A year after US forces invaded Iraq on the pretext that the country was developing weapons of mass destruction, Washington has kept pressure on Iraqi scientists to help find the ever-elusive WMD programme. "We have repeatedly told them that the WMDs were destroyed, but they are just not listening," said a physics researcher at Baghdad University. And scientists here aren't the only ones in a dialogue of the deaf. The expert tasked by US President George W. Bush with finding them, David Kay, repeated this month: "I was convinced and still am convinced that there were no stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction at the time of the war."

In the face of subsequent criticism, the United States, Britain and Australia have all launched inquiries into how intelligence about biological, chemical and nuclear weapons was used in making the case for war. But in Iraq there has been no let-up, and Washington has alternately used the carrot and the stick on scientists and researchers, and some have even fled into exile.

In December, the United States announced a 22-million-dollar programme to rehabilitate scientists, researchers and technicians who worked on arms development under former dictator Saddam Hussein. Under the programme, an office charged with identifying those who qualify was due to be set up in Baghdad in February, though no scientist, university chair or Iraqi professor questioned recently was aware of any date. "No one here seems to be knowledgeable about the programme," said an official from the US-led Coalition Provision Authority, who added that it was an issue for the US State Department. Yet these funds would be welcomed witharms by those who worked in Iraq's prolific military industry, a sector that collapsed with the fall of Saddam last April. "The state was militarized and the whole country worked on armaments," said the Baghdad University physicist on condition that he not be named. "We were not happy just to teach, we were conducting research. The military industrial departments had the best equipment, so we worked there for the experience," he said.

After the war, scientists who were important members of the ruling Baath party were removed, while others returned to their old jobs at universities, said Wael Nurreddin al-Rifai, chairman at Baghdad University of Technology. But as US forces struggled to find evidence on the arms, the researchers lived in constant fear of being arrested. There have been arrests and scientists held without charge because they "pose an imperative threat to security, either because of what they've done or what they know," US Major Michael Pierson said. "Some scientists who were in the former regime's military are being held as prisoners of war," he said, without providing details or numbers.

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 The families of these experts claim their loved ones are being persecuted. "If the Americans have something to accuse them of, they should set up courts and judge them in public," said the wife of Ali Abdelrahman al-Zaak, a 49-year-old genetics expert at Baghdad University, who has been held twice. Before he was arrested a second time in January, Zaak released a statement denouncing "harassment and rights violations against some Iraqi scientists and professors by American forces investigating WMDs". He said any "specialisation in the domains of biology, chemistry and physics is now dangerous for scientists under the occupation" by US-led troops. Zaak is qualified as a "high value detainee" on the American prisoner list. The wife of Sobhi Said al-Rawi, 59-year-old head of the women's information technology department at Baghdad University, tells a similar story. "Under Saddam Hussein, my husband refused to be a member of the Baath party and he was never promoted because he took that stand. Now he has been held for months by the Americans," she said.

Some scientists who took part in weapons development and have so far escaped arrest have joined the new industry, and science and technology ministries. But others have fled into hiding abroad. The physics department and science faculty have lost three professors in this manner -- two have taken refuge in Yemen, the third in Libya. "In all, the scientists have paid the price and the country is going through a troubling brain drain," Rifai said.