Professors in penury
Academics are being forced to flee certain death in Iraq - but face a very uncertain life in the UK
This morning, Baghdad University lecturer Dr A will have the chance to tell the all party parliamentary group on poverty about the desperate plight of Iraqi asylum-seekers. He has a terrible tale to tell: of escape from Iraq after death threats; of a wife and three teenage children now in hiding outside Baghdad because their names have been added to his on a death list, and whom Britain will not admit; and of six months in Britain, denied state benefits and not permitted to take paid work.His fare to Westminster from the countryside, where he is staying with an English academic colleague, will be paid by the Council for Assisting Refugee Academics (Cara), for Dr A has spent the small amount of money he managed to bring with him and is now destitute. He would starve on the streets without the hospitality of his academic colleague and handouts from Cara, though his high reputation in his field and his excellent English could win him useful work.
The first warning to Dr A (his name does not start with A) came early last year. His high academic profile had led to media interviews on his subject, and a colleague told him that his name was on an execution list held by one of the militias. In November last year he heard that, while he was abroad at an academic conference, a strange car parked outside his home and heavily armed young men were watching the house. He told his family not to worry, since he was not involved in politics or religion.
Leave or die
But in April this year came the dreaded telephone call. A series of insults was followed by a threat that many of his colleagues had heard before - and they had all been killed soon afterwards. "Leave the country or you'll die," the caller told him. "This time I took it seriously," he says.
In July, the family travelled to Amman in Jordan. He had been invited to an academic conference in London, so was able to get a visa. He hoped to regularise his position here quickly, so that his family could follow.
His wife and children waited in Amman as long as they could, but eventually their money and Jordanian visas ran out. They thought that, without him, they might be safe back at home in Baghdad. They were wrong. They watched the militias massacre their neighbours. Then came the warning: leave your home or be killed. They fled to relatives 200 miles away. They had to leave everything they owned, and have lost it all. "They are living like me, as refugees in their own country, from hand to mouth," he says. Dr A must be granted asylum before his family can come here.
He has no state benefits because he was in Britain for more than a week before he applied for asylum. He has made nine visits to the Home Office, at its request, travelling from the Home Counties during the rush hour using money he has not got, but each time he was told he cannot have any money, and his application for refugee status has not yet been processed.
How long will it take? "Anything from four months to a year," says Cara's director, John Akker, with the sad certainty of a man who has seen it all before. "If we are lucky, and they do not lose the file - which they often do - he may have a decision in late January or early February. Meanwhile, they have taken his passport, so he can't go anywhere else, and he can't open a bank account. We are helping him and we have to give him money in cash."
There is a theoretical alternative. Because of Dr A's reputation, he could apply for a high quality visa, granted to those with highly desired skills. But Akker says: "That application costs £400 and could take a long time."
About 500 academics from Baghdad and Basra universities have been murdered since the invasion of Iraq. Hundreds more have been kidnapped, and hundreds fled the country after getting one of the dreaded "leave or die" messages. Unesco believes that academics are targeted because they are key to reconstruction. An additional reason is that many of them were members of the Ba'ath party. "In Saddam's day, you had to be a member if you wanted to be a teacher," said Professor Issam al-Rawi, president of the Association of University Professors, last year. "Most of us were members only in name, not by conviction, but now it's come back to haunt us. Any day now I expect them to come for me." They did. Rawi was murdered a year ago.
Professor B managed to avoid joining the Ba'ath party, and has kept a very low profile since the war, making sure his name does not appear in the media. In London for an academic conference recently, he said: "I'm going back - I have not yet had the 'leave or die' message. My wife and son and students are there, and a man should go home if he can."
He gave a vivid account of life for a university teacher in Baghdad.
"The police will open places by shooting them up. It starts with your journey to work, past shooting matches between militias - and it's not just the militias you have to fear. Convoys of VIPs drive through Baghdad and shoot at cars. Many roads are blocked, either by police, or by militias, or by private companies. These companies rent all the houses in the road and have them blocked off by their own security guards, mostly foreigners. No one can do anything about them. Then you walk into your classroom past groups of very young men holding their weapons in their hands."
Worse than Saddam
Life is far worse than under Saddam, he says. "The Ba'athists might have imprisoned you for not attending the right religious ceremony; the militias will kill you for it. Before, we feared the regime itself. You couldn't speak about the president or his two sons, but everyone else was safe ground. Now you don't know, you could say a word out of place with someone and get killed. There are no longer any police to go to for protection, because they are divided between the militias."
Professor B has no doubt whose fault it is. "The British and Americans dissolved the army and police - even traffic wardens were banned from working. So the country was in chaos. They even created some of the militias, and most people believe there are foreign agents provocateurs. The militias go on killing and no one is ever arrested for it.
"You cannot keep track of all the academic colleagues who have been killed. The destruction of the Iraqi mind is the fault of many people, and your British government is one of them."
Which makes his colleague Dr A's plight in Britain the more unforgiveable. Britain helped to create the chaos from which Dr A has been forced to flee. Now it is putting obstacles in the way of Dr A living here and bringing his family out of the nightmare.
Cara believes the crisis facing Iraqi academics is so serious that, for the first time since Nazi persecution of the Jews in the 1930s, it is helping not just those in Britain, but those in other countries, and spending some of its reserves. "We had a little money we have been saving for a rainy day," says John Ashworth, president of Cara. "Now the rainy day is here."
