Matchmaker, matchmaker...

2008-08-13 17:46

Baghdad - Young Iraqis in Baghdad are surfing the internet to search for partners to tie the knot as violence and sectarian tensions take their toll on more traditional forms of socialising.

Dating has fallen victim to the insecurity that has reduced the capital to a sullen network of rival neighbourhoods, leaving little space for men and women to meet other than in cyber chat rooms.

Women stuck at home

"I think the Iraqis are looking for love on the internet because there are no other places for them to meet," said Mustafa Kazem, a 20-year-old engineering student who found his girlfriend on a university chat forum.

"Once they have completed their university studies, girls tend to stay home", rather than go out and look for a job, said Kazem.

Bank employee Omar Assir, 29, is among those who turned to the internet for a partner.

In Iraq, like in most conservative Arab societies, couples are usually nudged into matrimony by their parents and often a matchmaker is consulted to help find the perfect spouse.

Assir, a Christian, said he met his future wife, Evan Fadi, 25, on the Iraq4u.com internet chat forum.

"I was overjoyed when I found out that Evan was a Christian as well," he said.

The couple met twice only before deciding to tie the knot.

"For security reasons we met only twice, and briefly, at the Tea Time cafe in Mansur (central Baghdad)," said Assir, adding that his parents were opposed to a marriage through the Internet.

'The only way to meet a girl'

"But I persuaded them that it was the only way to meet a girl," he said.

"I had wanted to meet the man of my dreams but how could I when I was always stuck at home," said Fadi, an unemployed university graduate who holds a degree in languages.

According to Um Mohammed, a researcher at the ministry of education, "many young women are unemployed because their parents are afraid to allow them to leave home" for security reasons.

"Many men have also been victim of violence that has swept Iraq and others have simply left the country," she said.

Tens and probably hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians have been killed since the 2003 US-led invasion, according to independent estimates, while an estimated one million people were killed in the eight-year Iran-Iraq war that ended in 1988.

- AFP