Hope mixed with fear
A security guard at Baghdad University put it to us plainly: "If you come back here, I’ll break your camera."
Our crew had been trying to talk to students and professors about the new government and take the pulse of Baghdad after this key political milestone; they found the city to be still quite sick.
The crew arrived on campus after obtaining permission from the dean’s office, but found no professor would go on camera or allow them to film in a classroom.
"The last time a TV crew was here about two weeks ago, they took pictures, then those people on camera were killed," the guard told us. He followed us around constantly. It might have been true. It might have been a rumor. But the guard believed it. He demanded that we give him the tape we had used so far. In an old trick, our cameraman switched the tape in the camera, and played innocent.
"You want to take it, here?" he said, feigning guilt and offering the guard a blank tape.
"Oh, forget it," he said, and then told us not to come back or he’d "break the camera."
Reason to be fearful
They do have a right to be nervous on campus. According to Iraq’s Association of University Lecturers, 182 professors and academics have been assassinated since the start of the war. The group says another 85 have been kidnapped or survived attempts on their lives.
I personally know several professors who have fled the country. One, now working at an American university, was sleeping in his car for several days before he left Iraq; that way, he could be mobile, harder-to-find and escape at the first sign of trouble.
We did manage to talk to Hassan, an engineering student, who was having lunch in the university’s cafeteria.
"I think there is hope that everyone in Iraqi will participate in this government. People hope the future will be better," he said. "But everyday I hear that 50 Iraqis have been killed. Anyone can kill or be killed and no one will even ask why."
Another student, a young woman wearing a yellow blouse who didn’t want to give her name, was equally hopeful and discouraged.
"I hope that it will succeed, but I don't think that it will. All of the students, we don’t know if we are going to live or die under the current situation."
Dredging up dark history
EMAIL THIS
advertisement
Slide Show
- Life beyond the violence
Suicide attacks and murders due to sectarian conflict continue around Iraq. See how residents live their lives amid the attacks.
Read the Nightly News blog
