As British families broke open boxes of dates this festive season, a sheikh far away in a dusty palm grove gazed into the distance, as if picturing his fruit on Tesco’s tinsel-hung shelves.

After 30 years of dictatorship and fighting in Iraq, Sheikh Ali Mijbil (above, photographed by Ayman Oghanna), chubby and resplendent in spotless dishdash and headdress, wants to resurrect the ancient tradition of date cultivation and export which flourished before the country was shattered by war.

Potential clients for Iraq’s bounty include Britain and France, with the UK as the second biggest European market – behind France – consuming 12,000 tonnes of dates a year.

“It would be very nice to go to a European country and see Iraqi dates,” he says. “It feels bad that despite our being a people of the dates, our industry is so backward.”

On the farm just north of Baghdad that has been in his family for more than 300 years, Sheikh Ali points out towering date palms planted by his grandfather and the shorter ones from his father’s time.

Then he indicates trees that died when there was no water, electricity or ease of movement during Iraq’s bloody sectarian war. “During the past years,” he says, “agriculture in general degraded and deteriorated. In 2005 and 2006, it was the troubles and it was all over the country, including in this neighbourhood.”

Palm groves during the worst fighting were ideal hideouts for insurgents, and farmers in many places were afraid to go on their land. Unexploded ordnance still dots the ground under date palms in some regions.

But now, political instability notwithstanding, security has greatly improved, and cultivation can begin again.

From ancient Abbasid times until the 1960s, Iraq, with its swathes of fertile land between the rivers Tigris and Euphrates, was one of the world’s biggest date producers.

“We had 623 varieties and 43 million trees,” said Muwafaq Ali, of the US AID-funded Inma agribusiness program.

But then, he went on, came 30 years of dictatorship and conflict. The al Faw peninsula in the south was home to 10 million date palms, but became one of the fiercest-fought battlefields of the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War.

The damage wrought then was finished off, said Mr Ali, when Shia fighters in the 1991 uprising used the palms for cover. Sanctions in the 1990s deprived exporters of contact with outside markets, and violence after the allied invasion of 2003 left agricultural land neglected or destroyed, with less then ten million date palms remaining today.

But now economists working in Iraq are eyeing the country’s dependence on a single product – oil – nervously, and, with American backing, are keen to coax the once-mighty agricultural sector back to life.

While Iraq does not grow the Medjool dates popular with the British, or the Deglet Noor variety found in the classic Eat-Me date boxes, Iraqis firmly believe that their native varieties are so superior that a momentary taste test will surpass all previous date experience.

“Just try it,” urged Mr Ali, proffering a box of the prized Barhi dates. Creamy and with a undertone of burnt sugar, its smoky sweetness would indeed be no mean accompaniment to a glass of sherry in front of the fire.

Production has now increased, with better farming resulting in an increased yield. The next step, said Graham Dale, a British agricultural processing specialist working with Inma, is to ensure that farms meet the health and safety standards required by companies like British supermarkets.

“If you ask Iraqis,” he said, “they’ll say that you can’t wash dates, that they’re better with a bit of grit on them.” But the global market does not work this way, he went on, and six packing plants meeting health and safety standards have now been built across the country, including one on Sheikh Ali’s farm.

Further preparations are now underway for the visit of Alexandre Dahan, who buys fruit from around the world for sale in British supermarkets including Sainsbury’s and Tesco, who will tour the country before addressing a conference on the feasibility of Iraq becoming a nation famous once more for its dates.

“Unfortunately,” said Sheikh Ali, “we have had so many wars. Iraqis have a reputation for fighting and bloodshed, and that has ended.”

Iraq needs a leadership who can direct it toward agriculture and industry, he said. “The country is just like a family. If the head of the family has bad manners and is fighting all the time, the family will be looked on as a bad family.

“If someone comes from the family who is peaceful, the reputation will change.”

- Alice Fordham