Yesterday, our newspaper published an important investigative report on a case that has been making the rounds for two years and continues to resurface from time to time. Our reporters have shown that fraudulent diplomas are being issued to the benefit of members and affiliates of Shiite Iraqi political parties in Iraq.
According to the report: “Suspicions in the case arose in two instances: The first relates to accepting forged high school certificates issued in Baghdad and validated in Beirut, and the other pertains to granting of university and higher education certificates without students attending classes, in exchange for sums of money.”
The story began in Iraq when Shiite parties that assumed power after 2003 discovered that they did not have administrative teams qualified enough to hold advanced government positions. In fact, these parties discovered that most of their cadres “had never had the opportunity to receive an education” and were thus unable to assume their positions, according to a former official at the Iraqi education ministry.
The investigation mentions that in 2016, prominent Shiite forces, including the State of Law coalition led by Nouri al-Maliki and "Asaib Ahl al-Haq," by Qais al-Khazali, got the idea of "fasting-track” certificates through Lebanese universities, which saw an unprecedented influx of Iraqi students being sent there systematically.
A source quoted by the newspaper pointed to “a university with ties to the “Shiite Duo” (the Amal Movement and Hezbollah) that drew a large number of Iraqi students and granted them - within two years - certificates in graduate studies and doctorates.” In the past two years, this university issued “more higher education diplomas than all the other universities in the country combined.”
According to leaders of Iraqi Shiite parties, the scheme is part of the agreement their country signed to facilitate fuel to produce electricity in Lebanon. Most of the Iraqis who applied for the equivalence of certificates and enrolled in Lebanese universities are employees of official institutions.
Among them are deputies, officials, and security and police officers, who asked for equivalencies of their certificates from out of Lebanon in exchange for a substantial sum of money. According to an Iraqi Ministry of Education official, he knew of three senior officials who received promotions thanks to Lebanese certificates.
Well, is this just an Iraqi story? Certainly not. According to my sources, many in Lebanon have made money from this "degrees laundering" scheme totaling nearly 20 million dollars annually, indicating that this was a systematic mass operation. The disputes now might be intended to ensure that money keeps flowing, not an effort to combat forgery.
Thus, this story is not only one of educational standards; it is also about political conduct. These "fraudulent diplomas" have given rise to the "fraudulent minds," and these minds are dominating the political scene in Iraq and Lebanon and pushing the two countries to the brink of the abyss.
Individuals who forge certificates to attain positions in this manner, and those who help them do so, cannot be trusted with the project to build a state, be it in Iraq or Lebanon. They cannot be expected to respect laws and constitutions, nor to understand the threat that militias pose to the state.
This systematic fraud might explain why some supporters of Hezbollah and the Amal movement staged a demonstration facing the American University of Beirut shortly after the Gaza war broke out. They know that serious education is more dangerous than weapons.
In conclusion, those who validated the "fraudulent diplomas" enabled the "fraudulent minds" to dominate the scene. The state of affairs we see in these two countries that had once boasted a scientific and intellectual heritage, Iraq and Lebanon, is the predictable outcome of this approach.
