What About The Schools?

One thing we've been hearing for three or so years in Iraq is that the media is ignoring the good news, like all those schools we've rebuilt and repainted. You don't hear that critique much anymore, now that the country is enmeshed in violence. And here's a report about Iraqi schools that shows that, shockingly, paint does not fix all problems:

Iraq's school and university system is in danger of collapse in large areas of the country as pupils and teachers take flight in the face of threats of violence.

Professors and parents have told the Guardian they no longer feel safe to attend their educational institutions. In some schools and colleges, up to half the staff have fled abroad, resigned or applied to go on prolonged vacation, and class sizes have also dropped by up to half in the areas that are the worst affected.

Professionals in higher education, particularly those teaching the sciences and in health, have been targeted for assassination. Universities from Basra in the south to Kirkuk and Mosul in the north have been infiltrated by militia organisations, while the same militias from Islamic organisations regularly intimidate female students at the school and university gates for failing to wear the hijab.

Women teachers have been ordered by their ministry to adopt Islamic codes of clothing and behaviour.

If you control thought, you control the country. Insurgencies throughout history know this. The fact that the militias are entering the schools and forcing Islamic codes of dress and behavior on the students should be extremely troubling to everyone. In such an environment, the school system becomes no different than the madrassahs which preach hatred for the West throughout the Islamic world. All of this making Iraq FAR MORE DANGEROUS that it ever could have been under Saddam.

"The militias from all sides are in the universities. Classes are not happening because of the chaos, and colleagues are fleeing if they can," said Professor Saad Jawad, a lecturer in political science at Baghdad University.

"The situation is becoming completely unbearable. I decided to stay where many other professors have left. But I think it will reach the point where I will have to decide.

"A large number have simply left the country, while others have applied to go on prolonged sick leave. We are using MA and PhD students to fill in the gaps."

The flight of the educated classes in Iraq is also troubling, as a society depopulated of its intellectual talent will have little chance of mounting the rhetorical support necessary to battle the demagoguery of fundamentalists and those who foment sectarian violence. What you have here is a powderkeg. And this is happening not just in one area, but all over the country.

If you have a society where the kids cannot go to school out of fear of kidnapping, what you have is a failed state. Iraq is pretty much in an impossible spot. And the White House, and especially the rubber stamp Congress that supported them, cannot be trusted to make the impossible possible. We need new leadership.