Iraqi Universities Struggle to Rebuild the "House of Knowledge"

Enthusiasm for rebuilding higher education runs high in Iraq. Reconstruction efforts, however, have failed to keep pace with this eagerness.

By Mary Gray

The sign, Hawler International Airport, greeted me and my fellow passengers as our six-seater plane landed in July 2003 on a strip of concrete in the middle of an Iraqi field. Fortunately, the approach to this improvised airfield was direct, not like the spiraling in and out of Baghdad and Basra required to avoid possible hostile fire. Waiting were two vehicles, one from Research Triangle Institute, a contractor for the U.S. Agency for International Development, and the other from the Coalition Provisional Authority, the military entity that governed Iraq until the handover of author-ity to a transitional Iraqi government in June 2004. Arrivals at the airport encountered little: no buildings, no immigration, no customs, no X-ray machines—nothing but unrelenting 120-plus-degree heat.

Welcome to Iraq, or rather welcome to the former "Kurdish Safe Zone," the three Kurdish provinces administered by the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) and protected from Saddam Hussein after the first Gulf War by the "no-fly" rule. Unfortunately, "no fly" meant no easy way of getting people or supplies in or out for the past twelve years. The irregular and dangerous flights from Baghdad and Amman, such as the one on which I arrived, raised hope among the local inhabitants that soon there would be regular commercial service.

My visit two years earlier to Hawler involved flying to Dyabikar, in the Kurdish southeast of Turkey, then riding three and a half hours to the Iraqi border, a more-or-less unofficial crossing. ¹ Following that was a harrowing four-hour-drive in convoy with Pesh Murga, Kurdish militia guards, through beautiful scenery on breath-stopping roads. Two years ago, the mood was generally optimistic in spite of the difficulties in securing supplies, the disgust with the misuse of the "oil-for-food" money (which should have conferred better services to Iraq as a whole, including the Kurdish region), and the apprehension caused by the sight, from the citadel in the center of Hawler, of Saddam's army across the "border" in Iraq "proper."

The primary purpose of that 2001 visit was to help organize a census in the KRG-controlled region. Iraq had not carried out a reliable census for many years (and still hasn't). Thousands of villages destroyed in various onslaughts against the Kurds had been rebuilt, many refugees had returned from Iran and elsewhere, and Kurds forced out of cities by Saddam had moved to the safe zone in the years after the Gulf War. The regional government was anxious to have better information for planning in all sectors, including education, water use, and agriculture.

My first encounter with Iraqi universities was in the KRG region; I needed to assess their ability to provide the infrastructure needed for a census. Because of my professional background and my work with the human rights organization Amnesty International, I was later asked for advice in other sectors, such as information technology, teacher training, and human rights training for judges, police, and prison staff.

I found the Kurdish universities short on books, information technology, and other resources, but long on enthusiasm and the ability to cope. Buildings ranged from new to old and from utilitarian to decidedly makeshift, but they were generally well maintained considering the circumstances. The major complaint from faculty and administrators was their inability to communicate adequately with academics in Europe and the United States. Getting visas is hard enough when you have a country of your own (and thus a passport). Because the KRG region is not a nation, it was almost impossible for scholars there to travel internationally. At each of the three universities (Dohuk, Sulemaniya, and Salahaddin) in the KRG zone, there was limited Internet access through a slow and unreliable satellite connection, typically with only a few terminals in some central campus location (like the president's office).

Feeling of Optimism

What had changed two years later when I returned? I was there because, like many other Americans, I had not supported the war in Iraq and felt obliged to do something to help the Iraqis in some small way, using what expertise I could contribute. I joined a project focused on secondary education in all of occupied Iraq.

The Kurdish north saw little of the war, although its fighters participated in the coalition military efforts against Saddam. People in the KRG region—in July 2003—supported the war. They were enormously pleased to see the end of Saddam's regime, and I found them extremely hospitable, especially those with whom I was renewing my acquaintance. Opportunities for communication and exchange were eagerly envisioned; everywhere, there was hope for access to Iraq's riches for improvements in education and other sectors. The presence of coalition forces was not too invasive, and the U.S. civil affairs officers were eagerly helping with everything from improving information technology to healing ailing village goats.

On the other hand, people were wary about once again being under the central control of Baghdad, understandable in light of past history. Kurdish had been introduced as the language of instruction in the KRG area (with provisions for instruction in native languages for the Turkamen and Assyrian minorities). How this issue would be handled under a central ministry of education was not clear. Actually, in its zeal to provide for minority rights, the KRG may have gone too far. In community interviews I conducted for the project that brought me to Iraq for a second time, I learned that Assyrian parents and teachers really did not want all instruction in the primary and secondary system in their areas to be in Syriac. They preferred that the language of instruction in their schools revert to Arabic—a more useful means of communication outside of their homeland—with Assyrian language and culture as a separate area of study for their children.

Although progress had been made in many fields over the two years between my trips—computers had been introduced, for example, albeit with limited Internet access—little had changed in the three universities of the North. Some Kurdish scientists and scholars, however, had returned from exile tohelp in institution building. There was no war damage to speak of, but there was a great need for local infrastructure and international communication and exchange.

Difficult Reconstruction

In the rest of Iraq things were not so rosy, although some places had fared better than others. In the ninth through the eleventh centuries, Baghdad attracted scholars from Asia, Europe, and North Africa, particularly to the great House of Knowledge (Bayt al-Hikmat), a center of learning that combined the functions of a library and an academy. There the scholars preserved and created knowledge while Europe suffered through the Dark Ages.

In the mid-twentieth century, Iraqi universities were the best in the region. But for the last two or three decades before the fall of Saddam, education, once a great glory of Iraq, was largely neglected. A series of wars, corruption, isolation, and the exile or death of those who dissented from the policies and actions of the regime devastated the human and financial resources that supported all levels of education.

