This year was relatively kind to Iraq. The country remained safe and stable, and this has allowed important infrastructure projects in the centre of Baghdad to reach fruition. Meanwhile, many other projects are in the pipeline. Many Iraqis still find it difficult to be satisfied after around half a century of underinvestment, but some progress is being made. Much of Baghdad had previously fallen into a state of disrepair so desperate that many older Iraqis considered it irredeemable. But now many places have been renovated and a vibrant social scene is emerging.
Iraq is also the only country connected to Iran’s “axis of resistance” that was not attacked by Israel this year. And yet another parliamentary election has come and gone relatively normally, too. The incumbent Prime Minister, Mohammed Shia Al Sudani, made a strong showing, but nowhere near enough to guarantee a second term. However, it is widely expected that whatever new government will be formed will include a broad tent of political groups and will generally continue many of the same investment policies.
Of course, while the political system is stable, it remains corrupt and entirely reliant on hydrocarbons. And so it is just a matter of time until oil prices cause a major economic crisis.
But the most important development in Iraq, not of this year, but perhaps of the past decade, has generally gone unnoticed. That is the growing cohort of self-confident, worldly, young, politically independent, middle-class Iraqis. For Iraq, there is simply no precedent for this, and if the trend continues, it will be politically determinant in years to come.
Several factors have contributed to this new phenomenon. Iraqis who are today in their early 20s and living in the centre of the country have not known violent conflict, dictatorship, occupation or terrorism. They have lived in peace and free from daily fear for the bulk of their lives, which is the first time that this has ever happened in the country’s living memory. This was illustrated recently when Israel’s bombing of Lebanon intensified in September 2024, and tens of thousands of Lebanese fled to Baghdad. They were greeted with open arms by a population and by a state that was sufficiently organised to take care of daily needs, despite the sudden and huge influx. For young Iraqis, this did not go unnoticed: theirs is no longer a country that everyone is fleeing from – for many, it is now a place of refuge.
For most of the past decade, Iraq’s economy has also been relatively stable, at least for middle-class Iraqis. Money has been steadily flowing into the state coffers which has fuelled consumption and a few emerging industries. Two decades ago, Iraqis were an underclass in the region, forced into exile and condemned to take work that they believed was well below their station. For the middle class today, the situation could not be more different. Iraqis have been opening their own businesses, many of which now attract foreign workers from around the region and from further afield. They will now share offices with foreign workers, some of whom take their orders from local managers and owners.
Iraq is now also more fully integrated internally and internationally. In 2003, the Baathists left the country more divided than it had ever been. Young Iraqis knew nothing of their own country beyond a few small pockets. Some of the divisions were so great that there were actual internal boundaries that people could not cross, such as between Kurdistan and the rest of the country. Today, Iraqi society has never been more integrated – the amount of professional exchange and internal travel is totally beyond precedent. A typical Baghdadi will now be able to name their favourite small town or mountain lake in remote parts of the Kurdistan Region. Others will have travelled all over the country for expert conferences or sports events.
International travel is more limited but a similar explosion has taken place. Travel to the Gulf, East Asia and Europe has become so common that a significant number of young Iraqis will have travelled to each of these places on multiple occasions in the past few years. The first American university in Iraq opened in in 2006, but that was in Sulaymaniyah governorate, a stable and welcoming place far from the capital. Today, there is a massive and growing American university campus in Baghdad, alongside English-language business schools. The presence of English-language institutions in a city that is so dominated by Arabic should not be taken in and of itself as a sign of achievement, but it does demonstrate that Iraqis today have greater access to knowledge and international developments than they could have dreamt of a few years ago.
That new exposure is automatically carried into people’s homes and into their work. Around the time the occupation started in 2003, Iraqis’ state of isolation was so great that many had developed highly eccentric and sometimes ridiculous ideas about almost everything, often encouraged by a paranoid Baathist regime. All of that was underpinned by a deep sense that the world had passed them by. Some of those ideas still linger in Iraqi society today, but only in the fringes and in the shadows.
Crucially, this new class of Iraqis is not politically aligned. How could they be, when political groups are all run by families and narrow interests, while a young Iraqi’s world view is so new and large? Almost none will have voted in the elections. Politics is generally viewed as a stitch-up between self-serving politicians, and the strong preference is to remain uninvolved. However, that can only hold for so long – as I wrote above, a major economic crisis is likely just around the corner. If significant international developments (including, for example, a peace deal in Ukraine) causes the price of oil to decline significantly, the Iraqi government will be unable to pay basic salaries, which would cause major popular upheaval.
The last time that happened was in 2019, when the country witnessed the most sustained and widespread popular uprising that it had ever witnessed. When the next crisis comes, and it is a matter of when and not if, Iraq’s emerging and young middle class will mobilise into national politics in ways that we cannot predict today. The war in Gaza shows that when pushed to do so, they will become politically involved. Whether they can have a real impact remains to be seen.
