"According to the Ministry of Higher Education, at least 280 academics have been killed since the US-led invasion in 2003 by insurgents and militias...The targeting of such academics is generating a mess in our country. The health and educational systems are depleted of good professionals. Nearly one third of those living in Iraq before 2003 have fled violence," said Dr. Mustafa Jaboury, a research investigator at the Ministry of Higher Education.For more on the refugee crisis, be sure to read EPIC's interview with Sean Garcia of Refugees International.
"Shi'ite militias and Sunni insurgents are killing intellectuals to ensure Iraq is poorly managed and poorly governed," Jaboury added...Experts have raised concerns saying that if professionals continue fleeing Iraq on a daily basis the country will be depleted of academics and the level of education in Iraq will drop drastically.
"By removing those groups [of people such as intellectuals], the insurgents are aiming to eliminate all support for a democratic society. And militias hope that by targeting academics Iraq will become theocratic like Iran," said Paul Colley, a London-based independent analyst.
EPIC Dispatches from Iraq and around the world on the crisis facing Iraqis and on the agencies and individuals making a difference.
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
The Refugee Crisis and Iraq's Academics
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs just put out a brief report on the exodus of academics from Iraq.
No comments:
Post a Comment
The Ground Truth Blog is a forum for those who care about the plight of innocent Iraqis. All opinions expressed in this blog are those of the EPIC community, and not necessarily those of the Education for Peace in Iraq Center (EPIC). We embrace the democratic spirit of civil discourse, but reserve the right to remove any content that we find to be unacceptable, including anything that: (1) abuses, harasses, or threatens a person or persons; (2) knowingly falsifies information or defames or misrepresents another person; (3) Violates any obligation of confidentiality; (4) Violates the privacy of any third party; (5) Contains editorial content that has been commissioned and paid for by a third party and/or contains paid advertising links and/or SPAM; (6) infringes upon any copyright, trademark, trade secret or patent of any third party (all quotes and excerpts must be properly attributed to the original author). For details on fair use, see the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Legal Guide for Bloggers).