Stolen futures: when they started college four years ago, Iraq's freshmen had big ambitions. By graduation day, their dreams of a successful life--at least in Iraq--had been shattered.

• Author: Cave, Damien
• Position: INTERNATIONAL

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They started college just before or after the American invasion in 2003 with dreams of new friends and parties, brilliant teachers, and advanced degrees that would lead to good careers, marriage, and children. Success seemed well within their grasp.

Four years later, Iraq's 2007 college graduates have ended their studies shattered and eager to leave the country. During interviews with more than 30 students from seven universities, all but four say they hope to free now that they have received their degrees. Many say they do not expect Iraq to stabilize for at least a decade.

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"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," says Hasan Khaldoon, 24, a pharmacy student in Mosul, in the north. "Now, all these dreams have evaporated."

Karar Alaa, 25, a medical student at Babil University south of Baghdad, says, "Staying here 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 an Iraqi middle class that has already fled by the tens of thousands. As such, they embody the country's progression from optimism to dashed expectations and growing animosity toward the American presence.

Since the U.S.-led invasion began in March 2003, tension has increased between Iraq's two main Muslim sects: Sunnis (SOO-nees) and Shiites (SHEE-ites). Ever since the nation of Iraq was created by Great Britain in 1920 (see timeline, p. 20), the government had been controlled by Sunnis, who make up just 20 percent of the population. During the 24-year rule of Saddam Hussein, a Sunni, Shiites were brutally suppressed. Saddam killed as many as 100,000 when they rose up against him after the Persian Gulf war in 1991. Kurds, a mostly Muslim ethnic group in northern Iraq, also have a long history of being oppressed, and Saddam used chemical weapons to murder tens of thousands of Kurds in 1988. Such injustices caused tensions that were kept in check by the authoritarian government.

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But since Saddam was removed from power four years ago, the lawless environment and growing insurgency have allowed these tensions to surface. Car bombings, kidnappings, gunfire, and general mayhem have become part of day-to-day life for most Iraqis. (Northern Iraq, with its predominantly Kurdish population, has enjoyed relative political stability and suffered limited violence, in part because it does not have the same sectarian conflicts as the rest of Iraq.)

'DIVISION AND TERRORISM'

Iraq's recent graduates feel betrayed by the debilitating violence that has killed scores of friends and professors, by the growing influence of Islamic fundamentalism, and by the Americans, who they say cracked open their country without protecting universities and other moderate institutions that might have helped contain extremism.

"I want to tell them thanks for liberating us, but enough with the mistakes," says Abdul Alabidin, a Shiite studying law at Kirkuk University, in the north. The errors, he says, "led to division and terrorism."

The roughly 56,000 members of Iraq's class of 2007 began their college careers under far different circumstances. With the United States expected to democratize and modernize their country, they say, they felt special, chosen, about to be famous on the world stage.

"I thought we would be like stars," says Ahmed Khader, 21, a biology student in the southern city of Basra.

"I was thinking that Iraq would be like Las Vegas, especially Kirkuk, which has oil," Alabidin says. Instead, after an initial period of hope following...