Iraq and human development: culture, education and the globalization of hope.

HOW DO THE ARAB HUMAN DEVELOPMENT Reports relate to Iraq? The international discourse on human development, championed by the United Nations, came into being in 1990 with publication of the first Human Development Report. The UN initiated the discourse to buffer, with a human face, economic development theory and the neo-imperialist thrust of corporate globalization. While sanctions had removed Iraq from the purview of the human development approach for more than a decade, war and occupation reopened the examination through the discourse of post-conflict reconstruction. Although these two discourses of human development and post-war reconstruction provide recipes for rebuilding, there are crucial missing ingredients.

This essay reads human development and post-conflict reconstruction discourses against the grain to reveal, on the one hand, their inadequate conceptions of how to achieve more democratic and egalitarian societies, while also exposing the promising openings they nevertheless afford. The abstract humanism, without historical or cultural content, that characterizes the human development reports in general, and the first AHDR in particular, has the effect of masking new forms of assertive Western parochialism as universal civilization. However, even this hollow humanism does place the category of history and culture, albeit conceived in abstract terms, on the agenda of development and reconstruction, and thereby creates latent internal contradictions that can be exploited. In a departure from practices elsewhere, the human development reports for the Arab world were written by Arab intellectuals of standing who represent a wide spectrum of opinion in the Arab world, rather than the functionaries and specialists of international agencies. This departure has had important consequences. The second Arab Human Development Report, published when the implications for the Arab world of the American reaction to 11 September were clearer, takes greater advantage of the opportunity to give the human development discourse real Arab historical and cultural content.

The Arab authors of the report transcended the limitations of the neoliberal framework within which they wrote by intruding the unavoidably collective dimensions of both Arab history and culture into the analysis, notably with references to Palestine and Iraq. They also took pointed exception to the anti-Islamic animus of the American-led War on Terrorism.

This article aims to push exploitation of these internal contradictions in human development discourse further, by clarifying the ways in which Iraqi history and culture, in particular, can be made into resources to expose the dangers of an externally conceived and imposed mandate for educational reform. It then suggests alternative possibilities for mobilizing transnational resources in support of self-defined educational reform, with the specific example of a collaborative Iraqi-Canadian project that will rely on the people-to-people networks made possible by the Information Revolution. The project's goal is the establishment of a non-profit international university with global linkages to complement Iraqi national universities. This instance of grassroots globalism links Iraqi academics with their counterparts in Canada and around the world in the service of a project designed to meet self-defined educational needs that respond to the imperatives of Iraqi history and culture. It envisions spontaneous networks generated from below, including non-governmental academic associations, which are broadly inspired by anti-war, anti globalization, human rights and environmental movements--all urging action to mobilize human and capital resources in the human interest. In broadest terms, such efforts all contribute to anti-systemic struggles on behalf of a world, as Wallerstein puts it, that is "relatively democratic and relatively egalitarian". (1) Such efforts, even the most modest, localized, and experimental ones, are all part of what some have begun to call "the globalization of hope." (2)

HUMAN DEVELOPMENT

With publication of the first Human Development Report in 1990, the United Nations announced the initiation of an international discourse on development to "contribute to the definition, measurement and policy analysis of human development." (3) In effect marginalizing the intense theoretical debates on development that raged throughout the eighties, the discourse was launched with the "hope that this Report--and its annual sequels--will make a significant contribution to the development dialogue in the 1990s and lead to a serious exploration of human development programming at the country level." (4) The first Report initiated the discourse with a humanist perspective, drawing a relational distinction between human development and economic development:

      People are the real wealth of a nation. The basic
   objective of development is to create an enabling environment
   for people to enjoy long, healthy, creative lives. This may
   appear to be a simple truth. But it is often forgotten in the
   immediate concern with the accumulation of commodities and
   financial wealth.

      Technical considerations of the means to achieve
   human development--and the use of statistical aggregates to
   measure national income and its growth--have at times
   obscured the fact that the primary objective of development is
   to benefit people. (5)

Specifying economic development as necessary but not sufficient, the human development paradigm outlined by the Report in effect transposed the social problems of development--poverty, inequality, inequity--from economic to human development issues. However, the linkage between social problems and the international political economy of development was obfuscated by defining human development as a process of enlarging choices, tying the concept directly and in limiting ways to liberal individualism: "Human development is a process of enlarging people's choices. The most critical ones are to lead a long and healthy life, to be educated and to enjoy a decent standard of living. Additional choices include political freedom, guaranteed human rights and self-respect ..." (6) This discursive ploy opens the door to what Naomi Klein has called "the privatization of every aspect of life, and the transformation of every activity and value into a commodity." (7) The second Arab Human Development Report remains mute on how the political will and the financial resources will be found to advance the laudable goals in education it puts forward. That silence means that dominant political and financial forces, with their privatization agenda, will have unchallenged access to Iraq. At a time when a neo-conservative agenda is steering the American drive for global hegemony, the consequences of that silence are clear for the reconstruction of Iraq and the larger American project of remaking the Middle East.

Initiation of the international discourse on human development, specified ideologically in unambiguous neo-liberal terms, presaged the intensification of globalization in the 1990s (characterized by sharply increased private capital flows resulting from direct foreign investment in developing countries). (8) With unfettered capitalism poised to flood the developing world, the United Nations initiated its new international discourse; implicit with the promise of the good life, understood in individualistic terms, and made possible by economic development in the new conditions of globalization. A scorecard for the new approach would take the form of annual reports that ranked countries by their performance on the Human Development Index (HDI).

