BAGHDAD, IRAQ - The office of Iraq's most eminent cardiologist is padlocked. A handwritten sign is taped on his wooden door in the private clinic in Baghdad: Patients of Dr. Omar Kubasi should call him in Amman, Jordan.
There, Kubasi, 63, spends his days sitting at a cafe with other physicians and professionals from Iraq. Frustrated, he watches from afar as the medical education system he helped set up during his 36-year career slowly disintegrates. His teaching doctors are fleeing the country in fear.
Deteriorating situation
Younger physicians are looking for other countries to train in. Even patients are leaving, no longer confident in the care they can get in Iraq.
"I think it's part of the plan for the country's destruction," Kubasi said by telephone. "The situation in the last six months has gotten so bad, we couldn't continue."
Kubasi left Baghdad in May after he and nine other doctors received letters, written in a childlike hand, telling them they would be killed if they did not stop working in their native Iraq. He and his colleagues had been the objects of threats before, but the last carried a foreboding urgency, he said.
Iraq's top professionals — doctors, lawyers, professors — and businessmen have been targeted by shadowy political groups for kidnapping and ransom, as well as killing, some of them say. So many have fled the country that Iraq is in danger of losing the core of skilled people it needs most as it is trying to build a newly independent society.
"It's creating a brain drain," said Amer Hassan Fayed, assistant dean of political science at Baghdad University. "We could end up with a society without knowledge. How can such a society make progress?"
Professionals and businessmen with the means to escape are going to Jordan, Syria, Egypt or, if they have visas, to Western countries. Those left behind say they feel abandoned.
Exodus is not new to the country. Iraqis who could flee Saddam Hussein's repressive rule did: Poor Shiite Muslims sneaked across the border into Iran, and Sunni Arabs crossed the mountains into Syria or the desert to Jordan.
Some reconsider return
Many of those emigres flooded back into Iraq when Saddam fell. But the country's instability and daily regimen of violence have made some reconsider their return. Others who stayed throughout Saddam's rule are saying goodbye to their homeland now.
Numbers are impossible to document, partly because those who leave often tell passport officials they are going out of the country for a short visit.
Since the fall of Saddam, kidnapping has mushroomed into a lucrative business.
Anyone displaying signs of wealth, often professionals and businessmen, are particular targets of kidnappers. Payment is no guarantee that a hostage will not simply be killed and dumped; some authorities claim dozens of bodies are found every day but never reported.
Majid Majhoul Hawi al-Moussawi said his family "locked the door and left for Syria, the only country that would have us. We are grateful, but there is no work. There is nothing for us here." He took his family out of Baghdad after his daughter Hanan, 16, was kidnapped.

Professionals in Iraq say they face a deteriorating situation. Young physicians are looking for other countries to train in and even the patients are leaving, no longer confident in the care they can get in Iraq.

Dr. Omar Kubasi supported the claims that a systematic campaign to destroy Iraqi academia is occurring, stating, "I think it's part of the plan for the country's destruction. The situation in the last six months has gotten so bad, we couldn't continue."

Amer Hassan Fayed, assistant dean of political science at Baghdad University said; "It's creating a brain drain, we could end up with a society without knowledge. How can such a society make progress?"

Hundreds of Iraqi academics have been assassinated since the U.S.-led coalition invasion in March 2003, and there have been no charges brought against any suspects in the murders. 
 
Caroline Lucas, the Green Party MEP for Southeast England, is calling for a United Nations investigation into the killings which, she said, is forcing thousands of Iraqi educators to flee for their lives. 
     
"Iraq is undergoing a major brain drain, and can ill afford to lose academics and teachers to a continuing wave of violence. Iraq's education system, once one of the best in the region, has been decimated: some 84 percent of the country's higher education institutions have been burned, looted or destroyed, according to the United Nations University. These assassinations, which appear to be countrywide, non-partisan and non-sectarian, must be investigated by the U.N. Special Rapporteur on summary executions -- and those responsible brought to justice. Iraq needs security and stability, but it is clear that the continued U.S. and (British) occupation is contributing to the problem, not the solution," Lucas said.