It is 12:45pm and the full force of the midday sun has already engulfed the rooftops and streets of Sulaimaniyeh within a steamy haze. The UNHCR representative, who, for security purposes I have given the name Omar, has just arrived at my place of residence. All sources of electricity—the city’s six-hour allotment, the community generator, and the house generator that comes on for selected periods when all else fails—are currently out of commission. Omar wipes sweat from his forehead as we sit in the darkened office where I am interviewing him. Following what I believe is the customary gender-related politeness, Omar is gently attempting to ward me off from visiting the Qalawa camp where 97 internally displaced (IDP) families who fled the violence of their home communities are now temporarily ensconced.
“The situation is not tolerable for you to stay there,” Omar warns. “We should not go there after 1pm because there is a very bad smell because they don’t have latrines and garbage is everywhere. We barely got permission from the governor’s office to do things on a temporary basis, like garbage collection and water distribution. The living conditions cannot be standed. It is very difficult.”
“Let’s go now,” I say, not knowing if I will get another opportunity to visit Qalawa before leaving Iraq. “I don’t mind if it smells. I’ve smelled bad things before.” Omar smiles and nods, “For me, too, it is okay.”
Hopping into the standard white SUV vehicle used by most NGOs (nongovernmental organization), an obvious and perfect target for terrorists in any other part of Iraq, I am once again reminded of the inherent safety here in the north. The drive through the trafficked streets lined with shops and new construction—signs of Sulaimaniyeh’s building boom that is severely taxing its infrastructure—is sharply contrasted by what at first looks like a leveled, rubble strewn pre-construction site. A moonscape sorts, of huge proportions. Closer inspection reveals a straggly line of makeshift tents tucked off in one corner of the property surrounded by heaps of trash and human waste. A singular “home” on the outskirts of this corner and lying in the shadow of a dusty four-story condominium block has been constructed entirely from gathered stones and pieces of broken cinderblock, scrap metal pieces, refrigerator doors and the like, empty and rusted industrial drums, and other trashed items.
Across the street inside the unofficial IDP camp of Qalawa, the “homes” are much more fragile. They have skins consisting of blankets and pieces of tarp wrapped over wood pole skeletons. Depending on the number and size of family members able to help with construction, some are bigger and better constructed than others. “These families have been living here since September 2006, almost a year ago,” says Omar. “They are illegal according to the authorities who say they are occupying private land. So it is considered a makeshift camp. Not a real IDP camp.”
As is all things regarding Iraq, the IDP situation in Sulaimaniyeh is complex. A contradiction in terms according to media reports that Sunni and Shiite are at each other’s throats, Qawala consists of a mixture of Sunni and Shiite (and at least one gypsy family), educated and uneducated living together peacefully under a vague and uncertain umbrella of safety. Termed “very vulnerable” in UNHCR lingo, these refugees have traveled from Baghdad, Diyala, and Baquba to escape insurgent and sectarian violence. To gain admittance here, all had to produce death certificates to prove that at least one family member had been killed in some violent way. While Sulaimaniyan authorities allow fleeing families and individuals entrance to the region, the majority of IDPs entering the northern Iraq’s governorates have property or family to go to. Other IDPs are not as fortunate.
Like a nomadic tribe, the families at Qalawa are part of this smaller percentage of IDPs. The earliest arrivals set up camp on what looked like open space to them. Others, catching word of a safe place to go via the ethers of the IDP communication system, continue to trickle in and take up residence. However, unlike nomadic tribes who use accessible water sources as a criterion for setting up camp, these families, perhaps more desperate in nature, lived without water in the early days of their arrival here. According to Omar, after many meetings between international relief agencies and the governor’s office, permission was recently given to the International Committee of the Red Cross to provide water. Another NGO, Solidarity, has mobile medical teams visiting Qalawa and is also coordinating garbage collection.
Lack of access to water is just one of many problems associated with the influx of IDPs. On the one hand, there are those who have arrived and have property or family in the region. They tend to fade into the Sulaimaniyan fabric of life. Not only is this taxing an already fragile infrastructure in the region, but makes it very difficult for aid agencies such as the UNHCR and others to provide them with much needed health and humanitarian services. On the other hand, while the families who have congregated at what has been designated the Qalawa camp by these same international relief organizations—organizations that are attempting to provide them with basic services such as toilets, tents, and water—should hypothetically be easier to observe, evaluate, and be given services to than the first group due to their being gathered in one place (as opposed to those scattered across the region), this is not the case. Instead, the families at Qalawa are bombarded by a chain of politically motivated catch-22s that ultimately thwart the provision of these basic services.
