Iraqi universities, once among the most prestigious in the Arab world, are facing potential catastrophe, with rampant kidnappings and murders causing the post-Saddam Hussein intelligentsia to flee abroad en masse.
"Deans tell me their worries. I fear they will resign and that will lead us into a catastrophe," Higher Education Minister Taher Khalis al-Bakaa confessed to a news conference this week.
In the 2003-2004 academic year alone, Bakaa said 14 university staff members were murdered. Iraq's university teachers' union handed AFP a list of 75 lecturers registered as killed or kidnapped over the same period.
The latest victim was the dean of Al-Anbar university in the western city of Ramadi, Abdel Hadi al-Haithi, snatched two weeks ago from his university campus by gunmen demanding a ransom of 60,000 dollars for his release. There has been no news of him since.
"It is impossible to study in this atmosphere," said Bakaa.
In his study at the University of Al-Nahrain (Two Rivers), formerly named after Saddam Hussein and cultivated by the former regime as a hub of scientific research, pro vice-chancellor Saadun Issa cannot disguise his fear.
A chemist with a doctorate from England, he paid 50,000 dollars to gunmen who kidnapped his 22-year-old son last year.
"I used up all my savings and I am still in debt for what I borrowed for the ransom," he said. Cash was still not enough for the kidnappers. They sent him a message via his son, telling the academic to leave Iraq.
"That's proof of the fact they want to destroy Iraqi universities," said Issa, who now employs bodyguards.
"The victims cover a wide spectrum of research interests, different politics and different religious convictions. The only common denominator is their excellence," said Bakaa.
Issa shares his conspiracy theory with other academics gathered in the trade union office.
"All those targeted are known for their work. I think there is a plan to strip Iraq of its scientific backbone," he said. "Despite the increase in salaries since the end of the former regime, there's been a brain drain to neighbouring countries".
"The bleeding continues," said minister Bakaa, announcing that certain courses would not be taught during the new academic year for lack of teachers.
With anonymous death threats or a bullet slipped into an envelope, the climate of fear goes on and emigration gathers pace, said the union. Since April 2003, more than 1,000 academics have left Iraq, it added.
"Under the former regime, 1,600 lecturers lived in exile because of politics and the poor salaries. Today, they live in exile out of fear," said Bakaa, attesting to about 13,250 university teachers in present day Iraq.
A UN official said another 1,832 academics were summarily dismissed in 2003 for belonging to Saddam's defunct Baath party.
But with no end in sight to the daily killings, fighting and kidnappings in Iraq, despite the replacement of the US-led occupation authority with an interim Iraqi government, it seems the authorities can do nothing.