As Iraq’s children of war came of age, so did a political system that excluded them.
BAGHDAD — Fayhaa Khalid had never truly felt like she belonged in Iraq until she heard the roaring crowds in downtown Baghdad. Only then did she realize how many other young people had grown up feeling as alone as she did.
Fayhaa, Mohamed and Hajer belong to a generation that grew up — and grew apart from their country — in the shadow of that cataclysm, their formative years spent hiding from violence. In the square on that warm October day, though, they weren’t thinking of the past. Another future seemed possible and they reached for it.The first American cruise missiles hit Baghdad at 5:30 a.m. on March 20. Through the eyes of a child, the night looked like it was on fire.
Fayhaa’s family moved 170 miles southeast to live near her father’s closest friend, Omar. They had only been there a few months when they heard the gunshots, heralding the start of a childhood spent in hiding. Omar was dead in his front room and the bodies of his three daughters were sprawled around him. Fayhaa saw it all. “We moved many times after that,” she said.For Hajer, it was the first day of Ramadan in 2003 that stays with her.
The children were teenagers by the time American troops withdrew from Iraq in 2011 after nine years, some 4,500 troop fatalities and $1 trillion.were dead. Politicians, often backed by the United States or its increasingly powerful rival, Iran, had stolen hundreds of billions of dollars from the state.
The protesters had united under a slogan that summed up a lost generation: “We want a homeland,” they chanted. Hajer remembers screaming those words. “After everything that happened to us, I can’t say I felt any patriotism before. But standing there, with all those people around me, I really meant it,” she said.
But in the corridors of power in Baghdad and Tehran, politicians were planning the crackdown. “They knew it was dangerous,” one Iraqi official recalled later. “It was time to put an end to it.”Riot forces pumped water cannons, stun grenades and bullets into the crowd. By the end of October, strange men were appearing in the protesters’ tents and taking photos. Although he didn’t know it yet, Mohamed’s tent had an informant from an Iran-backed militia. One by one, his closest friends left.
Only when they grew up did these children of America’s war realize that they barely had a childhood at all.
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