To begin with, it has proven extremely difficult to determine the ownership of the property on which Qalawa is located. A series of letters written to the governing authorities of Sulaimaniyeh by the relief agencies asking for permission to provide services to the IDPs have been met with claims that the property is privately owned, making the occupation of it by the IDPs illegal. Therefore, no infrastructure—such as the digging of cesspools to allow for the construction of latrines—can be built without the permission of the landlord. Attempts by the relief agencies to identify the landlord have proven fruitless. Without this identification, there is no one to grant permission for the occupation of the property, the result of which is that the governing authorities have refused to allow the relief agencies to assist the families beyond deliveries of water, minor health care, and garbage collection. Requests by the relief agencies to provide minimal basic supplies have been continually ignored.
“On June 24th, we had a meeting with the governor regarding these families in Qalawa,” says Omar. “In a letter we proposed and asked for permission to distribute non-food items like tents, blankets, in addition to digging a cesspool for the latrines. So far there has been no answer. Right now, in the warehouse of the Iraqi Red Crescent Society of Sulaimaniyeh there are 97 packages, each includes a tent, blankets, plastic sheets, mattresses, kitchen sets…because these families are really desperate and have none of these items.” So far, no movement has been made to allow distribution of these basic necessities.
As we disembark from the UNHCR vehicle, residents of the camp immediately form a tight knit circle around Omar. Many are talking at the same time voicing various complaints. This leaves me free to tour the camp and take photographs. I, too, am eventually surrounded by Qalawa residents, children and adults alike, some of whom invite me into their fragile structures. One woman holding a small boy by the hand persistently insists I look under his gown to see some medical issue he is having. I walk with her to their home, the last at the long line of makeshift tents. Once inside she lifts his gown to reveal a bloated testicle the size of an orange.
AN UNANNOUNCED VISIT
Later Omar explains that the camp moqtar, or representative, was not present. The moqtar monitors the camp and reports all camp visits, occurrences, problems, and gripes to the relief agencies and authorities. He is also required to meet and greet any and all visitors. Since we did not go through the proper channels—anyone desiring to visit Qalawa, including aid representatives and journalists, must be approved by government security beforehand—not only is the moktar absent, but our visit is illegal. In his absence, Qalawa residents inform Omar of issues he has not heard of before.
According to the residents, every weekend, police have been visiting Qalawa, gathering all the women, and recording their names. Returning a few days later, the police check if all the women are present and question the head of the family of the women who are not present. The IDPs questioned Omar as to why this might be happening, a question to which he had no answer. A second issue involved letters of recommendation written and distributed by the moqtar to each and every family stating that the person carrying the letter is an IDP residing in Qalawa. With this letter, Qalawa residents were free to leave the camp, free to find employment, even free to go back to their places of origin for family visits and then return to Qalawa. A few days earlier, camp residents claimed that a group of security personnel had collected the letters from all of the IDPs, leaving them unable to leave the camp to work, and if they leave Sulaimaniyeh to visit family outside they will not be allowed to return.
Some say this is part of a psychological war to put pressure on the IDPs to relocate. The government of Sulamaniyeh is already heavily taxed by the needs of its own population. Unemployment, lack of housing, and infrastructure inadequacies related to garbage collection, electricity, fuel, water needs, and other basic services are already creating huge problems due to the natural growth of the host population. A potentially explosive IDP influx would only exacerbate an already overloaded infrastructure where the typical two to three room living space, renting for approximately $250 in February 2006 now costs between $400 and $500. If government officials were to allow basic infrastructure to be put in to a camp like Qalawa, the fear is that a tented camp with basic services would soon turn into a permanent community, as have many communities that have started out as refugee and IDP camps in Lebanon, Jordan, and other parts of Iraq. And then there are claims of an increase in crime since the arrival of the IDPs.
“According to reports—this is not my source—after the influx of IDPs here, the rate of crimes doubled,” says Omar. “Before there were no bag snatchings in Sulaimaniyeh but now this has spread. And begging has become common, as has prostitution.”
As we drive out of the camp, I point out a beautiful public garden with manicured lawns and flowers of many colors. There is not a scrap of garbage to be seen. “Does this work make you crazy?” I ask. “Believe me,” Omar says. “Look at my hair. It is gray now. I have been doing this since 2000.”
