Introducing Fikra Space: Where Iraqi Youth Can Take Fate into Their Own Hands

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Jun 11, 2015 Iraq
Introducing Fikra Space: Where Iraqi Youth Can Take Fate into Their Own Hands

Introducing Fikra Space: Where Iraqi Youth Can Take Fate into Their Own Hands

By : Jadaliyya Reports

It is an unusually hot day in February in Baghdad, even for a city where February is usually hot. But everything else is business as usual. Traffic jams. Car horns. Street vendors. Security situation. Chaos. Except for maybe one thing. In downtown Baghdad, Ahmed Ramz, a twenty-two-year-old electronics engineering graduate, is holding an event on microcontrollers.

“Microcontrollers are very simple yet very powerful instruments” Ramz starts the event. “They can be built to control any electronic system. They are the future of DIY. And DIY is the future”.

Ramz is part of a makerspace called Fikra Space. “Fikra” is the Arabic word for idea, and Fikra Space gathers young technology enthusiasts and aspiring entrepreneurs to exchange ideas and to work together to make them happen. Some study computer science, some study engineering, and some study finance. Some are students, some are graduates, and some are public sector employees. Some are Sunni, some are Shia, and some are Christian. They are all different. But they share two common traits, the willingness to improve and the readiness to embrace change.

“Fikra Space is a place for everyone who has an interest in technology” Aws Yaseen says. “There is no place like Fikra Space, it is the only place where I can work on what I want.”

There is a stark contrast between what is happening outside this room and inside it. But stark contrasts are no strange things in Iraq. It is a country with significant wealth, but a fifth of its people live on less than two US dollars per day. It was once the cradle of civilization and the birthplace of the first alphabet, but illiteracy has risen to twenty percent. It has one of the most youthful populations in the world, but struggles to engage them as youth unemployment surpasses thrity-four percent.

Since 2012, Fikra Space has organised more than two hundred events. Sometimes once, sometimes twice a week. Other times, months could pass before they organise an event. Many times due to the security situation in Baghdad. They have no place of their own, so they gather at a thirty-seat conference room of the IWPR, an NGO in downtown Baghdad. Their events have become so popular that attendance must be booked days in advance due to the limited number of seats. They have no equipment of their own, so they rely on members to bring their own equipment to the events. They gather to try disruptive products like microcontrollers, rasperry pi and 3D printers.

“But we are not only about technology” says Nael. “We’ve held many different events. We’ve even had music nights and book nights”.

So who funds an initiative like Fikra Space? Fikra Space has been operating with no funding since it was founded. But while its members have no monetary support to do what they love, they have an abundance of passion to keep them going. Ahmed, Aws and Nael all volunteer at Fikra Space post full-time jobs and studies. In a country with an abundance of problems, they have also learned how to become problem solvers. One of the biggest issues Iraqis deal with on a daily basis is the government’s bureaucratic procedures. The public system is an out-dated spider web that is impossible to navigate. It is prone to corruption and inefficiency. To help people overcome, Ahmed Ramz created Mu3amala, a crowdsourcing platform that provides step-by-step guidelines on government procedures. In just a few months, Mu3amala has been downloaded by more than ten thousand people.

The media, both foreign and domestic, paint a gloomy picture of Iraq, one that is almost exclusively focused on the battlefield. No coverage is given to the likes of the rising youth of Fikra Space. Similarly, the government’s efforts are focused almost exclusively on the battlefield. No funding is given to the likes of the rising youth of Fikra Space. Perhaps it is yet another contrast to add to the country’s many contrasts. Where funding these initiatives should be a priority to create opportunities for youth in a country where the youth has little opportunities. Where youth with no opportunities may feel disenfranchised and may consequently be wooed by people with extremist agendas.

“We want to expand our makerspace” Ali Ismail says. “We want to offer entrepreneurs access to a permanent co-working space, formal mentorship and training. We want to create the leaders of tomorrow’s Iraq. But we need funding. So we have started a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo called help Iraq’s geeks save their country and we hope that the campaign will help us expand”.

Outside Ramz’s DIY talk is a world with an uncertain future for Iraq and its youth. Terrorism and violence plague the country’s western and northern territories. Sporadic car bombs plague its heart, Baghdad. But inside this room, Ahmed Ramz could not be more certain about the future. “The future is DIY” he says.

This group of young Iraqis have even taken the DIY culture a step further. Since there are no opportunities for them in society, they have taken to create their own. Can Iraq’s geeks save their country and become role models for its people?

Support Fikra Space  

Today we have 19,000+ members on our Facebook community page. We have organised more than 200 events that have been attended by many enthusiasts. We have also helped young Iraqi entrepreneurs to develop successful start-ups such as S Convert, Mu3amala and d3. The Iraqi government has recognised our impact and asked us to help draft a regulatory framework for technology accelerators, giving us a unique opportunity to shape the industry we will be part of.

We want to grow even more and start offering young entrepreneurs access to a co-working space, formal mentorship and a training program. We want to empower youth to create their own opportunities in a country that has many youth but little opportunities for them. We believe that empowering youth is the way forward for a more peaceful and prosperous Iraq. We want to create success stories that inspire youth. We want to make them hope again.
            
We are writing to you because we are upset. We are upset that every news article in the media about Iraq is a negative one. We know that our beloved country is going through its most challenging times, but good things are
still happening here. Good things like Fikra Space. We want to highlight that. And we want the world to recognise that. That Iraqi people are young, smart, fun, excited and they love life. They have big ambitions and they
have big dreams.

