The Swords of Qadisiyah, also known as the Hands of Victory, are among Baghdad's most unmistakable modern monuments: two vast pairs of forearms holding crossed swords over a parade ground. They were commissioned under Saddam Hussein after the Iran-Iraq War, and their scale is inseparable from the regime that built them.
This is not a casual sightseeing stop in the usual sense; access and security conditions can change, and the monument is politically loaded. But as a piece of late-20th-century state theatre it is hard to ignore, and it says as much about Baghdad's recent history as many older ruins do about its ancient one.