The Islamic State is shelling the University of Mosul from across the Tigris, and the echoes of machine-gun fire bounce off the skeletal frames of its burned buildings. On a morning in early March, Qutaiba, a graduate who studied here nearly four decades ago, sits under an orange tree that is shedding its overripe fruit with gentle plops. (He asked that for his safety we use only his first name.) The ear-splitting boom of a mortar landing close by rattles the shell of the nearby civil-engineering building. But even as Qutaiba winces, he shrugs, a smile pulling at the corners of his mouth.
“This isn’t the first time the University of Mosul has seen war,” he says. He ticks off internal and external conflicts Iraq has either instigated or been visited by since the 1960s, with enemies becoming allies, turning hostile or faithful on a rotating basis. “Each time, the students and faculty put the pieces back together by themselves,” he says, implying that once more, sheer grit and determination will carry the day to restore the campus, this time gleefully gutted from the inside out by the Islamic State.
The black-and-white flags of the Islamic State first waved over the university during the summer of 2014, cloaking what was once a regional beacon of internationalism in ideological darkness. Its class offerings were culled in direct proportion to the Islamic State’s increased control of the areas they had conquered during their blitz across Iraq. Eventually, the university shuttered completely. This past January, soldiers from the Iraqi Army and other groups reclaimed the campus after fierce fighting and gently turned the flags upside down, a gesture simultaneously signifying the defeat of the Islamic State and respect for the proclamation of Muslim faith emblazoned on its flags.
As his eyes take in a scene of spent shells and split trees, Qutaiba is reminiscing about how boys and girls used to date and sneak around — he knew all the best places — when a heavily armed convoy full of impeccably mustachioed Iraqi generals turns a corner and stops tersely a few feet in front of us. A coterie of aides de camp sets up an impromptu rest stop, tea materializes out of the sudden burst of activity, and each general busily answers phones stacked four to each hand. After a few moments, a man in desert camouflage approaches and hands us a few bottles of water. His boots crunch on the carpet of broken cement, tile, and wood splinters created by consistent American and Iraqi airstrikes on most roads here, aimed at foiling car-bomb attacks on advancing forces. A three-star general joins him, and, learning we are interested in higher education, offers his take.
“There are four pillars of higher education in Iraq,” he states crisply. “These are the public universities in Sulaimani, Mosul, Baghdad, and Basra. When one of them is down, all of Iraq is down. But when they are all standing, Iraq is standing.”
He gestures to an approaching convoy of U.S. advisers, their nationality betrayed only by American baseball-team caps. “And the Americans have been so helpful in killing members of the Islamic State, we trust they will be equally helpful in helping us begin this process of reconstruction and rebirth.”
That trust may be misplaced. Though there is widespread agreement in international development circles that education is a critical part of restoring some modicum of civil society and normalcy after conflict, international donor agencies and their respective governments in the last decades have generally preferred to invest in short-term, tangible projects to demonstrate to constituents back home that their funds are having an immediate impact. It’s easier to sell a water pump with a picture of a smiling beneficiary than a scholarship that may or may not produce a leader in 20 years. Stir in donor fatigue, skeptical taxpayers, and budget cuts in Western governments traditionally supportive of development efforts, and it is a formidable challenge to ensure that Iraqi students, just a few decades ago some of the most highly educated in the region, get back to their studies.
Abey Saied Al-Dewachi, the University of Mosul’s president, wants to open the university in a month or two. Now working outside the city, he is waiting for the Iraqi government to complete a feasibility assessment. Though his own building was leveled by an Iraqi airstrike that killed at least a dozen high-level Islamic State leaders who were meeting inside, he’s not deterred. “Of course I’m optimistic about the future. What else can we do? We will do our best. Mosul needs its universities.”
A 2013 graduate named Omar guides us down wide boulevards shadowed by palm trees, eager to practice his English after living for two years under the Islamic State. He points out the classrooms where he studied for his graduate degree in chemistry, all now blackened by fire. Stepping over a fighting berm dug by Islamic State members and navigating unexploded ordinance, we arrive at the university’s central library as another mortar explodes on campus. Though desperate librarians are said to have grabbed the rare-book collections out of the rooms before the Islamic State arrived — a maneuver they first executed in 2003 as the Americans invaded, in anticipation of widespread looting — the more than 100,000 books and accompanying records that remained have all been turned to ash, burned as blasphemous. Miscellaneous pages of books drift gently on the breeze blowing through the charred skeleton of the library.
We gingerly step past the warped metal frame of what was the central library welcome booth, the smell of fire still in the air. We don’t walk upstairs for fear of mines. The ceilings reveal only blackened concrete, all piping, wiring, and venting ripped off for sale elsewhere.
Ducking through an open window riddled with bullet holes we cross a small path and arrive in the student center. A Coca-Cola sign is advertising fresh beverages for stressed students, and in the bookstore, those volumes spared in the flames yield insight into the erstwhile concerns of University of Mosul students: stress management, time management, and managing social-media accounts. A half-buried unexploded mortar greets us as we walk out the back door.
Across the expansive campus, we pass an unblemished mosque encased in gleaming white marble, and a guard hut that looks to have been evacuated quickly, with Qurans and bullets scattered across the floor. A piece of pipe cut with a small mirror jammed in it makes a primitive device to look around walls. A hanging educational poster and a notice to students about using their cellphones in the classroom have been covered by a piece of paper listing the Prophet Muhammad’s wives, extended family, and successors. Omar, initially loquacious, has spoken less and less the more he has seen of his campus, so we are accompanied only by the sounds of distant explosions and the nearby chirps of birds enjoying the sun.
We return to Qutaiba, still sitting and watching Iraqi troops, backed by Iranians whom University of Mosul graduates fought during the Iran-Iraq War, paired with American advisers that Mosul graduates also fought in Kuwait. Leaving the campus, we pass walls with "#you’re welcome” graffiti written by Kurdish special forces, whom University of Mosul graduates also fought in the last decades. Qutaiba turns philosophical. “War takes everything and gives nothing,” he says. “Iraq has given everything and received nothing. This is the way of war.”
He turns to look back at the campus once more. “The students need help,” he says. “And this time, they need hope.”
Matt Trevithick, a former employee of the American University of Iraq at Sulaimani, is a co-founder of SREO, a regional-development consultancy.
