BAGHDAD -- Like many students, Masar Sarhan took full advantage of the new freedoms that swept over Baghdad University two years ago. The pharmacy major joined the Dawa party and became a tireless campus activist for the long-suppressed religious and political rights of Shiite Muslims.
So it was not unusual for Sarhan to organize a celebration of the new, Shiite-led national government of Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari, a Dawa party stalwart. During the May 2 campus event, however, Sarhan exchanged heated words with a staffer from the office of the dean of the pharmacy school. Some accounts say the two men parted angrily; others say the tiff was resolved amicably.
Whatever happened, Sarhan, 24, was gunned down a few hours later while sitting in his parked car a few blocks from his home, according to family members and friends. One of them said the gunman emerged from another car and pumped two bullets into Sarhan's neck and one into his head.
The next day, Sarhan's fellow students, most of them Shiites, demonstrated at the university's Bab al-Muaddam campus. Assuming that Sarhan's Shiite activism had made him a target, they blamed former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party for Sarhan's death and demanded a more aggressive purge of onetime Baathist professors, most of whom are Sunni Muslims.
The march turned into a riot when some participants -- described by several witnesses as non-student "outsiders" -- sacked administrative offices, overturning furniture and breaking windows. Police officers were called. Classes were canceled for the rest of the week as students pressed their demands amid large posters that captured their sentiments: "A Baathist Professor Means a Backward Society" and "Debaathification is Necessary for Building a New Iraq."
"There is no doubt that the Baathists" killed Sarhan, said Salem Ahmad Azzar, 24, a fourth-year student and protester. "There are many who did not like the idea of the celebration because they are Baathists, and they don't like Jafari and the new Iraq. There are many of them everywhere, as we can see every day with the car bombs and explosions and killing of police and National Guard. Who is doing all that? Is it only [Abu Musab] Zarqawi? No, it is the Baathists who lost power and want to come back."
Sarhan's still-unsolved slaying and its aftermath highlight the deep divide between Shiites and Sunnis in Iraqi society, which is especially evident when it comes to the matter of how to treat those who -- willingly or not -- were once part of Hussein's ruling party.
As Iraq's preeminent educational center, Baghdad University was a Baathist redoubt in Hussein's coercive one-party state. Professors and students had to register as party members. Also, the Sunni Arab minority that was favored by Hussein's government was overrepresented among the student body.
In the initial days of the U.S. occupation, many university faculty members were fired because of their links to the Baath Party. Later, Iraq's interim constitution, written under the U.S. occupation, established the Supreme National Commission for De-Baathification to deal with cases on an individual basis and according to set guidelines. The group's work has been controversial. Sunni Arabs widely regard it as unfair and partisan; many Shiites see it as ineffective.
These divergent views were evident at Baghdad University after Sarhan's killing. Jaafer Kaabi, a chemistry professor and a Shiite, told al-Mada newspaper that "the university has reinstalled many Baathist professors, which has enraged the student ranks."
But Mustafa Hiti, a Sunni who is dean of the pharmacy school, disputed that assertion in an interview. At least as far as his school is concerned, he said, "five Baathist professors . . . were reinstated with the approval of the De-Baathification Commission, but not to their original posts."
As for himself, Hiti said, "I am not a Baathist, nor was I in the past."
