Making Heaven in a Shithole Changing Political Engagement in the Aftermath of the Islamic State

This chapter draws out how Kurdish youth frame and retain hope for the future through political engagement, despite their ongoing disappointment in Iraqi Kurdish parties. By situating Kobanî and the Rojava Revolution as “critical events” in the Kurdish imagining, this chapter focuses on how, in the aftermath of the fight against the Islamic State (IS), multiple new perspectives on confronting uncertainty emerged through political engagement among youth in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI). I argue that the war against IS and the mobilization of Kurdish forces created new spaces for young Kurds to imagine and work toward changing social and political structures in KRI that were centered on social inclusion, diversity, and gender equality. Based on fieldwork conducted in the city of Silêmanî between 2015 and 2016, I explore two types of political engagement amongst youth. First, I explore social activism as political engagement in the context of a post-conflict region through the story of Azad, a student who seeks to improve society through the promotion of the multiethnic, multicultural, and multireligious make up of Iraq. Second, through a Kurdish returnee and former guerrilla fighter named Hoshyar, I discuss how the ongoing Kurdish political struggle has changed militarized political engagement among Kurdish youth due to new transnational ties with the diaspora and Western audiences.