Apart from a handful of favored institutions, universities were hit particularly hard. Buildings and facilities suffered from lack of maintenance, hardly any Western books or journals had been acquired for years, and pay for most faculty was extremely low. Equipment, especially information technology, was scarce. The ability of faculty to advance their careers or gain support for research and travel depended largely on theirloyalty to the regime or traditional alliances.

Many faculty members—and, to a lesser extent, students—reacted to the war with enthusiasm for the ouster of Saddam's regime, hoping that it would end the isolation, privation, and oppression they had endured. The facilities of many universities suffered war damage. The looting of books, equipment, and furniture was widespread; at some universities, nothing usable remained. Demonstrating remarkable resilience, however, most universities were functioning within weeks of April 9, 2003, the date the United States declared an "end" to the war. Enthusiasm was high; the single most often heard sentiment was the desire for communication with the rest of the world, particularly through faculty and student exchanges.

This enthusiasm was still there in July when I visited. Faculty saw problems with the supply of electricity and other postwar difficulties as annoying—and surprising, given the impressive logistics of the initial U.S. invasion—but temporary. They issued pleas for American academics to ship books and journals, without understanding the near impossibility of getting materials to Iraq quickly—if at all. It soon became clear that access to the Internet and online databases and journals would be far more useful and cost-effective in the long run, but that will be a long time in coming.

Unfortunately, things have subsequently gotten worse, not better. While I was in Iraq, the Coalition Provisional Authority's control of ministries and its interference with universities were already arousing concern. The rising influence of religious authorities was also becoming a problem. In a few places, women who did not cover their hair were turned away from campuses. More disturbing, the failure to restore order made it difficult for women to travel anywhere by themselves, or for anyone to travel much with any degree of safety. A year later, safety and secular-religious tension are the dominant concerns, and the extent of actual control by Iraqis of their country is questionable.

The Bush administration's aid plans for Iraq stressed the importance of getting women into school. It is true that illiteracy is higher among women than among men in the older generations of Iraqis, that some girls in isolated areas received little or no schooling under Saddam, and that tough economic times had adversely affected the ability of all girls to attend school, which was not free.

Before the invasion, however, more than half the university students and a substantial proportion of faculty were women. Fields like engineering had a better representation of women in Iraq than they do in most Western countries. Yet the Coalition Provisional Authority appointed few Iraqi women to positions in higher education (or elsewhere), and it remains to be seen what the postcoalition government will eventually look like. In university elections to fill administrative posts, women have not fared well. Even as early as July 2003, some of the women and men with whom I spoke expressed concern about the need to ensure the full participation of women in future Iraqi political, business, and educational sectors.

In interviews with me, university faculty members, secondary school teachers, and the staff of teacher training institutes said they wanted help to introduce new teaching methodology and to become more substantively up to date. As in most of the Middle East, both secondary- and university-level education in Iraq tends to rely heavily on an instructor-centered lecture method. Narrow, state-determined syllabi are closely followed, and students learn to reproduce what they hear or read nearly verbatim on the stateexaminations.

Creative thinking, innovative material, and student-centered learning have not been encouraged. Some staff members and trainees at the teacher training institutes said that they had heard of such methodology, but they lacked the knowledge of how to implement it. Unfortunately, some of the U.S. Defense Department advisers assigned to the ministries dealing with education have espoused "high-stakes" testing that would assess schools and students by their success on rigid state exams. Given that the indigenous point of view seems to favor less reliance on such exams, it will be interesting to see what happens in Iraqi education from a teaching point of view.

Limited Progress

Word from Iraqi colleagues in May 2004 was that progress on the repair and replacement of equipment has been disappointing. One report claims that only $8 million of the $500 million that the United States allocated to rebuilding Iraqi universities has been spent. The problem may arise partly from lack of understanding of the region among the Bush administration appointees placed in charge of higher education. If adequate resources accompany the handover of authority in Iraq, the situation may improve. Meanwhile, many faculty and students are working hard and producing good results with limited support.

What, then, can American academics do to help their Iraqi colleagues? Certainly, providing scholarships for students and exchange opportunities for faculty would be helpful. It remains to be seen, however, how difficult it will be for Iraqis to obtain the U.S. visas needed to take advantage of such opportunities—the difficulties those from other countries in the region have encountered are not encouraging.

It may be necessary to extend assistance for Iraqi students and faculty to update their substantive knowledge and their English-language skills. Although recent university graduates may, in theory, have studied English, many have little fluency in the spoken language. Unlike many other countries in the region, Iraq has not used English as the language of instruction in science and technology. Although it may sound chauvinistic to emphasize the study of English, much work in this area will inevitably need to be done to restore Iraqi education to its previous high standards.

What else? American academics have not been politically active enough in opposing the changes in visa and related requirements that the U.S. government introduced following the attacks of September 11, 2001. The resulting decline in the numbers of international students studying in the United States is not good for these students, for U.S. universities, or for the country generally. Legislators need to be challenged on this issue. Regardless of how the United States extracts itself from its currently untenable position in Iraq, American academics will probably be called on to advise funding agencies about rebuilding Iraq and to provide on-the-ground help in the education sector and other areas. We must ensure that our efforts focus on Iraqi priorities for improvement and not on those of the U.S. government.

Note

1. Hawler is known in the rest of the world as "Erbil," the transliteration of the Arabic name of the ancient city that was home to Salahaddin, the great Kurdish Muslim leader of the twelfth century, and one of several claimants to being the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world. Back to text.

Mary Gray is professor of mathematics and statistics at American University, Washington, D.C., and visiting professor at Kings College, London.

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