Threatening Leaflets distributed in Baghdad

Civil war in Iraq has reached its peak. Everyday a new aspect of life dies. People are killed continuously in massacres that harvest more than 500 lives in one week.

Out of this civil war, education has its share. Schools are barely functioning to educate the new generations of Iraq.

After the U.S.-led occupation to Iraq, education deteriorated form its steady situation where students and professors were able to exchange knowledge despite the oppression of the former regime and the U.S.-U.N. sanctions against the Iraqi people.

Last November, Gunmen in military-style uniforms abducted scores of staff and visitors from a Higher Education Ministry institution in Baghdad. The attackers stormed the ministry's research department, locked women in a room and took the men away. As a reaction to this, the Higher education minister ordered all universities to be closed fearing a new wave of abductions reach the university campuses.

The minister’s fears were right. However, the new fighting-education campaign took another style. The militant’s aim seems to be not to kill professors rather than kill education itself. They started new techniques in destroying the long-term good education in the country.

Last week, a friend of mine told me that the former chair of the English Department in my university in Baghdad fled to northern Iraq. She told me he became miserable after armed men kidnapped his son, beheaded him and sent his head in a box.

Today, my sister called me from Baghdad. She said most of the students are either unable to go to the universities or unwilling to due to the kidnappings and bombings. In the latest incident, she said, armed men distributed leaflets in the University of Technology, the major engineering university in allover Iraq, threatening students and professors to be killed if they come to school. She added that the whole university has been shut down since last week.

In today’s edition, Azzaman newspaper reported that an “unknown group distributed leaflets to university students in Adhamiya and Yarmouk neighborhoods banning them from going to schools.” The paper added that the same group “excluded the elementary and high school students” from this campaign and “promised not to hurt them.”

Residents of Adhamiya told the paper that yesterday’s leaflets caused a huge panic among the residents and the students who stopped going to their schools after these threats.

A university professor who spoke to Azzaman on condition of anonymity said he was shocked when he saw one of the leaflets at the footstep of his house. He said fear haunted him and made him decide not to go to school fearing these groups’ threats.

In Abu Ghraib, an area in south western Baghdad, another unknown group distributed same leaflets threatening students from going to the Agriculture college of Baghdad university which is located in that restive part of the city.

People in Azzafaraniya, an eastern Baghdad neighborhood, said that armed groups threatened students of the Technical Institute to be killed if they come to school.

The Higher education ministry sources did not comment on most of these incidents, Azzaman said. The source didn’t say much but told the paper that the “government promised to increase the security measures in the universities and institutes.”

UPDATE:

Lady Bird of "Roads to Iraq" posted two of the leaflets mentioned above. However, there is a slight difference from the ones which Azzaman newspaper mentioned. They might be other leaflets.

"To the youths of the future, your lives are part of the live of the nation. So save it by not going to the universities and institutes of Baghdad in order not to be an easy target for the death squads."

"From these universities, the scholars and holy warriors graduated and at their gates, they are being killed.

To protect the lives of our dear professors and students from the assassinations that Maliki’s rejectionist [Shiite] government and its death squads are carrying out, it has been decided to stop schools for this academic calendar in all the Universities and institutes in Baghdad.

It is completely prohibited going to school after this announcement."

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