Iraqis Welcomed At Student Conference

Even after missing their flight out of Baghdad, waiting at customs for five hours, and missing another connecting flight out of Chicago, six Iraqi students arrived in time for the opening ceremonies of the Harvard National Model United Nations (HNMUN) conference Thursday evening and received a full minute of applause from the 2,200 other students in attendance.

The visitors were Iraq’s first-ever representatives to the annual HNMUN conference, which brings students from around the world together to simulate the United Nations.

Arwa Nazar Hamdan, one of the University of Baghdad students, said she was surprised to receive such a warm welcome, since she had expected to be viewed as a terrorist.

“The [American] military back home treats us with hostility,” Hamdan said. “I can see it in their eyes that they look at us as suspects.”

From this early encounter, Iraqi students had the chance to dispel their misconceptions of America—and Americans’ misconceptions of them—at a series of events throughout the weekend.

Iraqi student Quasay Mehdi Hussein said this was the first time the students attended a conference where they could speak their minds freely without being told what to say. He added that he spent more time informally talking with other delegates than participating in the conference itself.

In one of these conversations, Hussein spoke on Thursday with Shira Kaplan ’08, an Israeli student, at a reception hosted by the Center for Middle Eastern Studies. The two students discussed the future of their region and how to teach tolerance for “the other side,” Kaplan said.

“As an Israeli, it was a rare opportunity to meet Iraqi people,” Kaplan recalled later.

Events throughout the weekend also allowed the students to share their perspectives on life in war-torn Iraq and the effects of the U.S. invasion.

At a panel discussion at Lamont Library yesterday, the Iraqi students’ faculty advisor, University of Baghdad professor Hamdan, said he believed the vast majority of Iraqis had opposed Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship. But he added that since Saddam Hussein’s overthrow, everyday life in Iraq had been marked by danger, difficulty traveling, and scarcity of goods.

“We never imagined that one day we’d come and have to line up for gasoline,” Nazar Hamdan said of life under Saddam Hussein’s regime. “We never experienced a shortage of anything.”

But Hussein, a graduate student at the University of Baghdad, emphasized that Saddam Hussein’s departure had empowered the Iraqi people.

“We have some democracy [now]. Under Saddam you weren’t allowed to think for yourself,” he said.

Other students at the panel echoed Nazar Hamdan’s description of a post-Saddam Iraq plagued by insecurity.

“We never feel 100 percent safe in going to university and coming back,” said Arwa Hamdan, Nazar Hamdan’s daughter. “Any second, anything could happen. We’ve had several occasions where we’re sitting in lecture and explosions would happen nearby and windows would break.”

“A girl in my class was shot. Her dad was a member of the Baath party,” Arwa Hamdan added. “You’re risking your life every time you go to university. But we have to continue.”

She added that the visit to America had underscored the contrast between the two nations.

“That’s the thing we noticed when we first got here—that there were no roadside bombs going off and no explosions,” she said.

In addition to representing the country of Austria at the U.N. simulation and participating in discussions and receptions, the Iraqi students also had time this weekend to sample American food, attend a dance for HNMUN delegates, and even take part in their first-ever snowball fight.

“By any measure you could have, it was definitely a success,” said HNMUN’s Secretary General Matthew R. Smith ’05. “Not only for the delegates, but for all the people in the Harvard community that got to interact with them.”

He added that this year’s conference was the largest ever held.

Student delegates from Providence College—who represented Iraq at the conference—were especially interested in speaking to the Iraqi visitors, and even went out to dinner and exchanged phone numbers with them, according to Dhruv Taneja ’07, a board member of the International Relations Council, which sponsored the conference.

“It was so unique to get their insider student perspective,” said Taneja, who organized the Iraqi delegates’ on-campus events. “They’re not anti-American. Their suggestions are about how to create a new Iraq.”

At a dinner Sunday night sponsored by the Society of Arab Students, Harvard Foundation for Intercultural and Race Relations Director S. Allen Counter emphasized the importance of bringing international student leaders to campus.

“It’s a remarkable success where students are able to act as diplomats and set the tone for international relations for the future,” Counter said. “I would hope this could be used as an example of reaching out to educate and share and create a new generation of educators.”

—Staff writer Victoria Kim can be reached at vkim@fas.harvard.edu.