A Death of A Great Iraqi
Yesterday morning we lost a great man: Dr Issam Al-Rawi, a geology scientist and in the same time a moderate Sunni who used to make the gap between the Sunnis and Shiites leading personalities smaller.
Just a while before being attacked, Al-Rawi was on TV interview urging the Iraqis to comply with Mecca Code leaving aside the sectarian violence. He was attacked in Al-Dawoodi neighborhood, west Baghdad, where his house is, shortly after leaving his home toward the Baghdad University. Two other profs were with him; the both were wounded. The attack took place yesterday morning (Oct 30). The killers blocked his way then began shooting him. (According to the eyewitnesses Al-Rawi who used to go every where without bodyguards; a white four wheel drive vehicle - Land Cruse 2004- almost used by the high-ranking officials in the ministry of the interior affairs and this vehicle is the “trade mark” of the Shiite death squads backed by the some high-ranking officers and officials inside the ministry; there were four persons in the car, the driver, one was protecting the other two who shot Al-Rawi and the car escaped in front of a National Guards check point toward Al-Mansour area. Many previous reports confirmed that the former minister of the interior, the minister of finance now, Bayan Jabr and the former Prime Minister Al-Jaafari, gave tens of such vehicles to the death squads.)
According to his friends and family, the Death Squads were after his assassination. But I think the following:
• The occupation forces and the “Iraqi” police special forces raided his office ( the League of the Iraqi Universities Profs) which was established by him to defend the profs rights and lives, on Oct 19 (the Iraqi police special forces are almost Shiites; many reports confirmed its links with death squads). He issued a communiqué on Oct 28 condemning the raid through which the doors were broken, the literary was messed; the office of Al-Rawi- the president of the league and his deputy office were searched. He finished the communiqué saying, “we are putting I front of the nobles in the world and the patriot Iraqis some of the acts of the alleged democracy and liberation.”
• He taught in Erbil University from the late eighties till April 2003; there he began relation with the Islamic Kurdish parties; he kept the relation till his martyrdom. (the two leading Kurdish parties PUK of Talbani and PDK of Barzani) have no good relation with the Islamist Kurds who are opposing the relation with US and Israel.
• Many parties in Iraq; especially Al-Qaeda and Mahdy army are trying to shut down the education system in Iraq, while Al-Rwai was insisting to go to the school of science- geology departments where he was a prof. (by the way the first PhD was given in geology in Baghdad University was given to Al-Rawi in the late seventies).
Those criminals who killed Al-Rawi, hit many birds by one stone:
They killed the most moderate voice in the Association of the Moslem Scholars; they killed a leading Sunni personality who used to visit and talk with the Shiite clerics and they killed the prof who led the league that used to defend them; i.e.; the whole profs are an open target.
by the killing of Al-Rawi, the toll of Iraqi profs and academics who were killed under the ocupation became 300!!
the painful thing is the WORLD is still wtching the Hell in Iraq without thinking even in saying a word of sorry to the Iraqis. What does the world waite for?