Albawaba.com Article: Baghdad dating turns hi-tech

A growing number of young men and women in Iraq have turned to an unlikely way of meeting one another - the internet. Though in the past, most young couples were introduced to one another by their families, the ongoing war which has ravaged the country has made many such meetings between war-torn neighborhoods impossible.


Young Iraqis, confined to their homes as battles rage outside have turned to the internet as a means to keep up with relatives and friends, as well as initiate new relationships. Thus, the unlikely phenomenon of internet dating has arisen in major urban Iraqi centers such as Baghdad, according to the Los Angeles Times.


The trend has been further strengthened by the fact that in Iraq, like many other Islamic countries, young men and women rarely have the opportunity to communicate or meet without a chaperone.


A number of new people are cashing in on the demand for internet through wireless connections to satellite-based hubs, which bypass Iraq's notorious phone lines.


More and more internet café's have sprouted up around the city, including the Shirifi Internet Café, which opened three years ago.


“All they do is chat, chat, chat,” says the 25-year-old owner of Shirifi, Yousef Abdulla, referring to his many young male clientele.


“They have the opportunity to expand their horizons with this portal and get whatever information they want about anything, but all they are interested in is chatting – especially with girls.”


However, a number of internet cafes in Baghdad have received threats that they are spreading pornography and providing a means to contact the U.S. military. As a result, many have been forced to close, while other potential investors choose to avoid such entanglement and personal danger entirely.


Nonetheless, across Iraq and the Middle East, a growing number young people are logging on to chat rooms in order to meet one another, chat with friends and relatives, and also distract themselves temporarily from the horrors of the war outside their door.


For many though, an internet relationship is doomed from the start despite its promising beginnings. For Ali and Noura, two educated Sunni Muslims from Baghdad, such was the case.


For months the two chatted online obsessively, and eventually chose to have a Webcam meeting.


However, the two may as well have lived in separate countries, as Noura lived across the Tigris River in the city’s war-torn west while Ali lived in a quiet, middle-class neighborhood in the east.


“It seemed like a pointless relationship,” says Ali, who now refers to Noura as “my ex-Internet girlfriend.” He stopped responding to her messages and she eventually stopped sending them.


“She must be angry,” he says, “Maybe if we could have been alone together, it would have been different.”


Such virtual relationships, like many, offer a refuge of sorts for a time from fear and boredom. But all too often, such escapes are only mirages, and a frustrating and seductive reminder of a life outside the reach for most.