The HDI is based on three indicators--life expectancy, education, and GDP per capita. "Longevity and knowledge refer to the formation of human capabilities, and income is a proxy measure for the choices people have in putting their capabilities to use." (9) The purpose of the annual ranking of countries based on HDI is to provide an assessment of both attainment and shortfall--indicators of successes and failures from one period to the next. In other words, the HDI provides a ready measure for successful human development outcomes of economic development. Shortfalls, according to this evaluation system, are not indicators of the poor human development outcomes of economic development. Rather, shortfalls reflect failure to meet targets, and indicate either insufficient economic development or poor choices by policymakers in terms of the investment of income.

The first Arab Human Development Report, published in 2002, was unlike all other Human Development Reports: as noted above, it was prepared by Arab intellectuals and policy analysts, not by UN civil servants. This departure, as suggested, created the possibility of undermining the new human development discourse from within. In addition, unlike the national, regional or development issues foci of the others, "the focus of this Report is on the people of the Arab world, the citizens of the 22 member states of the Arab League." (10) The ethno-cultural focus and Arab authorship constituted an indigenization of the human development perspective, without the intent of changing its implicit liberal assumptions. The actual report, however, exceeded these expectations and raised the spectre of transcendence of the narrow ideological parameters that had been prescribed by the international discourse on human development. This unintended consequence was reflected by the Arab authors' emphasis on "strengthening of Arab co-operation in order to maximize the benefits of globalization and avoid its perils." (11) More pointedly, this unintended consequence was manifest in the explicit attention to the context of conflicts "driven by regional and extra-regional factors." (12) The inclusion of Palestine and Iraq in the Arab Human Development Index (AHDI) emphasized the link between international politics and regional development, thus explicitly transcending the liberal framework of the new discourse.

Identifying both the attainments and shortfalls of human development in the Arab world, the Report identified three major deficits--freedom, empowerment of women, and knowledge. Focusing on the knowledge deficit, the 2003 Arab Human Development Report expanded the process of indigenization of the human development perspective initiated in the first Report. The most immediate representation of this was the inclusion of a chapter on culture (Chapter 6) to examine its relationship to knowledge acquisition: "for knowledge does not evolve in a social vacuum but rather in a particular society and global context. It is this last element that has a special significance for the Arab world in this phase of its history." (13) In the context of Israel's reoccupation of Palestinian territory, the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and "plans ... being drawn up outside the Arab world for restructuring the area and for reshaping the Arab identity," the 2003 Report emphasized "that reform efforts, which genuinely serve the region's interests, must be initiated and launched from within." (14) The message was unmistakable that facts on the ground indicated a contrary reality throughout the Arab world.

The inclusion of Iraq and Palestine in the initial AHDR by its Arab authors refrained the concept of human development to incorporate Arab cultural and historical terms of reference that transcended liberal parameters. The notion of framing is used in the sense of drawing a discursive border that will define a social problem in a way that links discourse to policy. Refraining in this case subverted the ideological link with neo-liberal economic development policies that was established by the 1990 Human Development Report. In place of the particularization of problems around depoliticized development issues and individual states inherent in the international discourse on human development, the Arab Human Development Reports adopted a contextualist approach informed by the harsh political realities of international politics and economics. Iraq and Palestine emerge as central, collective Arab issues. From the perspective of this critical refraining, the challenge of educational reform and national reconstruction in Iraq can no longer be completely contained within a framework that voids culture and history of their local and regional meanings.

RECONSTRUCTION

Since the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the issue of Iraq's reconstruction has been high on the international agenda. Like the international discourse on human development, the discourse on post-conflict reconstruction is theoretically bound to Western models of sustainable political, economic and social institutions, (15) and ideologically bound to neo-liberal interests. (16) Reconstruction programs focus on political and economic reconstruction in line with the Washington consensus that calls for fiscal austerity for social programs, privatization, and market liberalization. Reconstruction comes under the domain of US-dominated international financial interests, mediated by international agencies such as the World Bank and IMF. (17) Social reconstruction programs focus on relief and rehabilitation programs for women and children and on the physical reconstruction of health and education institutions; they are the domain of humanitarian non-governmental organizations (NGOs) mediated by international agencies such as UNICEF. (18) For Iraq under U.S. occupation, economic reconstruction is even more explicitly under the domain of Corporate America. Since the withdrawal of the United Nations in the wake of the U.S. invasion, social reconstruction programs have been directed by the U.S. military, although the UN and an army of NGOs are likely to re-enter Iraq upon the projected handing over of sovereignty to the Iraqis in June 2004 and the formal ending of the U.S. occupation, even though US occupying forces will remain in Iraq.

Given the conditions of military occupation, the reconstruction of civil society and democratic citizenship are under the suzerainty of external powers and ideologically tied paradigms. These are culturally constructed terms for categories of human experience fashioned in the framework of western institutions. As the post-WWII era experience of Iraq and the Arab world more generally reveals, such transplants all too often produce a cultural backlash that prepares the way for authoritarianism. After more than a quarter century of dictatorship that arose in soil prepared by Western colonization and imperialism, more than a decade of sanctions, and three successive wars and military occupation, what are the chances for the cultural reconstruction of citizenship and civil society, the declared goals of the current reconstruction?

