Word: basra
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Khailanym showed the audience, approximately 100 people, a slideshow presentation of Basra University—from its dilapidated laboratories and overcrowded classrooms to its empty-shelved and unelectrified library...
...unruliness is being fueled by militant religious political groups, many of which oppose secular education and what they perceive as Western cultural influences. In March, extremist Shi'ite followers of the radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr beat up several hundred engineering students in the southern city of Basra. Their offense: attending a picnic at which both sexes were present. Female students have been harassed for "inappropriate" clothing; a majority now wear the hijab, or head scarf, to school-a sharp contrast to the prewar period when Islamic dress was rarely seen on campus. "We see it as our duty...
...study says 48 academics have been assassinated. Taher al-Bakaa, who was Iraq's Minister for Higher Education under former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, puts the number at 66. Just last week a deputy dean at Baghdad's Mustansiriya University was killed along with three bodyguards, and a Basra University professor of agriculture was kidnapped and killed. Scores of teachers have been kidnapped for ransom, and many more have received death threats simply for doing their jobs. Many top professors have quit and fled the country. As a result, only 28% of those now teaching have a Ph.D., according...
Some students have had enough. At Basra University, there have been several huge demonstrations calling for the expulsion of religious and political groups from campus. In Baghdad, friends of Masar Sarhan al-Rubaiyi are worried that the sectarian riots sparked by his death will overshadow a more positive legacy: in April 2003, as looters ransacked government offices and universities across the city, al-Rubaiyi and a few friends grabbed some weapons and headed for his college, determined to save it from the pillagers. They arrived late but fought their way through the mobs and managed to save most...
...Shiite leaders are now suggesting it may be a poisoned chalice, and that their own leaders should only be put forward once a new constitution is in place and the U.S. is on the way out. Incumbency has certainly proven to be a burden for the Shiite parties in Basra, where popular discontent at their failure to provide basic services appears to be turning voters against the Shiite list...