout than the elected unions. At Mustansiriya University, there are two "committees" representing Shi'ites--radical cleric al-Sadr is particularly popular--and a third is backed by Sunni students. All three routinely celebrate religious events on campus, plaster walls with posters depicting their respective religious leaders and conduct campaigns urging students to adopt "Islamic" clothing and behavior. "It's a grave problem," says Sami Mudaffar, Iraq's Minister for Higher Education. "And it's going to need unusual solutions." He's proposing, for instance, to allow a limited number of religious ceremonies on campus--provided that they include all sects. But many teachers feel the universities should be strictly secular. Geology professor Ihsan al-Rawi, president of the Association of University Teachers, warns that "the religion that is being brought into the campus by these groups is the religion of hate."

Some students have had enough. At Basra University, there have been several huge demonstrations calling for the expulsion of religious and political groups from campus. In Baghdad, friends of Masar Sarhan al-Rubaiyi are worried that the sectarian riots sparked by his death will overshadow a more positive legacy: in April 2003, as looters ransacked government offices and universities across the city, al-Rubaiyi and a few friends grabbed some weapons and headed for his college, determined to save it from the pillagers. They arrived late but fought their way through the mobs and managed to save most of the library by piling the books onto a dump truck and taking them to a nearby mosque for safekeeping. "Masar turned into a hero that day," says Salam Waheed, a teaching assistant at the college. "There was no student anywhere in Baghdad who did not know his name." Iraq needs his classmates to remember it for the right reasons. -With reporting by Yousif M. Basil/Baghdad

With reporting by Yousif M. Basil/Baghdad