From the perspective of Western discourses on development, culture constitutes an obstacle. This understanding of culture was most clearly articulated in modernization theory, the dominant theoretical paradigm on the post-colonial world throughout the sixties and seventies. Much of the critique of modernization theory, in fact, related to the clear cultural animus it manifested and the program of westernization it justified. The international discourse on human development issued by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP)essentially replaced modernization theory to by providing a humanist cover to screen the Westernizing thrust of externally controlled economic and political development. Modernization theory attacked culture head on. In contrast, the new discourse of human development essentially marginalizes culture, considering culture a suspect collective good that appears illegitimate or diversionary. The neo-liberal framework of human development emphasizes individual choice rather than collective advance and thus pushes culture to the side. This marginalization is reflected in the 35 national and sub-national HDRs for 17 Arab states prepared since the program's inception. In addition, it should be noted that with the acceleration of globalization in the last decades of the 20th century, Western liberalism's ideoological confrontation with cultural barriers to its global hegemony has been militarized with the war on terror, which is widely read, and with good reason, in the Arab Islamic world as a proxy war against Islamic culture and civilization.

The ideological underpinnings of the War on Terrorism reinforce Western notions of non-Western culture as an unwelcome, collective intruder that should be pushed to the margins. In the climate of fear that the War on Terrorism engenders, however, culture increasingly becomes a danger to be confronted with force. Islam, by these lights, is to be set aside with the Western formula of seperating church and state and secularizing society as Ataturk attempted to do in Turkey. If marginalization proves impossible, Islam, understood as a sanctification of violence and terror, is to be fought outright. (19) Iraq and Palestine in this understanding appear as sites in a global war on terrorism, a powerful conception that trumps notions of national reconstruction.

The indigenization of the Arab Human Development Reports challenges the foundations of such views. As we have seen, the Arab authors disturb the liberal premises of the human development framework by introducing Palestine and Iraq as regional political causes. Just as forthrightly, Western misconceptions about Islam are explicitly rejected. "The prevailing Islamic sect in Arab countries has neither a clergy nor a defined church or religious authority. Hence, the separation of church and state is not an issue.... Authority in worldly affairs is civil, based on people's selection of a ruler from several candidates." (20)

These contextual openings to history and culture can be pushed much further. The core question of educational reform, the subject of the second AHDR, takes on quite different dimensions when issues of history and culture are treated frontally rather than within a general framework that casts them as subversive intrusions or bothersome afterthoughts. How does the Iraqi case appear and with what larger implications when, as the Arab authors of the second report indicate, "knowledge does not evolve in a social vacuum but rather in a particular society and global context. It is this last element that has a special significance for the Arab world in this phase of its history." (21) What happens when we bring history and cultural fully back into the analysis? What are the implications of historically and culturally informed findings for strategies of educational reform? We turn now to these Iraqi historical and cultural perspectives, beginning with Iraq's incomparable historical legacy as a center of learning in Islamic civilization.

KNOWLEDGE IN THE SERVICE OF CULTURE: HIGHER EDUCATION UNDER THE ABBASIDS

The frequency of the word "knowledge"--ilm and its derivatives--is second only to the word Allah in the Qur'an. (22) In classical Islamic civilization, the pursuit of knowledge was highly esteemed, second only to the pursuit of justice. In this context, jurists and scholars were accorded high social rank. The golden age of classical Islamic civilization was realized under the Abbasid Dynasty, who founded Baghdad as their capital in A.D. 762. Under the Abbasid's the pursuit of knowledge was championed, and the multi-cultural, multi-ethnic mosaic of Islamic civilization fostered the transcendence of parochialism and intellectual diversity. The production and use of knowledge were neither politicized nor religiously monopolized. Baghdad became the center of remarkable cultural activity and intellectual development cultivated by knowledge from many sources. Ancient Greek science and philosophy texts were collected from the medieval monasteries in Europe and translated. A translation academy was established, Bayt al-Hikmah ("House of Wisdom"), with a library and an observatory. (23) The introduction of the decimal system and the zero from India stimulated the development of mathematical sciences.

Educational standards during the Abbasid era were high. Elementary education, both for boys and for girls, flourished. Theological colleges were maintained, and extension courses from mosques as centers radiated outward to areas beyond. Private, as well as public, libraries were common and contained tens of thousands of books and manuscripts; many of them were available for external borrowing. In addition, one street alone in Baghdad was said to contain a thousand booksellers' shops. Paper, introduced from China via Samarkand, was manufactured in the provinces from vegetable fiber. Learning and education were available to all groups and classes, including slaves and street singers. In 1184, there were 30 independent schools in Baghdad, 20 in Damascus, in addition to an engineering academy and 3 medical schools. While the poor enjoyed free basic education, talented students were offered "state" scholarships large enough to pay for all living expenses in order that the students would concentrate only on learning and excellence. (24) Under the Abbasids, the Islamic educational system divided all subjects, many derived from Greek, Persian and Sanskrit models, into three streams: Islamic studies; humanities; and foreign sciences, which included foreign languages, medicine, mathematics and sciences. The golden age of knowledge was brought to an end with the Mongol destruction of Baghdad in the 13th century. Higher education was not really regenerated until the 20th century, and then only in diminished utilitarian economic and political forms, framed critically by the Abbasid legacy.

