"In this bleak atmosphere it is important to give children a glimmer of hope, far from the sounds of explosions and the news of death," says Safa el-Din al-Sultani, who runs a computer centre for children in the heart Baghdad.

"The Karrada Cultural Center for Youth Computer Teaching" is located in a villa which used to belong to one of the bodyguards of Saddam Hussein, before the dictator was toppled in April 2003.

Since then, the capital has been rocked by daily shootings and bombings, carried out by insurgents against US and Iraqi security targets, but which claim the lives of many civilians.

For many children in this middle-class neighbourhood, computer games, painting or drawing progammes open up a whole new world and offer a brief respite from the grim reality.

More than 130 Iraqi boys and girls, aged 8-14, from 17 different schools in the Karrada area attend a two-hour computer course every day, delivered by fresh university graduates who volunteer to teach the children.

"The children are eager to learn. They want to know how to use computers, how to play games and how to draw," says Mithal Alaa, 27, who studied at the Nationalist Computer Science Centre under the old regime.

"We teach these children for free. Most of them come from families who cannot afford to have a computer in there homes," she said.

Beyond the enjoyment of a break from the omnipresence of the country's tumultuous events, children are also the first ones to seize a tool for their future, one which was reserved to the elite under Saddam Hussein.

Sultani admits that the centre would have not been established without the help of the US military and explains that the idea of teaching children sprung to his mind following the fall of the former regime in April 2003.

"The Americans welcomed the idea and they gave us 37 computers and ten play-stations," he recounts.

"Iraq is considered to be an under-developed country. We have ignorance here and there are no centres to inform adults and youths about computers, which have become an essential element in our life," he says.

"Now we are willing to educate children and adults about the importance of learning about computers," Sultani says.

During Saddam Hussein's iron-fisted rule, owning a computer was theoretically allowed but remained the privilege of the elite and Saddam's cronies.

"Computers were not forbidden, but were very expensive. Most of the Iraqis were worried about survival and owning a computer was beyond their imagination," he said.

For 12 years, Iraq lived under the crippling sanctions imposed by the United Nations following Saddam's invasion of Kuwait in 1991, throwing back into a poverty a country that had achieved huge progress two decades earlier.

Divided in three modest classrooms, the young students are studiously sitting in front of their screens. They draw all kinds of shapes, most using the brightest colours they can find: yellow, pink and green. Others simply write their names.

"I am here to learn about computers," says Ali, an 11-year-old boy already aware that the skills he is developing are more than a recreation.

"Now, I enjoy drawing and playing games. But in the future it will help me in my studies," he says. "When I grow up I want to be a computer programmer."

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