Between a rock and a hard place
Scientists in Iraq are coming under intensified scrutiny from coalition authorities frustrated by their inability to uncover any weapons of mass destruction, writes Nermeen Al-Mufti from Baghdad
Where are those weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) in Iraq which provided the convenient pretext for invading Iraq? Now that Tony Blair has admitted in front of the British Parliament the difficulty of finding WMDs in Iraq, the Bush administration is quietly shifting the emphasis from finding the elusive WMDs themselves to searching for more circumstantial evidence regarding Iraq's WMD programme.
This change in strategy means that the Americans are finally convinced that there are no WMDs currently in Iraq, but still they must find a face-saving formula. The growing witch hunt for Iraqi scientists should be perceived within this context. One such maligned scientists is Dr Huda Ammash, labelled by the Pentagon as "Mrs Anthrax", arrested on 3 May and accused of developing biological weapons.
Her husband Dr Ahmed Makki said in an interview with Al-Ahram Weekly that in 1994 Ammash received the Shoman Prize for Young Arab Scientists, awarded to a single scientist no older than 40, and given out by one of the most prestigious independent Arab institutes. Makki believes that this testifies to the public, benign nature of her scientific research, while Scott Ritter and others have reported that Iraq was devoid of any biological weapons programmes. He feels that Ammash was arrested for political reasons, seeing as she had co-authored a damning study on the lingering, carcinogenic side effects on soldiers and civilians of the depleted uranium shells that were used in Iraq in 1991. Whatever the reason, Ammash is still in the airport detention camp, the place Iraqis refer to as Guantanamo.
Meanwhile, many Iraqi scientists and university professors are reporting endless harassment by the American forces and intelligence apparatuses. An Iraqi scientist under investigations by the coalition forces who preferred to stay anonymous said: "First a team led by Colonel Robert Cadlack called the Scientific Assessment Team interviewed us at Baghdad University.... After a while, the team was replaced by a Pentagon team, and the interviews became interrogations. Then the team was changed again, this time it was a CIA team. After the anthrax investigation, they moved to smallpox. They refuse to understand that we are biologists and such weapons needed virologists. And despite the fact that our labs for the past decade had been under continuous monitoring, they still act as if they don't know anything."
Moreover, many scientists now are afraid of being abruptly imprisoned without access to family, friends and legal aid. Armed plainclothes Americans seized Dr Alice Krikore, the head of the biotechnology department in Baghdad University from her office. She disappeared for two weeks and nobody knew her whereabouts. After her eventual release, it transpired that she had been detained and interrogated in the airport. Dr Hazim Al-Rawi of Baghdad University's Medical School is still under arrest, denied all visitors, including family members. Al-Rawi had been interrogated in his house several times before he was arrested. Dr Anton Sabri, of the School of Veterinary Medicine arrested a week ago, is still under arrest. And while the search for evidence of any WMD programme continues, most Iraqi scientists are now afraid of being arrested.
A prominent Iraqi scientist who preferred to remain anonymous said: "The Americans tried financial incentives first, now they are using detention to force scientists to give information. The irony in all this is that many scientists were not hostile to the idea of being interviewed by foreign experts, the humiliation of the arrests, and the witch hunt will surely turn them against those who want to solicit their cooperation."
To add insult to injury, the Iraqi Interim Governing Council has not uttered a word against this witch hunt. And many Iraqis now feel that when the new academic year begins, Iraqi universities will have lost most of its senior teaching staff -- if not for their alleged involvement in the WMDs programme, then as victims of the deba'athification programme.