KNOWLEDGE IN THE SERVICE OF THE ECONOMY: UTILITARIAN HIGHER EDUCATION UNDER THE MANDATE/MONARCHY

During the Ottoman era, higher education in Iraq was devoted to Islamic religious disciplines, particularly Hanafi legal thought, which was taught in "The School of the Greatest Imam." In 1912, the enrollment was 100 students. (25) In 1922, under the British Mandate, the school was upgraded to a religious university which was called Al al-Bayt University. It was completed in 1924 for the explicit purpose of bridging the gap between the Sunni and Shi'i schools of thought and preparing graduates for posts in the Ministry of Endowments. (26) Similarly, a school of engineering was established to prepare technicians for posts in the Ministry of Public Works; a school of Law for legal clerks; and the school of teachers to prepare the teaching staff for the three basic levels of education: elementary, preparatory and secondary. In 1927, a school of medicine was established, followed by pharmacology, chemistry, and agriculture. All the schools were autonomous in curricula and administration. Attempts to bring them together in a university structure did not succeed until 1956, with the establishment of the University of Baghdad. (27) Throughout this period, the government provided generous support for graduate studies abroad, and thousands of Iraqis pursued advanced graduate studies in the West.

KNOWLEDGE IN THE SERVICE OF THE STATE: POLITICIZED HIGHER EDUCATION IN POST-REVOLUTIONARY IRAQ

The 1958 Revolution led to Iraq's independence and proclamation of the Republic of Iraq. Similar to other Arab revolutions, the slogans of nationalism and social development were raised, while a regime of authoritarian political centralization ensued. The coup of 1968 brought Ba'athist control and the criminal leadership of Saddam Hussein, though initially not all consequences were negative. Education at all levels, for example, experienced rapid expansion throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Many new universities were built.

The nationalization of the Iraqi oil industry and the skyrocketing of oil prices in 1974 afforded the Iraqi government impressive means for social development. As Dilip Hiro points out, "unlike in the Gulf monarchies and in Iran under the Shah, petroleum revenue filtered down to ordinary citizens in Iraq with a strong public sector, extensive free public services, and a large body of small landowners." (28) The nationalist fervor of the Ba'ath, coupled with views of real politik and pragmatism, however, stamped all levels of learning with policies of indoctrination, and transformed the institutions of learning into organs in the service of state apparatus. The very concept of education was politicized to such an extent that university students were transformed into agents of the state, higher studies abroad were given mainly to regime loyalists, and promotion, in general, and among the teaching staff in particular, was more often than not based on political rather than academic merit. As a result of Ba'ath repression, for example, in 1968 alone 288 Iraqi professionals migrated to the West. (29) The "brain drain" continued to accelerate, and in 1975, Law No. 154 was promulgated to motivate the return of the Iraqi scientists and scholars. Only 705 persons with advanced postgraduate degrees returned, but they soon departed because of the plague of ideologized education. (30) With repression intensified by war, then sanctions, in the 1980s and 1990s, there was a tide of emigration from Iraq as everyone who could flee, did. (31) The human consequences of the sanctions were almost unimaginable. Hiro summarizes the findings that "over 500,000 Iraqi children under five had died as result of malnutrition and lack of medicine caused by the UN embargo. (The Iraqi health ministry's statistics were twice as high.)" (32) By the end of the 1990s, there were 500,000 Iraqi emigres in Britain and the U.S., of which about 25,000 held advanced post-graduate degrees. (33)

The sanctions worsened the brain drain and had additional negative effects on education. Sanctions imposed in 1990 targeted educational institutions and scientific research facilities for systematic degradation, banning the import of virtually all educational materials. UNSCOM inspectors cleansed the central libraries of universities, confiscating and burning scientific books. (34) The broader impact of sanctions on education is reflected in the decline of literacy from 90 percent in 1990 to 58 percent in 2003.

KNOWLEDGE IN THE SERVICE OF RECONSTRUCTIO UNDER OCCUPATION: EDUCATION IN POST-SADDAM IRAQ

The Anglo-American invasion of Iraq, and its subsequent occupation, assaulted Iraq's historical identity and incomparable cultural legacy, when the US army failed to deter the widespread looting that should have been foreseen in the wake of the collapse of the regime. Instead of protecting Iraq's cultural and historical treasures, General Tommy Franks, the overall commander of all U.S. and British forces in Iraq, issued an order to unit commanders that specifically prohibited the use of force to prevent looting. As a result, Iraqis and a horrified world saw the unimpeded looting of precious artifacts and monuments, and the burning of the historical manuscripts and irreplaceable documents of the "cradle of civilization." Iraqi libraries had faithfully held these treasures in trust for all humanity, even under the adverse conditions of long years of the criminal regime of Saddam Hussein. Perhaps the most devastating losses for the Iraqi people, and indeed for all peoples, resulted from the ransacking of the National Museum, the greatest trove of archeological and historical artifacts in the Middle East. The 28 galleries of the huge museum were picked clean by looters who made off with more than 50,000 artifacts, relics of past civilizations dating back 5,000 years. The museum's entire card catalog was destroyed, making it impossible even to identify what has been lost. The U.S. military's inaction allowed the ransacking of the museum, just as it failed to prevent the looting of hospitals, universities, libraries, and government social service buildings. The occupation forces protected only the Ministry of Oil, with its detailed inventory of Iraqi oil reserves, as well as the Ministry of Interior, the headquarters of the ousted regime's secret police.

