Assassinations Tear Into Iraq's Educated Class

[peekaboo]

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/07/in...07ASSA.html?th

By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
Published: February 7, 2004



BAGHDAD, Iraq, Feb. 6
Abdul al-Latif al-Mayah was never safe. Not before the war started, and not after.

A couple of weeks ago, Dr. Mayah, a 53-year-old political scientist and human rights advocate known in his neighborhood here as "the professor," was driving to work when eight masked gunmen jumped in front of his car. They yanked him into the street, the police said, and shot him nine times in front of his bodyguard and another university lecturer.

In an instant, he became one of hundreds of intellectuals and midlevel administrators who Iraqi officials say have been assassinated since May in a widening campaign against Iraq's professional class.

"They are going after our brains," said Lt. Col. Jabbar Abu Natiha, head of the organized crime unit of the Baghdad police. "It is a big operation. Maybe even a movement."

These white-collar killings, American and Iraqi officials say, are separate from ? and in some ways more insidious than ? the settling of scores with former Baath Party officials, or the singling-out of police officers and others thought to be collaborating with the occupation. Hundreds of them have been attacked as well in an effort to sow insecurity and chaos.

But by silencing urban professionals, said Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, a spokesman for the occupation forces, the guerrillas are waging war on Iraq's fledgling institutions and progress itself. The dead include doctors, lawyers and judges.

"This works against everything we're trying to do here," the general said.

It has never been easy being part of the educated class in Iraq, certainly not under the repression by Saddam Hussein. Now, all over the country, it is a lethal business.

In Baghdad, Haifa Aziz Daoud, a high-ranking electricity manager, was shot dead through her front door in June. The deputy mayor, Faris Abdul Razzaq al-Assam, was also shot and killed near his home in October. Every member of the Baghdad City Council has been threatened, said Muhammad Zamil Saadi, a lawyer and council member.

"In the past, it was the party people who got the good jobs," said Mr. Saadi, who has two bullet holes in his windshield. "Now it is the professionals. These killers are desperate to go back to those times."

The American authorities say foreign terrorists may be behind the attacks. "There is a huge incentive for foreign terrorists to create chaos here," General Kimmitt said.

The Iraqi authorities point to former Baath Party elements or displaced military officers. They say the killings have been coordinated.

American and Iraqi officials say there is no tally of all the professionals assassinated. But Lt. Akmad Mahmoud, of the Baghdad police, said there had been "hundreds" of professionals killed in Baghdad.

Mr. Saadi, the Baghdad city council member who works closely with the police, estimated the number at from 500 to 1,000.

Colonel Natiha, the head of the organized crime unit, said there were too many to count. He blamed the general sense of lawlessness in Iraq, which is still struggling to form its own police forces.

General Kimmitt said the military was not involved in the investigations, though advisers from the F.B.I. were helping train Iraqi detectives.

Lieutenant Mahmoud, 28, says he has not met with any American advisers. He has been left to investigate Dr. Mayah's death by himself, one in a sea of similar cases.

In Basra, Asaad al-Shareeda, the dean of the engineering college, was assassinated in November. Two months later, Muhammad Qasim, a teacher in the technical college, was stabbed to death in his home.

In Mosul, Yousef Khorshid, an investigative judge, and Adel al-Haddidi, head of the local lawyer's association, were killed in drive-by shootings in December. The same car was seen by witnesses in both cases.

Iman al-Munim Yunis, director of the translation department at Mosul University, said someone recently slipped a note under her door. It read, "It's better to leave your job or you will face what you don't want." In the envelope was a bullet.

She resigned.

Several physicians have been killed. Many more have been threatened. Some have closed their practices. Others have held on.

"I was given one week," said Abid Ali Mahdi, director of the Institute of Radiotherapy and Nuclear Medicine in Baghdad. "But I can't quit. If I step down, nobody would come and take my place."

[Mitteleuropeo]

What they report about Irak is not unique. In Europe it is called "mobbing" and slightly different weapons are used, the effect being the same.

Good day!

[peekaboo]

I find your comparison is quite misplaced, Mittel. Don't you think there's a difference between mobbing and killing?

i posted this article because i never heard or read about these despicable and mindless murders of academics in Irak before.... I can't immagine who has an interest to blow out the professional classes there and it makes me sad and furious that nobody seems to be able to protect them.
So what kind of future has that bleeding country if the few remaining intellectuals get killed?

[Mitteleuropeo]

Mobbing is just a slow way to kill somebody! There are many statements by High Courts defining mobbing as fellony, as well as murder.
Can you imagine to be forced to go to your office every day, having another person sitting next to your desk and doing your job, whilst for you there is nothing left than watching him all day long?
I know some colleagues who underwent "treatments" like that and had thereafter to resort to psychiatric help. Let alone those who preferred to suicide.
I know, it is not correct to compare an evil with another, but I dream of a world without mobbing and killing.

So long!