BAGHDAD, Oct 12 — An Iraqi professor leading a group of students on a walking tour of Baghdad’s historic centre invites them to stop and admire a centuries-old stone wall erected to shield the city from Mongol invaders.

Such a tour would have been unthinkable in the Iraqi capital through much of recent decades due to the country’s successive wars, which saw Baghdad pounded from the air, targeted by suicide bombers and hit with car bomb attacks.