Washington's official rationale for the occupation is to restore Iraq to political, social and economic health. However, the Iraq Observatory (IO) team that recently visited Iraq found that the Coalition Provisional Authority's agenda for Iraq's universities is less committed to developing a system of higher education that will serve as a basis for civil society than it is to counter-terrorism and weapons nonproliferation. Personnel decisions make this case, notably the appointment Andrew Erdmann, the CPA adviser to Iraq's Ministry of Higher Education, answering to Paul Bremer and the Pentagon. The adviser is the de facto head of Iraq's university system, with the power to veto appointments and set budgets. Erdmann's U.S. State Department biography is revealing. In 2000, the Harvard history graduate defended a doctoral dissertation entitled "Americans' Search for Victory in the 20th Century." He has formal preparation in neither Middle Eastern history and politics nor Arabic. A former member of the Secretary of State's policy planning staff, he was responsible for counterterrorism, homeland security, and Central Asian policy. Erdmann also has no training in university management, or practical leadership experience in academic or other settings. (35)

The American occupation authorities insist on four main principles for the reconstruction of Iraqi higher education. These principles derive from a plan drawn up in Washington before the occupation. The four principles are: the "normalization" of Iraq's scientific community; de-Ba'athification; expanded communication and exchange; restructuring, to make Iraq's universities autonomous entities. Erdmann told the IO that the Ministry of Higher Education could be abolished and universities "floated," possibly resulting in their insulation for the political system but also opening up control possibilities for non-Iraqis. (36) The USAID contracts that are to be awarded to U.S. universities to help rebuild the Iraqi system are not a response to Iraqi initiatives, but are based on remote assessments by State Department officials in consultation with representatives of the Iraqi exile community. (37)

KNOWLEDGE IN THE SERVICE OF CULTURE AND HISTORY: THE IUB MODEL

Graham Leonard, the former Dean of Students at the American University of Beirut, sounded the correct note for Iraqi reconstruction when he indirectly rebutted the US National Security Advisor, Condoleezza Rice, with regard to her plans for revitalizing Iraq and the Arab World. Instead of imposing American models, be emphasized a culturally grounded approach that looked to the revival of the free critical thinking of the early Muslims under the Abbasids, for purposes of making the production and dissemination of knowledge an indigenous social product. (38)

There are ways to respond in this fashion to Iraqi needs, although the present configuration of dominant international forces militates against them. Frustrated by these adverse international conditions, yet unwilling to simply watch passively the deterioration in Iraq, the authors of this article have acted as part of a transnational network of Iraqi, Arab, Canadian and international educators that is responding with an independent educational initiative. While past and present performance indicates that the dominant forces of corporate globalization will contribute little to the building of a better Iraq, the information age has also brought the promise of grassroots globalism that is enabling citizens from around the world to cooperate in projects that serve the human interest. Elements of Iraqi civil society, including educators and scholars who have survived the depredations of dictatorship, war, sanctions, and occupation have reached out for global partners. Iraqi civil society cannot wait for resolution of the grand national and international issues, especially at a time of global systemic crisis. Even small and experimental steps to meet the compelling needs of revitalizing Iraqi education must be taken. It is in this spirit, hopeful yet modest, that our transnational collective of educators from Iraq, Canada, the Arab world, and the international community, seek to establish the International University in Baghdad (IUB), first virtually, and later with a campus just outside of Baghdad. Our initial step, now in advanced planning and fundraising stages, will be to launch within a year the Virtual International University in Baghdad (VIUB), with learning centres housed on the campuses of our Iraqi partner universities, beginning with the lead national institution of higher education. Baghdad University.

We launched our collaborative effort with Iraqi, Arab, and Western educators without an agenda imposed by any government, unencumbered by formal links to any established transnational NGOs assigned responsibility for social reconstruction in Iraq, and freed by our commitment to a non-profit model from "bottom line" imperatives. Although aware from the outset that, as with any university anywhere, reasonable accommodation would be necessary to political and economic realities on the local, regional, and international levels, we sought to maximize the scope for creative and flexible thinking attuned to the nuances of a highly volatile situation. We have made several careful strategic choices: first, we avoided identification with the American occupation regime by basing the project in Canada; secondly, we have maximized the prospects for implanting our project firmly in Iraq by adopting a model of active consultation, from design to implementation, with our Iraqi partners in Iraq and in disapora communities around the world.

Even as the museums and libraries of Iraq burned, participants at an April 2003 conference of the International Association of Middle East Studies (IAMES) in Northern Cyprus took stock of the wider consequences of the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq, and of the responsibilities subsequently imposed on the international academic community, as represented in our collective by Iraqi and Arab scholars having personal and institutional direct contacts on the ground in Iraq. We considered the damage to the United Nations, international law, collective security, democratic accountability, and even to the notion of the superiority of reason over violence. We discussed the active complicity of the international community in the long years of horrendous dictatorship and violation of human rights and assaults on civil society in Iraq under Saddam Hussein. We assessed the failure to find alternative means to assist Iraqis in toppling the dictator other than the willful and interested resort to war on demonstrably questionable evidence by the world's sole superpower. American and British scholars were particularly disturbed to be confronted by their governments' violation of international legal and civilizational norms. We understood immediately that in the eyes of most in the Arab and Muslim worlds, the United States and Britain had now cast themselves in the role of outside invaders, evoking in Iraq memories of the Mongols. However greatly the Iraqis had suffered under Saddam, we anticipated their refusal of unilateral foreign invasion, bereft of a clear United Nations mandate, as "liberation."

