A Kurdish falcon in the sky of Najaf – Ahmed Abdel Majeed
My memory records that the current Minister of Higher Education (agency) is the third Minister of Education to visit the city of Najaf, in decades. The first Minister of this (sovereign) Ministry is Dr. Abdul Razzaq Al-Issa, who is credited with launching the Al Alamein Institute for Graduate Studies in Najaf, to be the first private academic institution to grant prestigious degrees (Master’s and Doctorate) in specializations that were exclusive to public universities.
As for the second minister, whose inspection of the El Alamein Institute in 2023, he is Dr. Naeem Al-Aboudi, about whom I wrote a newspaper column published by (Al-Zaman), in which I said that he seemed to me (his mind is older than his age).
As for the third minister, he was (Ha Lo Al-Askari), whose presence at the graduation ceremony of the fifth batch of students at the Institute was a surprise. The source of the surprise was that he was enjoying the weekend, which he was often keen to spend in the city of Sulaymaniyah, where he was born in 1966. Despite the bumpy road, Al-Askari was keen to respond to the Institute’s invitation and sponsor the graduation ceremony, which was truly an academic wedding full of academic pride, joy of achievement, and loyalty to the founders.
The first thing that caught attention in the character of (He Lo), which means falcon in Kurdish, is his humility, which seems to me to be the source of his family and academic build-up, and was strengthened by his political experience in the ranks of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, led by Mam Jalal, a politician descended from a Sufi family, a graduate of the Faculty of Law at the University of Baghdad, and an intellectual who celebrated the Al-Jawahiri Diwan and the Muzaffar al-Nawab rebellion.
The second striking characteristic of the character of the Kurdish Falcon (Ha Lo) is his fluency in Arabic, Kurdish, and English, and his ability to present an effective persuasive speech among an academic audience that monitors rhetorical vocabulary and evaluates correct delivery in light of the characteristics of pre-Islamic poetry.
If the name (Ha Lo) causes confusion, which is something the minister suffered from, then the open-mindedness that he enjoys has avoided the problem of falling into tension, annoyance, or unintended suspicion. I learned that (Ha Lo) was content with explaining to those who were ignorant of the meaning and depth of the name, that it meant (the falcon), that bird that usually resides only in the highest places and often takes shelter from the mountain peaks after flying high in the sky. As I listened to his speech at the ceremony, I looked carefully at the minister’s stature and found that I linked his stature to the meaning of his name. He seemed to me to be a soaring figure who resides in the hearts of his listeners and captivates them, with the sweetness of his words and the depth of his observations, which he singled out for the institute after a tour of its departments and its vast library and his attendance at the discussions of professors and students. His keenness to ensure that these remarks were friendly was preceded by his praise of what distinguished the El Alamein Institute from the government institutes and universities he visited.
I attribute his persuasive ability, after his meeting with the general supervisor of the institute, the former minister and parliamentarian Ibrahim Bahr al-Ulum, to skills that (the Kurdish Falcon) acquired from communicating and dealing with employees of different nationalities, groups, components, abilities, levels of education, and social backgrounds, throughout his academic life (Bachelor of Agricultural Sciences at the University of Baghdad in 1988, environmental science studies at the University of Manchester in London, and a doctorate in environmental pollution science at the University of Baghdad. Brunel in London in 2008), as well as holding several advisory and administrative positions in the Kurdistan Regional Government (2018-2020), and assuming the position of Minister of Environment in the Federal Government in Baghdad, succeeding its resigned Minister Nizar Amidi, who was recently elected President of the Republic.
I conclude that the Kurdish falcon flew high, last Saturday, in the sky of the city of Imam Ali, peace be upon him, to sponsor the graduation ceremony of a group of graduates, one of the most prominent Iraqi scientific edifices. And (Ha Lo) was right and true.
