Iraqi Campus Is Under Gang’s Sway

Imagine working at an institution with the kinds of problems the staff at Mustansiriya University (Iraq) are coping with. A violent gang of students, with support from faculty and campus security:

Although Baghdad and most other areas of the country are now generally free of the armed militias that caused much of the violence during Iraq’s sectarian warfare, Mustansiriya seems a remnant of that chaos. It is under the sway of an armed group of violent Shiite students in engineering, literature, law and other disciplines; faculty members; and campus security guards.

[P]rofessors and administrators at the school solemnly give the names of colleagues and students who were threatened by the group before being found dead: Jasim al-Fahaidawi, a professor of Arabic literature, shot dead at the university’s entrance in 2005; Najeb al-Salihi, a psychology professor, kidnapped in 2006 near the campus and found in the morgue three weeks later, shot to death; and Jasim Fiadh al-Shammari, a psychology professor fatally shot near the university, also in 2006.