WELCOME TO THE FIRST AMERICAN UNIVERSITY OF IRAQ
My driver drops me off at what looks like a large nondescript one-story trailer attached to an industrial hangar. A few armed guards guide me inside where a modern interior of sparkling whites and clean architectural edges belie the drab exterior. These are the preliminary digs of the first American University of Iraq in Sulaimaniyeh (AUI-S). My friend Nathan Musselman, whom I met en route to Iraq in February 2004, is AUI-S’s prefect and deputy to the chancellor, an incredibly posh title for a very down-to-earth person. In addition to arranging for my letter of entry—required to gain admittance to Iraq—Nathan also introduced me to AUI-S chancellor Owen Cargol.
Freshly arrived from his former position as president of Abu Dhabi University, Cargol exudes excitement at his role in this new and historic endeavor. This is Iraq, after all. A place where, if you believe what the critics say, an American University would be the last thing Iraqis would want to see. But here in Kurdistan, America is seen as a friend and most definitely not a foe. In fact, many Kurds I have spoken with here opined they would like to see more American involvement and support to their region. These feelings are in part due to the protection the US provided Kurds from the rampages of Saddam Hussein in the aftermath of the first Gulf War, and in part due to a newly reinforced appreciation for the US after the most recent invasion. Thanks to the ousting of Saddam Hussein and the presence of the US in Iraq, economic growth in the north Kurdish governorates is expanding at higher than prewar levels.
The creation of AUI-S is one very visible sign of an American/Iraqi partnership. And if this model in Sulaimaniyeh succeeds, plans are in the making for expansion involving the creation of two more American university centers—one in Baghdad and another in Basra. Once, of course, Iraq’s security dilemma is solved. “In many ways this job, this university, is the most exciting higher education opportunity in the world today, says Cargol. “Because its brand new, its in Iraq, and its bringing to higher education an entirely new approach to having students and the university jointly involved in developing students in a way that they can provide leadership to Kurds and Iraqis by thinking about what they are doing rather than doing what they’ve been told to do. You have experienced the Middle East. You know that’s sort of the way—we have someone in charge. So long [as] he is in charge and he has the money, the power, the guns, the control, the family ties, then you do it.”
The idea of choice and student involvement is something new to Middle Eastern education. Historically, the education system in Iraq has been public and offered free of charge, but at the same time been extremely regimented and seemingly dictatorial. In order to enter public Iraqi universities, students must fill out a form and list their top 50 choices stating where they want to go to school and what they want to study. Where they end up—or not—is based on their scores on their 12th-grade national finishing exams. The influence of parents and economics play a large role. The choices of what students study are not always their own, or in areas that interest them. “If my parents decide medicine or dentistry is what I want, or needed or should do, and I list these sort of very competitive disciplines but my scores don’t qualify me to get into any of these top 50 choices, then the computer will randomly find something for me that matches my scores,” says Cargol. The end result is that these students graduate and go into fields that they have no interest in or perhaps even dislike.
“It’s a historical arrangement. If you are a bright student, the best-paying jobs, the most secure jobs, the jobs that kept you out of trouble were medicine, engineering, dentistry, where one could get a job and have a secure future for oneself and ones family. Civil engineering is one of those they want because they envision construction, simple engineering, a good job, not having to enter the military, not having to move, getting a job in their hometown. Maybe they care less about engineering, but they take it for those reasons.”
TEACHING STUDENT HOW TO QUESTION
AUI-S is a private school, and students will follow a standard liberal arts education and be required to take a year and a half of general arts classes before choosing a major. During this time they will have the opportunity to explores their options, likes and dislikes, meet with faculty from different disciplines, investigate different major and minor possibilities—all new territory for a population that has existed within what Cargol states is an “acceptance of hierarchy structure.” He gives the example of the Koran. “There are no misunderstandings in the Koran. There is only one way. You have to interpret it this way. You don’t think about whether or not something is logical. This is sort of a Middle Eastern approach. So if a leader, someone in charge, says: ‘This is the way it is,’ they listen.”
In addition to Cargol, AUI-S’s Board of Regents includes a blue-ribbon panel of leaders: Iraq’s President Jalal Talabani as chairman; Iraqi vice-president and economist Adil Abdul-Mahdi; Sunni MP Hacem Al-Hassani; Iraq’s first CPA-appointed interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi; former US Ambassador to Iraq and current US Ambassador to the UN Zalmay Khalilzad; and prime minister of the Kurdish Regional government Nechirvan Barzani.
In a September 2 column in the New York Times, Thomas Friedman quoted Barzani as saying that once Saddam was removed, the people of Kurdistan were given a “psychological hope for the future. Those who had even a limited amount of money started to invest, start small businesses or buy a car, because they thought they could see the future. The uncertainty was removed. We have to thank the American people and government.”