In the midst of this sense of disorientation and demoralization, the refusal of Canada's Prime Minister, Jean Chretien, to join in the invasion of Iraq outside the sanction of the United Nations, strengthened Canada's unstained reputation in the Middle East, and thrust the Canadian conference participants into an informal leadership role of the scholars assembled in Northern Cyprus. As Paul Heinbecker has eloquently summarized, the Canadians "got it right," and they pursued their own principled courses vis-a-vis Iraq despite American pressure, yet without breaking the strong American-Canadian relationship. (39) In this microcosm of an international congress of specialists on the Arab Islamic world, the values internalized and articulated by the Canadians reflected Canada's constructive international role in the macrocosm. If reason were to rule over violence, the assembled scholars from around the world recognized that Canada and Canadian universities and scholarly institutions had something worthwhile and important to contribute.

Out of our collective deliberations, begun in Northern Cyprus and continued in cyberspace, emerged a proposal to establish the International University in Baghdad as a contribution to reconstruction in Iraq. The IUB will have as its first priority graduate programs of advanced education and research, complemented by a quality liberal arts undergraduate college. Through its teaching and research programs, the university will assist in the building of a strong civil society and democratic state in Iraq that respects the principles of human rights, good governance, transparency, and accountability.

The proposal is animated by the conviction that the process of rebuilding Iraq on democratic foundations must be grounded, inter alia, in the pluralist, rational, and scientific traditions of Islamic civilization. The IUB will draw on the rich and creative traditions of Iraq as a centre of science and learning in the Islamic world for several millennia. It will promote academic freedom that encourages creative engagement with the diverse educational cultures of Iraq, while linking this rich heritage with the global community of scholars, researchers and those engaged with the liberal professions. It is appropriate that Canada, with its own humane, pragmatic, and pluralist traditions, take a key supporting role in supporting this ambitious educational project to revive similar traditions in the Arab Islamic world. It is critical that Iraqi scholars take the lead in assessing needs and shaping the design of programs to meet them in ways that complement and support existing universities.

Even before the recent war, Iraq's once impressive educational resources had been severely depleted: politicization by the regime of Saddam Hussein undermined academic integrity; the protracted conflict with Iran diverted resources from the educational sphere and compromised quality; and the sanctions further damaged the educational system. The recent war brought the destruction of educational infrastructure, museums, libraries and cultural institutions, leaving a vast educational and cultural void. The establishment of the International University in Baghdad will contribute in a modest, yet important, way to overcoming these cumulative damages to Iraqi education. The objectives of IUB are to create a distinctive, non-profit international university, committed to:

* Post graduate education in priority fields

* An integrated liberal arts undergraduate component

* Advanced research in university research centers

The university will gear its graduate, undergraduate and research programs to the pressing demands of national reconstruction as they are defined in consultation with our Iraqi partners. It will do so while forging enduring partnerships with academic institutions around the world. The establishment of a university that is responsive to national needs, but possesses a cultivated international reach, will support the revitalization of the pluralist cultural tradition integral to the civilization of the Middle East region. It will do so while promoting a pragmatic, rational approach in education and its application to problem-solving in the country and the region.

IUB will also assign importance to the challenge of the repatriation of Iraqi intellectual and academic talent, both in the recruitment of the research and teaching staff and in designing programs aimed specifically at early and mid-career professional training. The attraction of these Iraqi human resources is essential for the task of rebuilding. This can only be accomplished by creating a free and creative educational and scientific environment that will sustain their work in Iraq. These returning intellectuals and professionals will in turn provide an important vehicle for the transfer to Iraq of knowledge and technology from the countries across the globe in which they now live and work. The impressive scale of the dispersed talent among exiles is indicated by the fact that informed estimates place some 500 to 1000 Iraqi university professors in Jordan alone. In addition, at least 10 percent of the approximately half million Iraqis currently living in Jordan are highly trained professionals, including doctors, engineers, and lawyers. The Iraqi community in Europe and North America is, similarly, estimated to contain at least 700-1000 professors, along with a high percentage of other trained professionals.

One important focus in the first phase of this project will thus be to offer returning Iraqi graduates a quality education that can assure that their degrees and qualifications are recognized as legitimate throughout the world. The International University in Baghdad will become a centre of excellence that provides an environment for the rigorous engagement of graduates and professionals in key areas. In particular, the proposed university aims to establish a special relationship of mutual support and complementary with Baghdad University. To this end, the re-training and enhancement of the professional qualifications of the personnel of the governmental university system will be one of its explicit education objectives.

The distinctive international character of the project will develop at multiple levels: (a) an academic engagement with global debates and research; (b) an institutional partnership between the International University in Baghdad faculty and university and research centers in various parts of the world; (c) a curriculum and university research agenda that relies on the latest information technologies to acquaint students with global information networks relevant to their field of study and critical for national reconstruction; (d) supportive study abroad arrangements for students; and (e) a visiting professor program to bring scholars from around the world to teach and conduct research.

