British and American scientists and academics assisted the birth of Iraq’s science community in the last century; can they help it now to be born again?
Two international initiatives to help Iraqi scientists and academics to reconstruct their community began two years ago. They were independent of each other. The first initiative was supported by American academic institutions (see main text), the second by British counterparts. International Symposium on Higher Education in Iraq is an initiative by a group of expatriate Iraqi academics working in UK. “We are following different avenues”, says Dr. Gahzi Derwish, visiting professor of Surrey University and member of the Symposium Organising Committee. “Our aim is to explore the needs of universities in Iraq, help to set their priorities and determine how best British Universities and other organizations can help in restoring the once flourishing links between Iraq’s academic institutions and their correlatives in the west”.
“Higher education has been the incubator of R&D in Iraq”, says Dr. Derwish, a veteran scientist who obtained his PhD in chemistry from the University of London and held prestigious scientific posts in Iraq for four decades. The public sector comprises 20 universities and 47 technical institutions with about 350,000 students and 18,000 academic staff. There are also 10 private sector higher education colleges with some 15,000 students.
The Symposium, hosted last month by the University of Westminster in London, was attended by 170 academics, 20 of them presidents, assistant presidents and deans of Iraqi universities. Abbas Al-Hussainy, Secretary General of the Symposium and senior lecturer at Westminster University, said that they discussed with their British colleagues curriculum modernization, ways to establish higher education policies and strategies that can effectively deal with the challenges of the reconstruction period. Parallel to the political issues being debated in Iraq; special workshops in the Symposium were devoted to centralisation vs. de-centralisation, role and regulation of private universities and radical rethinking of scientific research in line with national needs.

Beyond discussing what needs to be done, some practical measures have already been taken since the first Symposium held in January 2004. Dr. Al-Hussainy said that several training workshops, research co-operations, and academic/scientific visits for Iraqis were organised by a number of British universities (Birmingham, Nottingham, John Moor, Bangor, Westminster, Surrey, Cardiff, Greenwich). The Association of Iraqi Academics in UK and a number of British universities have arranged donation of books and scientific journals to Iraqi universities. The Association of British Publishers invited Iraqi university librarians to attend the British Book Fair and to establish contacts with UK publishers. British and European universities offered scholarships for MSc and PhD degrees to six Iraqi Universities. Furthermore, the British Council contributed six-month training courses for seven academics under the Chevening Technology Enterprise Scholarship Programme.
Dr. Derwish points out that few scholarships and training courses will not be sufficient to alleviate the tragic state engulfing Iraq’s science community. A recent Report from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Baghdad stated “Iraq’s university laboratories suffered heavy damage during the US invasion two years ago and are desperately short of essential equipment and chemicals needed to teach medicine, dentistry, pharmacy and several other science subjects. As a result, 15 students or more have to share a single set of equipment during practical experiments, three times more than the internationally recommended maximum of five”. University teachers grumble that thousands of graduates are being turned out every year short on practical knowledge.
Iraqi scientists and academics are suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune as they face the constant danger of assassination and kidnapping. According to Sami Mudhaffar, minister of Higher Education and Science Research, 54 Iraqi scientists and academics have been assassinated. In an interview to London based Arabic newspaper Ashahrq Alawsat, Dr. Mudhaffar expressed his regret for accepting ministerial responsibility “only one of 14 reconstruction projects ready for implementation has been carried out”. The reason, he said is the “halt of ministry expenditure”. He added, “All the talk about international donations is an empty promise. Many of the 200 contracts and agreements that were signed didn’t benefit the country. On the contrary they added more debts to an already heavily debited nation”.

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