Linda Hayali should be elated. Like thousands of other Iraqi undergraduates, she will sit down today and take her final examination after three years of hard work at Baghdad University.

Once, a degree from the prestigious college on the banks of the Tigris would have opened opportunities for a good job at home or abroad, and even the possibility of postgraduate studies anywhere in the Arab world.

But the 20-year-old admits that she feels little sense of achievement and has few real prospects. She simply feels lucky to have survived in this country, where students and professors have been caught up in the cycle of killings, kidnappings and bombings.

“There were times when I wanted to drop out. I stuck it out at university because I had no choice. What else is there for me to do? Once I graduate I will probably just stay at home. There are no prospects for young people in this country,however educated they are,” she said.

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Her attitude is born from experience. She embarked on her degree in administration in 2004, after Saddam Hussein had been overthrown, and assumed that life would improve. Instead, the best teachers have fled the country or have been killed. Some of her fellow students have been murdered. Her bleakest moment was when a car bomb exploded near the university, blowing eight pupils to pieces, including her best friend, Marwa.

The 21 universities in Iraq have not simply been caught up in the general violence and chaos that is afflicting the country. They have been targeted specifically by militant groups who intend to cripple Iraq and to destroy any vestiges of Western culture and secular education.

The universities, which are free and open to men and women, are regarded by Islamic militants as a dangerous challenge to their extreme interpretation of Islam.

Students at the College of Law in the town of Baquba, near Baghdad, fled their classrooms recently and have not returned since al-Qaeda gunmen spray-painted graffiti outside the college that read: “This is the law of the infidels.”

Shia Muslim militants belonging to the Mahdi Army have harassed and threatened Sunni Muslim pupils, who fear for their lives by just showing up to classes on the wrong side of town.

“Everyone knows from my name that I am Sunni,” Omar Saad, a student at Baghdad University, said. “Every day that I come in for my final exams in this side of town could be my last. I never know if I will see my family again.” The darkest day in the tragic story of Iraqi universities came on January 16 when two car bombs blew up outside Mustansiriyah University in Baghdad, killing 70 students who had just finished classes and were leaving the campus.

“I remember that day well because it was the day after I became engaged,” Dunya Mohammed, a 22-year-old Arabic studies student, said. “I had brought chocolates into school to give to classmates. I found Soha, one of my friends, reading as usual. She was a very clever student. I gave her a chocolate then we went out of the university.

“Suddenly there was a huge explosion and everything was covered in thick black smoke. We ran and ran to escape the bombing. I came back to the campus a week later and discovered that Soha was one of those killed.”

Today there is a small memorial near the spot, and flowers left by students wilt in the blistering summer heat. Mustansiriyah has the grim distinction of being the only university in the world with its own mass grave. The unidentified body parts of its students were collected and buried in a garden near its now heavily fortified entrance.

The students have not been the only casualties. More than 200 professors have been killed since the USled invasion in 2003 and thousands have fled abroad for jobs in Syria, Jordan or anywhere that will take them.

Nour, a Professor of Biotechnology at Al-Nahrain University in Baghdad, is part of a small and shrinking group of courageous faculty members who still try to teach in the face of extraordinary odds.

Her department began with eleven professors but today there are only two left. One doctor, Abdel Wahhad, was kidnapped and killed because of his work. Another, Kadam al-Sumaidi, stuck it out until his son was kidnapped and killed. “He went crazy with grief and left the country for Syria soon afterwards,” Nour said.

She has stuck it out, but often wonders why. From her original class of twenty-seven students only seven have finished their degrees this month. Everyone else has fled or dropped out.

“Believe me, if I could escape I would,” she said. “But I am stuck here.”

Campus killers

By last October, only 30 per cent of Iraq’s 3.5 million registered students were still attending classes, according to the Ministry of Education, down from 75 per cent the year before. There has been a sustained campaign of violence targeting universities. This year’s attacks include:

— June 20 Gunmen kidnap 8 Christian university students and a lecturer in Mosul as they returned from exams

— May 28 A sniper killed a female student near Mustansiriya University in eastern Baghdad

— April 16 Dean of the Political Science College at Mosul University dies in a drive-by shooting

— February 25 A suicide bomber detonates an explosive vest in Mustansiriya University, killing at least 40 and wounding 55

— January 16 A car bomb and suicide bomber set off twin blasts at the entrance to Mustansiriya University as students, teachers and employees are heading home. Nearly 90 students and lecturers are killed and another 140 injured

Source: Agencies

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