On the day that British troops formally ended their mission in Iraq, that country's prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, was heralding a peaceful invasion by its citizens of our universities and colleges.
This year, 500 Iraqi students will be coming to Britain under a new scholarship scheme, and thousands more will follow.
"It's especially poignant and important to stress that on the day the British troops are withdrawn there is a new era of cultural exchange, of educational exchange," Maliki said on a visit to the British Council's London headquarters.
"As you know, education and culture are the tool and the key that build bridges between nations, and it is on these that the true value of nations is built."
Restoring education
The scholarship scheme, which aims to send 10,000 Iraqis a year to universities and colleges in the UK, US, Canada and Australia, is part of a two-pronged effort aiming to restore education in a country that has historically valued it.
"The second part of the initiative involves the improving and upgrading of the primary and secondary curriculum and improving the level of education in primary, secondary and further education," said Dr Zuhair Humadi, an education adviser to the prime minister.
The scholarship students will be following a path that has been well-trodden by principals and senior managers from Iraq's colleges over the last five years.
The Rawabit (partnership) project arose from the desire of a group of eight English colleges to give something back to Iraq. From the start, it was agreed that these colleges should not try to push English methods or programmes on those trying to rebuild the Iraqi vocational education and training sector. "We would just expose them to what works here and what doesn't," says Jo Clough, of the Learning and Skills Improvement Service, which has been managing the project.
There has, in fact, been significant interest from the Iraqis. Groups of principals - followed by deputies, heads of department and lecturers - have spent weeks immersing themselves in the colleges.
"We wanted to help build links with our colleagues in Iraq ... to reconnect with the UK, to be exposed to what we do and to pick out what works for them," says Ali Hadawi, principal of Southend Adult Community College, one of the eight participants.
According to the British Council, which provided the initial funding for Rawabit, the energetic involvement in the scheme by the Iraqi-born Hadawi - the only Arab principal of a British FE college - has been critical in developing trust.
Initially around 50 principals spent time in Southend College, as well as in Greenwich, Oxford & Cherwell, Derby, Warwickshire, Brighton & Hove, Huddersfield and Preston colleges. One particular technique captured the interest of the dean from the Najaf Technical Institute. At Greenwich Community College he was fascinated by an outreach programme to train the unemployed. Going out to find potential students and offer them training might work with the disaffected young men who were otherwise being recruited by militias, he thought.
"It was recognised that many, though not all, of the people involved in the violence that was rife at the time were not doing it for ideological reasons but because they didn't have skills or a job in the new set-up," Hadawi explains. "People were offering them $50 [£33] for a killing and they were taking it."
Five courses - in construction, air conditioning, welding, electricity and metal turning - were devised, and sessions began. They were offered predominantly to men in their 20s and 30s, a novel idea in a country that did not have a tradition of giving adults a second chance of education.
Gradually the idea spread. In rural areas, courses in, for instance, agriculture, horticulture and bee-keeping were offered.
"My understanding is that it has been rolled out across Iraq," says Hadawi. It has gone beyond former militia members to unemployed men - and women.
Absolute boss
One difficulty proved to be the vast difference between the role of principal in Iraq and in the UK. Under Saddam Hussein, principals were absolute bosses in their institutions, Hadawi says. "You made every decision, from buying a light bulb to writing the curriculum."
It was realised that other staff members needed to visit the UK colleges to see another management approach and to be allies for their principals in pushing through change.
On his recent visits to colleges in Iraq, Hadawi says he has noticed real changes. Principals are concentrating on strategy and vision, leaving managers to manage rather than just carry out orders, he says.
Further education is a relatively small sector in Iraq. In non-Kurdish Iraq there are 40 technical institutes and colleges, serving 63,300 students. There are a further 22 institutes and colleges in Kurdish Iraq.
Although historically Iraqis have held education in high regard, the years of deprivation under international sanctions meant that many young adults were unable to give up time to study, he says.
"These people will have lost years of their lives," he says. "They need to be offered opportunities to come back to study and training."