We are running a crowdfunding campaign called "Help Iraq`s Geeks Save Their Country" on Indiegogo to raise funds and expand. The campaign can be found here: http://indiegogo.com/projects/help-iraq-s-geeks-save-their-country 

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Feb 16, 2011 Lebanon
Jadaliyya Reports By :
Jadaliyya Reports

Past is Present: Settler Colonialism Matters!

On 5-6 March 2011, the Palestine Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London will hold its seventh annual conference, "Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine." This year`s conference aims to understand Zionism as a settler colonial project which has, for more than a century, subjected Palestine and Palestinians to a structural and violent form of destruction, dispossession, land appropriation and erasure in the pursuit of a new Jewish Israeli society. By organizing this conference, we hope to reclaim and revive the settler colonial paradigm and to outline its potential to inform and guide political strategy and mobilization.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often described as unique and exceptional with little resemblance to other historical or ongoing colonial conflicts. Yet, for Zionism, like other settler colonial projects such as the British colonization of Ireland or European settlement of North America, South Africa or Australia, the imperative is to control the land and its resources -- and to displace the original inhabitants. Indeed, as conference keynote speaker Patrick Wolfe, one of the foremost scholars on settler colonialism and professor at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia, argues, "the logic of this project, a sustained institutional tendency to eliminate the Indigenous population, informs a range of historical practices that might otherwise appear distinct--invasion is a structure not an event."[i]

Therefore, the classification of the Zionist movement as a settler colonial project, and the Israeli state as its manifestation, is not merely intended as a statement on the historical origins of Israel, nor as a rhetorical or polemical device. Rather, the aim is to highlight Zionism`s structural continuities and the ideology which informs Israeli policies and practices in Palestine and toward Palestinians everywhere. Thus, the Nakba -- whether viewed as a spontaneous, violent episode in war, or the implementation of a preconceived master plan -- should be understood as both the precondition for the creation of Israel and the logical outcome of Zionist settlement in Palestine.

Moreover, it is this same logic that sustains the continuation of the Nakba today. As remarked by Benny Morris, “had he [David Ben Gurion] carried out full expulsion--rather than partial--he would have stabilised the State of Israel for generations.”[ii] Yet, plagued by an “instability”--defined by the very existence of the Palestinian nation--Israel continues its daily state practices in its quest to fulfill Zionism’s logic to maximize the amount of land under its control with the minimum number of Palestinians on it. These practices take a painful array of manifestations: aerial and maritime bombardment, massacre and invasion, house demolitions, land theft, identity card confiscation, racist laws and loyalty tests, the wall, the siege on Gaza, cultural appropriation, and the dependence on willing (or unwilling) native collaboration and security arrangements, all with the continued support and backing of imperial power. 

Despite these enduring practices however, the settler colonial paradigm has largely fallen into disuse. As a paradigm, it once served as a primary ideological and political framework for all Palestinian political factions and trends, and informed the intellectual work of committed academics and revolutionary scholars, both Palestinians and Jews.

The conference thus asks where and why the settler colonial paradigm was lost, both in scholarship on Palestine and in politics; how do current analyses and theoretical trends that have arisen in its place address present and historical realities? While acknowledging the creativity of these new interpretations, we must nonetheless ask: when exactly did Palestinian natives find themselves in a "post-colonial" condition? When did the ongoing struggle over land become a "post-conflict" situation? When did Israel become a "post-Zionist" society? And when did the fortification of Palestinian ghettos and reservations become "state-building"?

In outlining settler colonialism as a central paradigm from which to understand Palestine, this conference re-invigorates it as a tool by which to analyze the present situation. In doing so, it contests solutions which accommodate Zionism, and more significantly, builds settler colonialism as a political analysis that can embolden and inform a strategy of active, mutual, and principled Palestinian alignment with the Arab struggle for self-determination, and indigenous struggles in the US, Latin America, Oceania, and elsewhere.

Such an alignment would expand the tools available to Palestinians and their solidarity movement, and reconnect the struggle to its own history of anti-colonial internationalism. At its core, this internationalism asserts that the Palestinian struggle against Zionist settler colonialism can only be won when it is embedded within, and empowered by, the broader Arab movement for emancipation and the indigenous, anti-racist and anti-colonial movement--from Arizona to Auckland.

SOAS Palestine Society invites everyone to join us at what promises to be a significant intervention in Palestine activism and scholarship.

For over 30 years, SOAS Palestine Society has heightened awareness and understanding of the Palestinian people, their rights, culture, and struggle for self-determination, amongst students, faculty, staff, and the broader public. SOAS Palestine society aims to continuously push the frontiers of discourse in an effort to make provocative arguments and to stimulate debate and organizing for justice in Palestine through relevant conferences, and events ranging from the intellectual and political impact of Edward Said`s life and work (2004), international law and the Palestine question (2005), the economy of Palestine and its occupation (2006), the one state (2007), 60 Years of Nakba, 60 Years of Resistance (2009), and most recently, the Left in Palestine (2010).

For more information on the SOAS Palestine Society 7th annual conference, Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine: www.soaspalsoc.org

SOAS Palestine Society Organizing Collective is a group of committed students that has undertaken to organize annual academic conferences on Palestine since 2003.

 

[i] Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event, Cassell, London, p. 163

[ii] Interview with Benny Morris, Survival of the Fittest, Haaretz, 9. January 2004, http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/art.php?aid=5412