This morning, Baghdad University lecturer Dr A will have the chance to tell the all party parliamentary group on poverty about the desperate plight of Iraqi asylum-seekers. He has a terrible tale to tell: of escape from Iraq after death threats; of a wife and three teenage children now in hiding outside Baghdad because their names have been added to his on a death list, and whom Britain will not admit; and of six months in Britain, denied state benefits and not permitted to take paid work.His fare to Westminster from the countryside, where he is staying with an English academic colleague, will be paid by the Council for Assisting Refugee Academics (Cara), for Dr A has spent the small amount of money he managed to bring with him and is now destitute. He would starve on the streets without the hospitality of his academic colleague and handouts from Cara, though his high reputation in his field and his excellent English could win him useful work.
The first warning to Dr A (his name does not start with A) came early last year. His high academic profile had led to media interviews on his subject, and a colleague told him that his name was on an execution list held by one of the militias. In November last year he heard that, while he was abroad at an academic conference, a strange car parked outside his home and heavily armed young men were watching the house. He told his family not to worry, since he was not involved in politics or religion.
Leave or die
But in April this year came the dreaded telephone call. A series of insults was followed by a threat that many of his colleagues had heard before - and they had all been killed soon afterwards. "Leave the country or you'll die," the caller told him. "This time I took it seriously," he says.
In July, the family travelled to Amman in Jordan. He had been invited to an academic conference in London, so was able to get a visa. He hoped to regularise his position here quickly, so that his family could follow.
His wife and children waited in Amman as long as they could, but eventually their money and Jordanian visas ran out. They thought that, without him, they might be safe back at home in Baghdad. They were wrong. They watched the militias massacre their neighbours. Then came the warning: leave your home or be killed. They fled to relatives 200 miles away. They had to leave everything they owned, and have lost it all. "They are living like me, as refugees in their own country, from hand to mouth," he says. Dr A must be granted asylum before his family can come here.
He has no state benefits because he was in Britain for more than a week before he applied for asylum. He has made nine visits to the Home Office, at its request, travelling from the Home Counties during the rush hour using money he has not got, but each time he was told he cannot have any money, and his application for refugee status has not yet been processed.
How long will it take? "Anything from four months to a year," says Cara's director, John Akker, with the sad certainty of a man who has seen it all before. "If we are lucky, and they do not lose the file - which they often do - he may have a decision in late January or early February. Meanwhile, they have taken his passport, so he can't go anywhere else, and he can't open a bank account. We are helping him and we have to give him money in cash."
There is a theoretical alternative. Because of Dr A's reputation, he could apply for a high quality visa, granted to those with highly desired skills. But Akker says: "That application costs £400 and could take a long time."
About 500 academics from Baghdad and Basra universities have been murdered since the invasion of Iraq. Hundreds more have been kidnapped, and hundreds fled the country after getting one of the dreaded "leave or die" messages. Unesco believes that academics are targeted because they are key to reconstruction. An additional reason is that many of them were members of the Ba'ath party. "In Saddam's day, you had to be a member if you wanted to be a teacher," said Professor Issam al-Rawi, president of the Association of University Professors, last year. "Most of us were members only in name, not by conviction, but now it's come back to haunt us. Any day now I expect them to come for me." They did. Rawi was murdered a year ago.
Professor B managed to avoid joining the Ba'ath party, and has kept a very low profile since the war, making sure his name does not appear in the media. In London for an academic conference recently, he said: "I'm going back - I have not yet had the 'leave or die' message. My wife and son and students are there, and a man should go home if he can."
He gave a vivid account of life for a university teacher in Baghdad.
"The police will open places by shooting them up. It starts with your journey to work, past shooting matches between militias - and it's not just the militias you have to fear. Convoys of VIPs drive through Baghdad and shoot at cars. Many roads are blocked, either by police, or by militias, or by private companies. These companies rent all the houses in the road and have them blocked off by their own security guards, mostly foreigners. No one can do anything about them. Then you walk into your classroom past groups of very young men holding their weapons in their hands."
Worse than Saddam
Life is far worse than under Saddam, he says. "The Ba'athists might have imprisoned you for not attending the right religious ceremony; the militias will kill you for it. Before, we feared the regime itself. You couldn't speak about the president or his two sons, but everyone else was safe ground. Now you don't know, you could say a word out of place with someone and get killed. There are no longer any police to go to for protection, because they are divided between the militias."
Professor B has no doubt whose fault it is. "The British and Americans dissolved the army and police - even traffic wardens were banned from working. So the country was in chaos. They even created some of the militias, and most people believe there are foreign agents provocateurs. The militias go on killing and no one is ever arrested for it.
"You cannot keep track of all the academic colleagues who have been killed. The destruction of the Iraqi mind is the fault of many people, and your British government is one of them."
Which makes his colleague Dr A's plight in Britain the more unforgiveable. Britain helped to create the chaos from which Dr A has been forced to flee. Now it is putting obstacles in the way of Dr A living here and bringing his family out of the nightmare.
Cara believes the crisis facing Iraqi academics is so serious that, for the first time since Nazi persecution of the Jews in the 1930s, it is helping not just those in Britain, but those in other countries, and spending some of its reserves. "We had a little money we have been saving for a rainy day," says John Ashworth, president of Cara. "Now the rainy day is here."
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