baghdad — In a darkened room on the second floor of a government building, 100 young Iraqis conspired to revolutionize their country.
School curricula should employ interactive Internet games to stimulate learning, said a 28-year-old Web developer.
Iraq’s young prepare to inherit a war-scarred nation after U.S. withdrawal
Faces of new Iraq: Meet six Iraqis who are preparing to inherit a nation still struggling to right itself.
April 1 should be a cultural holiday to promote Iraq’s bygone status as a cradle of intellectualism, said a 23-year-old government employee.
Women should harness social media to bridge the gender gap, said a 22-year-old activist.
And on it went, a parade of young people auditioning for a prestigious conference. Each shared hopeful but vague ideas that envisioned a rosy future beyond Iraq’s turbulent present. The unspoken challenge, though, was turning dreams into plans, and notions into demands.
“We are free, and this could not have happened without the U.S. But now we are fighting to grow,” said civil engineer Abdul Ghany, 27, a volunteer organizer. “Not many young people know what they want, exactly.”
They do know what they feel. Their country was turned upside down by the American-led invasion in 2003, and now Iraq’s young — their worldview indelibly shaped by a U.S. military presence that ends next month — are preparing to inherit a nation that still struggles to right itself.
Some young Iraqis say they are glad to be rid of Saddam Hussein but feel less safe — and therefore less free — than before 2003, a sentiment reflected in dozens of interviews in eight provinces.
They view their government as a pseudo-regime that deprives them of basic rights, and they worry that their peers are being lured into the ethnic, sectarian and partisan traps of their elders. They think the world is fixating on revolutions in other Arab countries while ignoring a rotting democracy in Baghdad and their generation’s struggle to live the freedom that was promised to them 81 / 2 years ago.
“Our generation has seen enough,” said Baghdad resident Mustafa Hamza el-Ebadi, 21, who will graduate this spring with a degree in communication and engineering and wants to move to the United States. “When we were kids, there were economic sanctions. When we were teenagers, there were bodies in the street. And now there is no space to live.”
Growing up at war
About half of Iraq’s 33 million people are 19 or younger, and no Iraqi born since Saddam came to power in 1979 has known the country to be without war or dictatorship.
Iraqis in their late teens and 20s “grew up in a very dangerous climate” that did not foster a “civilian mentality,” according to Abduljabbar Ahmad Abdullah, dean of the political science college at the University of Baghdad.
“The political socialization of that individual is not correct,” Abdullah said over tea in his campus office in October. “Every student belongs to his clan, not his country.”
When Iraqis talk about the fate of the younger generation, they use expressions similar to “crossroads” and “tipping point.”
“We are at a very critical period, with the deterioration of security and the elevation of corruption,” activist Hanaa Edwar said at a September peace festival in Baghdad’s Zawra Park. “Elections are not enough. We need active participation from young people. They are not yet polluted by politicians. They need more than hope. They need to be empowered.”
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