Iraq's Future? These Kids Want No Part of It

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It's not easy for everyone to do so. Prospective emigres like Mohammed Suleiman al-Shumali, 24, another computer-science student, rely on relatives overseas for help in obtaining work visas. Al-Shumali says his cousins have secured a visa for him to go to Germany, where he hopes to find a decent high-tech job despite speaking no German. Female graduates have particularly dim hopes. Rawa Mahdi, 21, who received her degree in English literature last week, says she and her girlfriends are forbidden by their parents to leave Iraq without husbands. The trouble is that almost all the men she knows are fleeing. "The men might ask their families after a while to find them Iraqi wives," she says. "That is our way out."

Louis Yako's cousins in Chicago are searching for a job or a graduate program for him. Yako supports his six siblings with the $700 a month he makes as a translator, but that has not changed his plans to leave. "Even my mom tells me to go," he says. Iraq's new government will have to prove the country's long nightmare has truly passed if it hopes to keep its graduates at home.