Iraq’s capital, Baghdad, is once again vibrant – its markets and streets colourful and busy, its coffee shops filled with crowds of young people and the lingering scent of fresh cardamom in the air.
The Station is a co-working space popular with Baghdad’s young adults.
Ghada Ahmed, 30, who runs workshops at the Station. Right: Young women working on their laptops.
Young people chat at Grinders coffee shop in central Baghdad..
It’s been 20 years since the start of the US-led invasion which toppled the then president Saddam Hussein – launched under the false premise of Iraq owning weapons of mass destruction. What followed were years of violence, including a sectarian civil war, frequent terrorist attacks by al-Qaida and, eventually, the emergence of Islamic State. About 300,000 civilians died in the conflict over the past 20 years and much of Iraq was left devastated.
Young people sit by the Tigris River.
Many street murals went up around Baghdad at the start of protests beginning in 2019.
Baghdad’s face is constantly changing: concrete blast walls coming down, new co-working spaces popping up, the banks of the Tigris River being redeveloped and a building boom under way. Young people have transformed grey walls into colourful murals, or empty buildings into restaurants and it is on this generation of people in their late teens and early 20s that so many hopes are being pinned.
Students at Baghdad University leave classes in April 2023.
In the capital, Baghdad, they are students and ballet instructors, artists and amputees who lost limbs during the heavy years of conflict, entrepreneurs and business owners. Many were born into war, and are now torn between two choices: “My generation either wants to leave Iraq and start over elsewhere, or otherwise stay here and invest, rebuild and move our country forward,” says Anwar Ahmed, a 23-year-old environmentalist. “Personally, I believe Baghdad needs me – and even when it’s not always easy, I think I need it too.”
Of course, she adds, metropolitan Baghdad with its 8 million residents does not necessarily always speak for the rest of the country – but “here’s where change starts”.
Atef al-Jaffal, 23, a young artist and graphic designer, at his exhibition in Baghdad. Jaffal grew up in Syria, but returned to his native Iraq with his family when Syria’s civil war started. At first, the return was difficult. ‘I feel more optimistic now,’ he says. The 2019 protests and the subsequent resignation of the prime minister gave him hope. ‘We planted the seeds for change,’ he says.
Over half of Iraq’s population of 42 million are under the age of 25 – according to the World Bank – one of the world’s youngest populations. Many of the young people are full of ambition and drive, but there’s hopelessness and even despair in equal measure. Iraq’s unemployment rate sits at about 14%; government corruption is rampant, violence against women – including femicides – is common, and the sectarian political system has not been overhauled since the US invasion. Countrywide demonstrations erupted in 2019 exactly for those reasons – with young people at the forefront – but a brutal government crackdown resulted in more than 500 people being killed and thousands more injured.
Anwar Ahmed, 23.
Yet Baghdad’s younger generation might be more determined than ever. “We’re the ones defining Baghdad’s – and Iraq’s – future, there’s no denying it,” Ahmed, wearing a Black Sabbath T-shirt, says, sitting outside a city community centre where she has been taking percussion lessons in her free time. She does a bit of everything, she says: she is an artist, a musician, but most of all a climate activist working full-time for a local aid group that’s aiming to preserve the Tigris River, Iraq’s main water source. “Our generation is very conscious when it comes to climate change as we live in one of the world’s worst affected countries. Frequent droughts, water shortages and dust storms – that’s sadly our future,” she adds.
Ahmed’s family has always supported her ambitions, but she knows that’s not necessarily a given – especially for young women. “Many families – and to an extent society at large – hold conservative norms and this can be especially difficult for young women,” says Lizan Selam, 26, and Baghdad’s first licenced ballet instructor. Her family always had her back, but she says she faced years of social media harassment and attacks, with strangers on the internet deeming her business “dirty and forbidden”.
Today, she teaches 45 students in Baghdad, but admits that things aren’t easy. “I’m confused,” she says. “Part of me wants to stay in Baghdad and invest – another part wants to go. I don’t see myself being part of this community unless it changes, but at the same time, maybe I need to be here do to my part and help bring that change.”
Lizan Selam, 26, Iraq’s first licensed ballet teacher. Selam has her own ballet school, teaching up to 45 students.
For Mustafa Rahman, also 26, change came in an unexpected – and unwanted – way. He was barely 10 years old when he and his mother ventured outside to the local bazaar in his home town, Abu Ghraib, half an hour’s drive from the capital. A suicide bomber caused an explosion that killed scores of people, Rahman remembers. It spared his mother, but tore off his leg. Years of agony and depression followed and it wasn’t until last year when he joined a football club for amputees that he was able to start moving forward. He’s training three times a week now, hoping to eventually make it into Iraq’s national team.
Baghdad’s football team for amputees. Founded by Mohammed al-Najar, 37, the idea was born in the UK where Najar studied, joining an amputee football team in Portsmouth and later exporting the idea to Iraq.
Mustafa Abdul Rahman, 26, lost his leg in an explosion in his home town of Abu Ghraib. He now lives in Baghdad and practises football three times a week.
“There’s one thing I realised,” he said, standing on the football pitch, taking a break during a training session under a scorchingly hot sun. “The scars of war are everywhere, we can’t ignore that. But we have to live with it and make the best out of it. We have to move forward.”