The brainchild and prime mover behind AUI-S is Dr. Barham Salih, a former prime minister and current deputy prime minister of Iraq. Working with some of the names mentioned above, and several other influential Iraqi Kurds, Arabs, and internationals since 2005, Dr. Salih engaged them with the idea of a university offering a complex and challenging educational philosophy that engenders freedom of choice, rather than the more simplistic mode of follow the leader. As president of the AUI-S Board of Trustees, Salih, is joined by a virtually all-male club of American, Sunni, Shiite, Lebanese, Iraqi-American, and Kurdish businessmen, neoconservatives, and neoliberal thinkers. The lone female is women’s advocate Dr. Rajaa Khuzai, an Iraqi physician and former member of the Iraqi National Assembly. John Agresto, the retired president of St. John’s University in New Mexico, is the sole American trustee. After arriving in Iraq in late 2003 and spending nine months working with the Coalition Provisional Authority, Agresto told the Washington Post, “I’m a neoconservative who’s been ‘mugged by reality’”—the title of his newly released book. He went on to say, “We can’t deny there were mistakes, things that didn’t work out the way we wanted. We have to be honest with ourselves.” Addressing Agresto’s candidness at a time when most neocons were still bearing the “you’re either with us or against us” cross, the Washington Post stated, “He is one of the few American officials here to speak on the record at length about the shortcomings of the occupation. In his case, the frustration comes from the sense of a missed golden opportunity: to reconstruct Iraq’s decrepit universities and create an educational system that would nurture and promote the country’s best minds.”
Agresto now has the opportunity to attempt to make up for the “missed opportunity” by helping to create the direction of AUI-S. A direction that will practice a more American mode of education, rather than the traditional Middle Eastern model. The thinking behind AUI-S is to create an American model institution where students will gain a liberal arts foundation for their undergraduate education. Then they will obtain a major in their primary area of undergraduate interest, and a minor in a secondary area.
“Part of the philosophy of Dr. Salih and the board and all the people who bringing this project together is that under the former regime, there was only one way to think, one way to do things,” says Cargol. “So the country has lots of engineers, lots of mathematicians, lots of physicists. But it doesn’t have a history of having people who challenge ideas.” In order to foster this more problem-solving, questioning form of education, AUI-S will require less rote memorization and instead put students through the vigorous paces of critical thinking. Students will be required to bring their books to class, study intensely throughout the semester and not just in the few weeks before exams in order to memorize the material, and be allowed to open books and check notes during exams.
Using poetry as an example, Cargol says, “This is a memorization culture throughout the Middle East, where people just memorize and memorize. We’d like some future leaders for Kurdistan, Iraq, the Middle East, to go through an educational process where they are taught to challenge what comes from the teacher and the textbook and come up with their own ideas. It doesn’t mean their ideas are right and doesn’t mean the teachers are wrong, but they need to be able to defend why they think an answer is correct.”
At a ceremony held in Sulaimaniyeh in early September, Iraqi leaders came together to celebrate the groundbreaking for AUI-S. Construction is scheduled to start in November. Reportedly, donations were promised to the tune of $10 million. Other donations, including the $10.5 million pledged contribution of the US Congress total $40 million to date. The Italian government has pledged money to help set up an environmental studies center that will foster work it has already supported in conjunction with the Iraqi environmental NGO, Nature Iraq, regarding restoring southern Iraq’s Mesopotamian marshes. The University of Vermont will be holding joint videoconference “town hall” meetings with AUI-S between their respective political science classes where topics such as the separation of church and state and states rights versus federal rights will be explored.
All classes will be conducted in English in a donated space and should be in full swing by the time you read this. The initial class of students is small, 46, and the first classes taught will be the English as a Second Language requirement. It is hoped that by September 2008, AUI-S will be able to offer two degree programs in order to meet Kurdish economic development needs: business administration, and computer systems and information technology. Enrollment goals are to have 1,000 students by the year 2011 and 5,000 as of 2021.
I ask Cargol how it feels to be in at the ground level of the creation of such an institution. “Well, I founded the University of Abu Dhabi and did that for four years. Last week, I was interviewed by a reporter from the Chronicle of Higher Education. He said that that sounded like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. And I said, ‘Yes, and coming here and founding AUI-S is a twice in a lifetime opportunity. This one is especially challenging, because in Abu Dhabi they have First World infrastructure, First World international opportunities, and more money than God. And here it’s a real challenge, to open an American University in Iraq for all of Iraq.”
This article appears in November 2007.
