*Inter Press Service*
Dahr Jamail and Ali Al-Fadhily

*BAGHDAD, Nov 18 (IPS) - The recent kidnapping of scores of academics in
Baghdad highlights the desperate situation of the educational system in
occupied Iraq.*

Armed men wearing Iraqi police uniforms abducted as many as 150
academics from the Ministry of Higher Education on Tuesday.

Alaa Makki, the head of the Parliament's education committee called the
action a "national catastrophe" and the minister of higher education,
Abed Dhiab al-Ujaili, announced that teaching in all of Baghdad's
universities would be halted "until we find out what happened," and
because "we are not ready to lose more professors."

While 70 of the academics have been released since then, others remain
missing.

Academics, along with other professionals, have been increasingly
targeted by sectarian violence which continues unchecked across much of
Iraq. Thousands of professors and university researchers have long since
fled the war-torn country.