- Quietly, in their ones and twos, the professional classes
of Baghdad are slipping out of the country to avoid becoming another fatal
statistic.
-
- Iraq is losing the educated elite of doctors, lawyers,
academics and businessmen who are vital to securing a stable future. There
is also fear that their departure will leave a vacuum to be filled by religious
extremists.
-
- Outside the shelter of the Green Zone, home to the American
and Iraqi political leadership, lawlessness has overtaken the capital.
-
- Prof Abdul Sattar Jawad, the head of English literature
at Baghdad University, will leave next month to take up a post in Jordan.
Two of his colleagues left recently after being intimidated.
-
- At his home in east Baghdad the professor answered the
door with an outstretched hand. In the other hand he carried a loaded revolver
"because I don't trust anybody nowadays".
-
- While the lack of basic needs and a barely functioning
infrastructure are considerable hardships, it is the daily threat of death
that was the catalyst for his decision. Since the new government came to
power in April there have been up to 3,000 civilian deaths, about half
attributed to criminal activity.
-
- "I love my country but I am unable to do any service
for the people because it is overrun by fanatics and extremists,"
Prof Jawad said. "The streets are ruled by gangs, looters and goons."
-
- Last month he resigned a position as dean of arts after
"religious animals" surrounded his office and shouted "war-like
slogans".
-
- The threats have also forced him to close down two English
newspapers he ran because "it now is anti-religious to have free speech,
liberal minds and civilisation in this country".
-
- Prof Jawad's wife Sarah, a former geography teacher,
said she now wore a headscarf to avoid being harassed by religious extremists.
-
- For his son Omar Jawad, a single 30-year-old lawyer working
for a British company in the Green Zone, the one ambition is to leave Iraq
"as quickly as possible, as soon as I find somewhere to go".
-
- He added: "I see a lot of educated people leaving
Iraq. I talked this morning to one of my friends who has a PhD in law.
He has just resigned from his job and is going. You hear so many similar
stories. It is more security problems than economic. Under sanctions [imposed
on Saddam Hussein by the United Nations after the Gulf war] we had no problems
like this."
-
- Aside from the daily risk of kidnap, suicide bombers
and drive-by shootings, his half hour journey into work is now a two-hour
slog through roadblocks.
-
- There are no land-line telephones, water has to be pumped
from a well and electricity is on for only two hours a day compared with
21 under Saddam. In a country that perches on a lake of oil, the petrol
queues last up to four hours.
-
- "I am not very optimistic," Mr Jawad said.
"We have this fear of civil war because when the Americans are out
it will be left to the Iraqis.
-
- "It is two years now since the war ended and we
see no development."
-
- For the past three years Mahir Mahmood, 37, has built
a successful business importing cars and spares but by the autumn he will
be gone because he fears his wife and four children will be held to ransom
by criminals.
-
- "I think the bombs, explosions and killings are
enough for anyone to leave the country," he said. " What good
has the government done for the people to make them stay?"
-
- He has arranged an apartment for his family in Syria
where he knows of half a dozen other Iraqi businessman who have already
moved.
-
- Baghdad's doctors suffer most of all. They are now authorised
to carry firearms after some were killed by angry relatives of dead patients
and after threats by police officers demanding immediate treatment for
injured colleagues.
-
- Dr Tariq Bahjat, who became a hospital director in Baghdad
after his predecessor was killed and where a radiologist was recently shot
dead, said: "No one can provide doctors with protection. I am afraid
the same will happen to me; that is why I will go abroad."
-
- A spokesman for the prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari,
said: "It is a worry, of course, and they are going to be difficult
to replace.
-
- "Many people are getting jobs abroad and in terms
of what the government can do about it? Very little."
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- © Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2005.
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- http://telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/08
/10/wirq10.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/08/10/ixworld.html
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