FIRST STEPS: THE VIRTUAL INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY IN BAGHDAD (VIUB)

As Western specialists in the Middle East and scholars from the Middle East, we from the outset were not persuaded by Bush administration's illusions that American occupation forces would be greeted as liberators in Iraq. Anticipating the active resistance that the occupation would encounter, we decided from the first that the initial phase of building the International University in Baghdad would be virtual. While the conception of the virtual university first took shape in April 2003, we refined and adjusted the notion in consultation with a meeting in Amman of Iraqi educators, convened under the auspicies of HRH Prince Hassan bin Talal who is an active supporter of the project. Encouraged by the Iraqi response to the notion of a virtual campus, we have built a partnership with academic leaders from an Iraqi-Canadian partnership to underwrite the effort. In our planning documents and funding proposals we are proposing that Athabasca University, the recognized Canadian pioneer in distance learning, take the lead from the Canadian side, while Baghdad University, Iraq's pre-eminent national university, provides the site for the first learning centers in Iraq, as nodes of the virtual campus network. Both have responded positively. This partnership strategy ensures that the VIUB will be fully responsive to the educational needs of Iraq. It also provides assurance that essential Canadian educational resources will be provided in the most efficient and mutually beneficial way through distance learning.

The VIUB model of distance learning proposed here takes into account the condition of the information technology infrastructure within Iraq and the goal of producing an international university environment that will engage the academic community within the Iraqi university system. It has at its heart the learning centre. The information technology infrastructure within Iraq is weak. Access to computers and high speed internet connectivity is rare. The learning centers will be sited within existing Iraqi university buildings and will allow Iraqi students and faculty to access the internet through high-speed connections. engaging in classes provided online and in collaborative research projects with the participation from the Canadian and international academic community. They will be a resource for students and local academic faculty, allowing them to engage their peers within Iraq and abroad, while accessing the world knowledge community.

The learning centers will comprise desktop and related computer facilities, linked to a satellite based, high-speed internet connection. Their physical areas must be secure and maintained by qualified staff. It is estimated that 30 workstations at Baghdad University will be sufficient for the initial phase. As demand increases, additional facilities could be added. The computer workstations themselves will be up-to-date basic office-level machines. The learning centers will also have a conference areas with projection, audio and camera resources for internet-based videoconferencing.

Classes within this environment will primarily be offered in a collaborative, asynchronous mode. Local students could access course materials and library resources via the computer workstations and receive tutorial support online from academics and tutors based within and outside Iraq. The conference facility will supplement course activity. In the initial stages of the project, classes will involve students from Baghdad, using the pilot learning centre. As the model in Baghdad proves successful, further centers will be established. Course materials will initially draw on the existing pool of Canadian distance learning courses relevant to Iraq. Subsequently, courses tailored more specifically to Iraqi conditions will be designed jointly by Iraqi and Canadian academics and will respond more directly to the labor market and broader developmental needs, and to the needs of the emerging government and civil society agencies.

The learning centers will also facilitate research collaboration for faculty and advanced students. They will permit access to online library resources and collaborative online facilities to work with colleagues in other universities in Iraq, Canada and around the world.

The VIUB is only one pillar of the larger project but it is one that can be erected now, even in the daunting security conditions that prevail in Iraq today.

CONCLUSION

The Arab authors of the two Arab Human Development Reports exceeded the boundaries set by the discourses of human development and the reconstruction of war-torn societies. Their indigenization of those frameworks introduced cultural and historical dimensions into the analysis that partially subverted the abstract humanism used to mask what ultimately are Western discourses of human development and post-conflict reconstruction, as driven by Western interests. In doing so, they identified openings for projects of reform and renewal that could be at once self-defined and yet open to international collaborations, in the best spirit of classical Islamic civilization.

The IUB project reflects parallel thinking by proposing a network of transnational educators who seek to take action, however modest and limited in scope, on similar theoretical grounds. The transnational network of educators who initiated the project, including their Iraqi members and partners, see the envisioned university as an initiative that aims to build on the partially liberated discursive field identified by the Arab authors of the first, and especially the second, AHDR. It is our aim to demonstrate how that field is not simply a discursive one, but also an arena for constructive social action that contributes to strengthening prospects for democratic development in Iraq through educational reform. We understand our effort as a contribution to the larger task of enlarging prospects everywhere for more equality and more democracy, as essential corollaries of a grassroots globalist vision of a better world. Like the authors of the AHDR, we believe that all "building" in such local fields must be culturally grounded in the indigenous civilizational heritage. It is no contradiction to affirm that any project built in Iraq in the spirit of a "globalization of hope" must ultimately find its roots in the rich cultural soil of Iraq and respond to Iraqi self-defined needs at this difficult juncture in its history.

ENDNOTES

(1.) See Immanual Wallerstein, "New Revolts Against the System" in Tom Mertes, (Ed.), A Movement of Movements (Verso: London, 2004), p. 273.

(2.) This characterization was apparently first used during the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre. Cited by Naomi Klein in "Reclaimig the Commons," in Tom Mertes, (Ed.), A Movement of Movements (Verso: London, 2004), p. 219.

(3.) United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Report, 1990 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), p. iii.

(4.) Ibid: p. iv.

(5.) Ibid: p. 9.

(6.) Ibid: p. 10.

(7.) Klein, p. 220.

