Professor shares Baghdad experiences

Kathleen Namphy cuts a similar figure to Anna Leonowens, whose famed stint teaching the king of Siam's children in the mid 1800s distinguished her as something of a cultural pioneer.

Namphy, who graduated from the UW in 1954, has been set apart in a similar way.

Despite the rumors of American invasion and war running rampant throughout Iraq, Namphy, an English professor at Stanford, accepted a spot as a guest professor at the University of Baghdad in the fall of 2002. She was the sole American to do so that year.

During her tenure in Iraq, Namphy was able to take the country's pulse. Her reflections of teaching in Baghdad in times of war and peace have given her a unique perspective of the conflict in the Middle East -- and what could be done to alleviate it.

As Namphy spoke before a packed classroom in Thompson Hall yesterday afternoon, she painted a picture of a country rich in cultural heritage but torn apart by political factors that it has no control over.

"Iraqis feel betrayed," Namphy said. "There was a major disappointment that, after Saddam Hussein fell, the U.S. didn't move out. Ask an Iraqi for their opinions and conspiracy theories abound."

In the wake of the Gulf War, the United Nations imposed sanctions on Iraq that depleted the country's once rich treasury. The United Nations renewed its sanctions last July. Iraq has been left a war-torn and impoverished country, with an unemployment rate approaching 70 percent, according to Namphy.

"Health care was probably the most tragic casualty of the sanctions, especially with the cancers of many kinds that are known to be related to the bombings in 1991 and 1998," she said. "The consequences of the geranium bombs have yet to be seen, but from what I have seen in the pediatric wards, which stretch for blocks and blocks in Baghdad, they will be even worse."

Namphy strives to raise awareness of the situation in Iraq among Americans. She said while The New York Times runs frequent updates of American casualties in Iraq, Iraqi casualties are not even counted.

"The disregard was chilling to me," she said. "Casualties are human beings, whether they are Americans or Iraqis."

In her last year as an undergraduate at the UW, Namphy traveled with the Model United Nations club to San Francisco to attend a conference, shortly after the United Nations signed its charter in the same place. It was, she said, one of the most inspiring experiences of her life.

"I follow with interest and some disappointment the diminishing authority of the U.N. to do what its charter has recommended it to do," she said. "If you read the charter, think about its promises and how they can yet be fulfilled."