Selected Articles

Wiring for the Future: The Use of the Internet to Overcome Isolation in Iraqi Kurdistan
3 July 2001

Michael Rubin is a 2000 - 2001 Carnegie Council Fellow. This article is based upon his observations and interviews during his nine-month residence in northern Iraq.

Neglected by Baghdad for decades, Iraqi Kurdistan is among the world's most politically isolated regions. Yet the recent revolution in information technology promises to bring remarkable changes to the way people in this essentially autonomous region relate to one another and to others throughout the world. The transformation will be particularly acute in the sphere of higher education, where decades of authoritarian government, a stagnant curriculum, and the practice of rote memorization have created a culture that devalues students' use of their analytical ability.

Moreover, the adaptation of the new technology will dissolve many current misconceptions and ill-informed expectations people have of the Internet. Sophomores at Dohuk University, for example, raised in a system where it was forbidden to question sources, insist that all material published on the Internet must be of good quality, because "it was published, after all." Many professors and even department chairmen have inflated hopes that the Internet will overcome material shortages, believing that the texts of all books and academic journals are freely available on the Internet. When they learn that this is not the case, some dismiss the new technology. Beliefs such as these may complicate the acceptance of the new medium - but they cannot prevent it altogether.

Three universities operate in northern Iraq: Sulaymani University, Dohuk University, and Salahuddin University in Irbil. While all maintain Internet centers, in many ways their administration and pedagogical methods still reflect the conservatism of a people who have lived under conditions of extreme repression. Most Iraqi Kurdistanis only have experience in Saddam Hussein's Iraq and in Iran (where many fled and lived for years following the 1975 Algiers Agreement). Many professors and university administrators received their training in the former Soviet Union; only a handful of professors at each university received degrees in the United States or Great Britain. This provincialism is reflected in the fact that, faced with an uncontrolled source of information, university administrations have focused on the issues of access and control.

Since its establishment as a "safe haven" after the Gulf War, northern Iraq has been divided between two political parties, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP); all three universities are managed by one or the other of these parties. The KDP-run Salahuddin and Dohuk Universities were the first to offer limited Internet access, as both have greater financial resources than PUK-run Sulaymani. Salahuddin University now boasts computer centers in most of its constituent colleges, though the university president and several of the college deans have hesitated to allow access to students. Dohuk University allows all professors and graduate students access to its Internet centers, and the president has promised undergraduates access beginning in summer 2001. PUK-controlled Sulaymani University initially trailed behind its two sisters in creating an Internet center, but it just opened a twelve-hour-per-day, thirty-computer facility this March that is available to students and faculty at all levels.

Given the current conditions of the institutions of higher education in northern Iraq, one can safely predict that the impact of the Internet upon them will be immense. The educational system in both PUK- and KDP-administered areas is both rigid and antiquated. As elsewhere in the Middle East, the pedagogy discourages independent thinking: professors often read lectures to students, who copy and memorize them verbatim. While some students clearly thirst for knowledge, many professors remain unqualified by Western standards, their degrees having been given in Iraq or the former Soviet bloc - often less for academic merit than for political expediency. Curricula have changed little for years, as primary research is rare and professors have no incentive to update their information. At Sulaymani and Salahuddin Universities, for example, students still learn BASIC in computer class, though the programming language has not been used for more than fifteen years. Few students know how to use a mouse, let alone word-processing software.

Another important effect - though it may be more difficult to track - will be the acquisition of the English language by Kurds. In Sulaymaniyyah, which suffered disproportionately the trauma of the repression - summary executions, retaliation during the guerrilla conflict, and nearby chemical attacks in the 1980s - Kurdish authorities virtually ceased serious Arabic instruction. As a result, much of the youngest generation speaks only Sorani Kurdish. In Irbil and Dahuk, Arabic is more widely employed, though English is commonly understood by the more educated as the Iraqi university system teaches science and medicine primarily in English. Since some 70 percent of Web sites are in English, the Internet promises to help transform English into northern Iraq's second language. This would, in turn, aid the region in overcoming its intellectual isolation, while also widening the mental wedge between the burgeoning civil society in the north and the repressed society in areas of Iraqi government control.

The unprecedented access to information has created challenges for a society trying to emerge from decades under Baathist dictatorship. Dohuk University's actions have shown that it is sometimes difficult to abandon the culture of control. This past March, it installed Starr Surveillance software to ensure that students and university personnel use computers "properly." Not only will the surveillance software monitor Web sites visited, it will also record all keystrokes, compromising both e-mail account passwords and all word-processed documents. Foreigners will be limited to a single computer. Internet center officials will not define what "proper" means, nor divulge who specifically will receive reports of the computer use. Because northern Iraq retains a state-centered economy, such information may be used to determine the "loyalty" of potential hires; it may also be used to ensure that only politically acceptable candidates are admitted to higher-degree programs. Dohuk University's decision has been criticized and - to the KDP's credit - will likely be reversed.

Just as the small measure of openness afforded by new information technologies may help erode isolation in northern Iraq, it also forces northern authorities to negotiate the dilemmas of globalization and liberalization faced by many other parts of the world that are emerging from authoritarian regimes. In particular, managing the modernization of education in a region where pedagogy has been stagnant for decades is one of the crucial elements in the process. How well the Kurdish political parties in northern Iraq will be able to handle the transition to the Internet age remains to be seen, but events of the last few months give cause for optimism.