After 20 years of trauma, Iraq is struggling to recover

After two decades of rampant violence and political dysfunction, Iraq is at last showing signs of recovery. Most of the concrete blast walls that sliced up cities have come down. Baghdad, the capital, is reviving, towered over by a new central bank. The road to the airport, once dubbed the world’s most dangerous because of the snipers along the way, is lined with private universities and housing estates. “Before, we had to clear roads of landmines,” says the head of a paramilitary engineering unit. “Now we clear people’s sewage.”