BAGHDAD: One month into the new academic year and education at the sprawling University of Baghdad is as near to normal as it has been for years — the grisly murders of two professors and two students aside.

Educators at the tree-lined, garden-sprinkled campus on the banks of the Tigris River are upbeat that 2007-2008 will restore the university’s reputation for excellence that it has enjoyed since it was established 50 years ago.

Student numbers — both Shia and Sunni — are back to near capacity, they say, many vacant lecturing posts have been filled and the kind of sectarian violence in Baghdad which virtually wrote off last year’s academic efforts has dipped significantly.

“We could say the situation is about as normal as is possible, given the circumstances,” said a 24-year-old lecturer in soil science, who despite his bubbling optimism would give his name only as Salah and declined to be photographed.

“Last year was the worst ever — sometimes no one would turn up for lectures for an entire week.

On average we had eight to 10 students out of around 20 arriving for laboratory. This year it is around 15. Sometimes we even get a full class of 20,” said Salah, sporting a striped orange shirt and slicked-back hair.

“There has been a vast improvement in the security situation,” he said, repeating a refrain that has begun to echo right across the Iraqi capital.

US commanders attribute the fall in bombings, shootings and death squad murders to a ‘surge’ of an extra 28,500 American troops on the streets of Baghdad and its surrounding violent belts since June.

The more cynical say the city of four million people has simply been polarised into a maze of Shia and Sunni enclaves off limits to anyone from a rival sect and that the ‘ethnic cleansing’ of neighbourhoods is more or less complete.

“Up in an expansive office on the 13th floor of the campus administration, university media director Dr Intisar al-Suaidi does her best to paint a bright picture of education in 2007-2008 but admits she doesn’t yet have the statistics to give more than mere broad brushstrokes.—AFP