BAGHDAD: They started college just before or after the American invasion with dreams of new friends and parties, brilliant teachers and advanced degrees that would lead to stellar jobs, marriage and children. Success seemed well within their grasp.
Four years later, Iraq's college graduates are ending their studies shattered and eager to leave the country. In interviews with more than 30 students from seven universities, all but 4 said they hoped to flee Iraq immediately after receiving their degrees. Many said they did not expect the country to stabilize for at least a decade.
"I used to dream about getting a Ph.D., participating in international conferences, belonging to a team that discovered cures for diseases like AIDS, leaving my fingerprint on medicine," said Hasan Tariq Khaldoon, 24, a pharmacy student in Mosul, north of Baghdad. "Now, all these dreams have evaporated."
"Staying here," said Karar Alaa, 25, a medical student at Babel University, south of Baghdad, "is like committing suicide."
The class of 2007 came of age during a transformation that, according to students, has harvested tragedy from seeds of hope. They are the last remnants of a middle-class that has already fled Iraq by the tens of thousands. As such, they embody the country's progression from innocence to bitter wisdom, amid dashed expectations and growing animosity toward the Americans.
They said would leave their country feeling betrayed, by the debilitating violence that has killed scores of professors and friends, by the growing influence of Islamic fundamentalism and by the Americans, who they say cracked open their country, releasing spasms of violence and then failing to protect the moderate institutions that could have been a bulwark against extremism.
"I want to tell them thanks for liberating us but enough with the mistakes," said Abdul Hussein Ibrahim Zain Alabidin, a Shiite Turkoman studying law at Kirkuk University. The errors, he said, "led to division and terrorism."
Iraq's roughly 56,000 graduates began their college careers under far different circumstances. Under the Bush administration's plan to spread democracy through the Middle East, they said, they felt special, chosen, about to be famous on the worldwide stage.
"I thought we would be like stars," said Ahmed Saleh Abdul Khader, 21, a biology student in the southern city of Basra.
Alabin in Kirkuk said, "I was thinking that Iraq would be like Las Vegas, especially Kirkuk, which has oil."
Instead, after an initial period of hope after Saddam Hussein's regime collapsed, the students said they watched in awe as Iraq's underlying sectarian and ethnic conflicts emerged and flourished. At the country's 21 universities, the decline started with chaos. Looters stole ancient artifacts and destroyed buildings at Basra University, for instance, only days after British troops reached the area in 2003.
Violence followed. In June 2004, a geography professor at the University of Baghdad was murdered after leaving the campus. He would not be the last.
"We've lost over 200 professors, being killed," said Abid Dhiyab al-Ujayli, the minister of higher education. "A number of others have been kidnapped."
Scores more have fled, he said, leading the perpetually upbeat Ujayli to spend much of his time trying to convince those still here to stay. It's a particularly difficult task; in November, dozens of ministry employees were kidnapped in broad daylight by gunmen wearing police uniforms.
"I'm not going to say we are in a good position," Ujayli said. "We are surviving. We are trying our best to have an educational system to be as good as we can."
Students said Iraq's university system had significantly declined, dragged down by chronically canceled lectures and decrepit equipment, all in an atmosphere of growing terror and violence.
Alabin said his class of law students in Kirkuk shrank from 85 in 2003 to just 30 at graduation because of the bloodshed and fear. He acknowledged that more Shiites were entering college than before; he was even one of the students who said he did not plan to leave, declaring that "I am no better than those who have suffered or been killed."
But he could not contain his frustration with the country his class would inherit. He said he and his friends constantly discuss "the ugliness of terrorism, the free-for-all of killing in Iraq, Americans' mistakes, the way they humiliate Iraqis, the shameful stance of neighboring countries and the loss of the Iraqi identity to divisions by sect and ethnicity."
"I blame Saddam because he sold Iraq and was behind the coming of the occupiers," Alabin said. "I blame the American administration for its mistakes in dealing with Iraqis."
The mood was even darker last week at Mustansiriya University in Baghdad. In January, two car bombs and a suicide bomber killed at least 70 people at the school. A month later, a woman laced with explosives blew herself up at the university entrance, killing 40 more.
In the immediate aftermath of the attacks, charred metal, bloodied notebooks, glass, fingers and make-up cases littered the ground. Students later buried the detritus of the attack in a courtyard where they regularly gather.
The memorial, a mound of dirt with banners naming those who died, now acts as a constant reminder of the horrors this year's graduates have endured.
"We even have a mass grave now in the university," said a student who would give only his first name, Saif, for fear of retribution. "Imagine flesh and body parts - we buried that here at Mustansiriya University. Imagine how bad our situation was."
Several students about to graduate said the attacks only hardened their resolve to complete their studies. Indeed, at many universities in Baghdad, the class of 2007 has tried to make the best of a difficult situation.
At a graduation party at Baghdad's University of Technology in April, students sprayed Silly String on one another near cardboard simulations of mortar tubes and rockets - macabre parodies of Iraq's situation.
At Baghdad University, students shared jokes about the violence over their cellphones. Graduates from the dentistry department recorded a song with verses that poked fun at each student for his or her quirks.
Three of the song's subjects, Mudher Rafid, 22, Ahmed Bahir, 22, and Hasan Haitham, 22, said that humor had helped them stay sane through the chaos. On a recent afternoon in eastern Baghdad, speaking English well and wearing T-shirts with Western brand names like Diesel and Ecko, they said they wished the world would remember that not all young Iraqis wanted to kill one another.
Ahmad Fadam and Diana Oliva Cave contributed reporting from Baghdad. Additional reporting was contributed by Iraqi employees in Baghdad, Hilla, Kirkuk, Mosul and Basra.