(8.) International Monetary Fund, "Globalization: Threat or Opportunity," 12 April 2000 (Corrected January 2002). (www.imf.org/ external/ np/exr/ib/2000/041200.htm) 13 March 2004.

(9.) UNDP, Human Development Report, 1990, p. 14.

(10.) UNDP, Arab Human Development Report 2002, (New York: United Nations Publications, 2002), p. VI.

(11.) Ibid: p. VII. See Chapter 8: Arab Cooperation.

(12.) Ibid: p. 31.

(13.) UNDP, Arab Human Development Report, 2003 (New York: UNDP, 2003), p. 113.

(14.) Ibid: p. III.

(15.) Sultan Barakat and Margaret Chard, "Theories, Rhetoric and Practice: Recovering the Capacities of War-Torn Societies," Third World Quarterly, 23, 5, 2002, pp. 817-835.

(16.) David Moore, "Leveling the Playing Fields and Embedding Illusions: Post-Conflict Discourse and Neo-Liberal Development in War-torn Africa," Review of African Political Economy, 27, 83, March 2000.

(17.) International Monetary Fund, Iraq and the IMF. 2003. Retrieved 12/5/2003 from http://www.imf.org/external/country/IRQ/index.htm Also see, The World Bank Group (2003). Iraq reconstruction. Retrieved 12/5/2003 from World Bank site: http://search.netscape.com/ns/boomframe.jsp? query=World+ bank&page=1&offset=0&result_url=redir%3Fsrc%3Dwebsearch%26amp%3Br equestId%3Dc9538fee35206f0%26amp%3BclickedItemRank%3D1%26amp%3 BuserQuery%3DWorld%2Bbank%26amp%3BclickedItemURN%3Dhttp%253 A%252F%252Fwww.worldbank. org%252F%26amp%3BinvocationType%3-D%26amp% 3BfromPage%3DNSCPIndex&remove_url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww. worldbank.org%2F

(18.) UNICEF (2003). Iraq--Country in crisis. Retrieved 12/5/2003 from UNICEF site at: http://search.netscape.com/ns/ boomframe.jsp?query= UNICEF+Iraq&page=1&offset=0&result_ud=redir%3Fsrc%3Dwebsearch%26a mp%3BrequestId%3D4ea1221f133f65d9%26amp%3BclickedItemRank%3D1% 26amp%3BuserQuery%3DUNICEF%2BIraq%26amp%3BclickedItemURN%3 Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.unicef.org%252Femerg%252Firaq%252F%26 amp%3BinvocationType%3D-%26amp%3BfromPage%3DNSCPIndex& remove_url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.unicef.org%2Femerg%2Firaq%2F

(19.) See Bernard Lewis, What Went Wrong (Phoenix: London, 2002) for a succinct statement of this view influential in the Bush administration..

(20.) AHDR 2003, p. 120.

(21.) UNDP, Arab Human Development Report. 2003 (New York: UNDP, 2003), p. 113.

(22.) Akbar Ahmed, Islam under siege, (United Kingdom: Polity Press, 2003), p. 6.

(23.) http://www.angelfire.com/nt/Gilgamesh/bakgrnd.html

(24.) Naji Ma'rouf and 'Abd al-'Aziz al-Douri, Mujaz Tarikh al-Hadharah al-'Arabiyya, (Baghdad: n.p. 1949), pp. 145-166.

(25.) Hasan al-Dejeli, Taqadum al-Ta'lem al-'Ali fi al-Iraq (Baghdad: Irshad Press, 1963), pp.1-2.

(26.) Ibid: p. 10.

(27.) Ibid: pp. 220-225 and the introduction.

(28.) Dilip Hiro, Iraq: In the Eve of the Storm (New York: Thunder's Mouth Press/Nation Books, 2002), p. 159.

(29.) Ibid: p. 15.

(30.) Ibid: pp. 22-23.

(31.) Nader 'Abd al-Ghafour, Al-'uqoul al-Iraqiyya al-Muhajerah baina al-Istenzaf wa al-Istithmar, (England: Al-Rafed Agency, 2003), pp. 19-22.

(32.) Hiro, p. 143.

(33.) Ibid: p. 27.

(34.) Michael Wolff, "How Sanctions Destroy Iraqi Education," CounterPunch, 22 February 2003 in http://www.counterpunch.org/wolff 02222003.html

(35.) See Opening the Doors, The Iraqi Observatory, http://www.h-net.org/about/press/opening doors/text.rtf, p. 25.

(36.) The IO reports: He suggested that the Ministry of Higher Education may eventually be abolished and universities "floated." Presumably this would insulate Iraqi academia from the country's political structure, while at the same time provide additional opportunities for control and oversight by non-Iraqis, p. 27.

(37.) Rania Masri, "American policy in Iraq: educational imperialism," The Daily Star, 30 August 2003, in http://www.casi.org.uk/discuss/2003/ msg04204.html

(38.) Ibid. Graham Leonard in http://www.lebanonwire.com/ 0308/03081514DS.asp

(39.) Paul Heinbecker, "Canada Got It Right." Globe and Mail, 19 March 2004.

Jacqueline Ismael is Professor of Social Work, and Tareq Y. Ismael is Professor of Political Science, both at the University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Raymond William Baker is Professor of International Politics at Trinity College, Haverford, Connecticut, and Adjunct Professor of Political Science at the American University in Cairo.