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Schools out as Baghdad bloodshed kills education http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=inDepthNews&storyid=2006-12-07T134447Z_01_MAC737809_RTRUKOT_0_TEXT0.xml&WTmodLoc=NewsArt-L1-RelatedNews-1
Thu Dec 7, 2006
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Ahmed waits outside his school's gates on a chilly midweek morning, holding his textbooks by his side.
But as the majority of pupils and teachers fail to arrive, the 18-year-old, who is in his final year at high school, has to put off learning for yet another day.
"It's canceled again today," he said, visibly frustrated. "Only 15 out of 200 students in my year turned up."
Three years ago, after the fall of Saddam Hussein, teachers and students talked excitedly about excising the compulsory pages on the dictator from their textbooks and freeing academia from interference from the ruling Baath party.
Now, sectarian venom has struck deep at the heart of Iraq's education system as militants from both Sunni and Shi'ite groups attack schools, universities and personnel.
The prevailing anarchy has also poisoned society, bringing casual violence into classrooms in a way not seen before.
Mohammed, a teenager at school in central Baghdad's Karrada district, told this week how he leapt a wall to escape as militiamen dragged his headmaster, pleading for his life, through the school yard in revenge for an alleged insult.
Abu Abdullah, once a teacher at Baghdad's Al Quds secondary school, says he quit after a student he caught trying to cheat in an exam brought a gang into school to attack him.
"When we stopped him from cheating, he left the school and returned with 15 of his knife-wielding friends. They slashed my colleague's face with a long knife and beat me up," he said.
Abu Abdullah said militants also killed Arabic teacher Hadi Farhan, one of his outspoken Shi'ite colleagues, two weeks ago.
"We warned him to stop talking politics. His killing affected the school, only 14 out of 42 teachers still work there. The Shi'ites have transferred to schools in their area and many others just left," he said.
One 16-year-old, who asked not to be named, said teachers at her school regularly order students into the corridors as mortars crash down nearby and that some were now urging their more eager pupils to stay away from classes. "Very few students are coming," she said. "One of our teachers even told us to agree between ourselves not to turn up so the teachers can all stay at home during this hard time."
STAYING HOME
Soad, a Baghdad housewife, keeps her 6- and 8-year-old at home all the time, terrified of a repeat of a recent day when she arrived at the end of classes to find them both cowering in a corner with a handful of other children -- the teachers and other pupils had fled hours earlier when a rumor spread that a militant group was about to attack.
"I can't bear not to have them with me the whole time now," she said -- a sentiment shared by thousands of other parents.
An official at the Education Ministry said the situation was terrible. "The so-called mujahideen are trying to terrify and terrorize the people. This is a very great disaster. We are trying to provide protection to these schools," he said.
But in the end, said the official who was too afraid to give his name, it was up to parents and neighbors to defend their schools: "If you don't protect yourself, who will protect you?"
The situation in the capital's colleges and universities is no better -- tit-for-tat sectarian attacks on professors have left many dead and hundreds more are fleeing the country in a "brain drain" which makes many fear for Iraq's future.
This week Sunni insurgent group Ansar al-Sunna distributed leaflets in Sunni areas of Baghdad ordering minority Sunnis to stay away for the rest of the academic year. It said the group was "protecting" Sunni academics from Shi'ite assassins.
Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki assured Iraqis this week that security at universities would be provided and warned that those who did not attend could risk losing their place.
But the two main universities in the capital and many schools in Sunni areas remained virtually empty.
Disrupted education is not confined to the capital. In the insurgent stronghold of Baquba, a religiously-mixed city, Sunni militants forced the closure of all schools.
In Sunni Samarra, radical Islamic militants told a headmistress of a girls school to stop her students wearing tight jeans and make-up. When she refused gunmen walked into her office during school hours and shot her dead. The Education Ministry is quite simply at a loss.
"It's clear that in Iraq there are attacks from religious extremists, Baathists, Saddamists, gangs, mafia and intelligence agents from other countries," the ministry official told Reuters.
"What can I do?"
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