Thieves of Baghdad: According to the Thousand and One Nights story of Ali Baba and the slave girl Morjanan, a statue of whom (right) adorns one of the city's main squares, Baghdad nights are idyllic...

Even if US forces leave Iraq as planned later this year, seven years after the US-led invasion how long will it take to put the country back on its feet, asks Salah Hemeid

Pondering questions thrown up by the seventh anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, Mona Anis recalls a 2003 visit to Baghdad shortly after US president G W Bush announced "mission accomplished"

Seven years after the US-led invasion of Iraq, everything points to the growing influence of Iran in Iraqi politics, writes Mustafa El-Labbad

Charles Tripp of London University's School of Oriental and African Studies explains his views on Iraq's political future to David Tresilian

Many directors have attempted to represent the invasion of Iraq on film. But Paul Greengrass's Green Zone is something special, Khalid Abdalla, who stars in the film, tells David Tresilian

VARIETIES OF EXILE: Saadi Youssef (b.1934), one of the more innovative exemplars of the free verse movement, with Sargon Boulus (1944-2007), a pioneer of the prose poem. Iraq produced some of the best Arab poets through the ages, but it was characteristic of Iraqi poets to be living abroad.

Baghdad via exile, for Youssef Rakha, makes more sense than Baghdad