Life in Iraq from the 1930s to today

A Washington Post article has the viewpoint of someone who lived and grew up in Iraq.

Saif Al-Azzawi grew up in Baghdad and moved to the United States as a refugee in 2009. He now lives in Long Beach, California.

He grew up in Baghdad in a middle-class family. My father served in the Iraqi Air Force and often traveled internationally; my mother was a math teacher; my siblings all attended college. I graduated from the most prestigious high school in Baghdad before getting my degree at pharmacy school.

Most Americans don’t understand that Iraq used to be a modern, Westernized and secular country. From the 1930s to the 1980s, Iraq’s neighbors looked to it as the example. People from different Arab countries came to Iraq to attend university. The country had an excellent education system, great health care, and Iraq was rich — not the richest, but rich.

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