Culture and art have somehow managed to succeed where politics failed, so to speak. Iraq has recently brought together huge delegations from most of the Arab countries, at the invitation of the Iraqi Ministry of Culture, to participate in the closing festival of events for the Baghdad Capital of Arab Culture 2013.

The year-long and final events had been subject to criticism on social networking pages by a group of intellectuals, artists and journalists from Iraq, amid talk about financial corruption associated with the events, to which half a billion dollars was allocated. Despite the criticism, these events have positively and significantly affected Iraq, especially in a period when the entire Middle East is going through political changes that had, in some way, an impact on the cultural, artistic, literary and media landscape.

In the end, these events greatly contribute to conveying messages to the Arab peoples that are, in turn, contributing to those changes, including in Iraq. Indeed, Iraq has been witnessing over the last two or three years popular demonstrations, during which the people demanded their rights in a given case or challenged a certain governmental or parliamentary action that they deemed unjust. These actions are the fruit of the activation of the Iraqi people’s social culture. This new culture is still young and needs enrichment to reach practices within the framework of the freedom and democracy, away from sectarian and communal retrenchment, which is largely affecting the demography of many segments of Iraqi society.

Therefore, we must understand that communicating via these means is very important and can lead to significant and radical changes in the restructuring of the Iraqi people’s social culture. These people should be saved from sectarianism to focus instead on the negative aspects of the former regime, which was exterminated more than 10 years ago. This can be achieved through cultural, cognitive and intellectual exchange, as well as the exchange of experience in the fields of cinema, theater, television and other means of communication. In fact, these means are influential and their messages can be conveyed spontaneously, automatically and in a simple way.