Baghdad, known as The City of Peace by Arabs, became Iraq's capital in the early 1920s and has a population of around five million people. The Tigris River roughly bisects the vast city ...

If I was going to meet the new Baghdad, I'd have to put some old habits and memories to the side. My first day back I spread out a map of the city on a table in a shaded inner courtyard.

The clean-shaven 51-year-old, who wears a black robe called a jellaba ... with 10 teams qualifying in Baghdad alone to ...