Iraq, twenty years after the invasion

Euskaraz irakurri: Iraq, inbasiotik 20 urtera

Under the guise of getting rid of it huge weapons of destruction and to free the Iraqis from the yoke of Saddam Husseinthe international coalition led by UNITED STATES, in which he was Spain, invaded Iraq 2003. But today, 20 years later, the country is still rebuilding, with an unstable political system and surviving thanks to a dangerous dependence almost exclusively on oil.

In the famous speech “Mission accomplished” (mission accomplished) from the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln on May 1, 2003 US President George W. Bush he celebrated that “Iraq is free” and affirmed that the role of coalition forces was now to “secure and rebuild the country”.

But Iraq is still suffering the effects of the invasion, which, added to the rampant corruption of the ruling class established during the occupation, has locked one of the world’s most oil-rich countries into a crisis spiral.

“Looking back, it was necessary to get rid of Saddam, but not through an invasion. There were some grassroots changes coming, social changes in Iraq. It would have been a good idea to limit the invasion to taking out of Saddam and his circle, and do not destroy the whole country and its institutions,” he told EFE Sarkawt shamsuntil 2021 deputy in the Iraqi parliament at the head of a Kurdish formation.

The occupation years are over between 100,000 and 500,000 deadby various estimates, in addition to billions of dollars lost and a state still unable to provide continuous electricity to its citizens to this day.

For Bayarek al-Khayr, also a former representative of the Sunni faction, Mohamed Othman al-Khalidi“the deterioration of services and infrastructure, high levels of poverty, unemployment, forced displacement and the feeling of instability”. “heavy price” paid for Saddam Hussein’s freedom.

And it is that the successive conflictssuch as the sectarian war that ravaged the country between 2006 and 2008, or the devastation wrought by the terror group Islamic State between 2014 and 2017 have portrayed the country in a very bad light and undermined efforts to ensure Iraq’s stability and development.

Are Iraqis free?

After the fall of the dictator, the United States took political command of Iraq and installed, under a kind of “viceroyalty” of Paul Bremer, a series of leaders who were in exile against the old regime and were entrusted to lead a country from zero.

“The legacy (of the invasion) is to get incompetent exiled politicians to rule and leave the country in the hands of warlords, while the United States did not guarantee the survival of civil society,” Shams said.

According to Al Khalidi, the fall of Saddam and the lack of planning for the transition process also meant the proliferation of armed groupsas is the case with Al Qaeda, and militias loyal to Shia clerics and political leaders who “imposed their dominance” in Iraq, something that continues to happen today, he deplores.

The attacks have been constant all these years.

The Iraqi Constitution approved in 2005guaranteed something though rights unthinkable under Saddam for all religious communities and ethnic groups that make up Iraq, who were oppressed under a dictatorship that did not tolerate any form of dissent or criticism.

For Salem al Anbaki, a parliamentarian from the current majority coalition in the Iraqi legislature, Al Fatah, the fall of Saddam has indeed given the Iraqis a freedom of speech unprecedented, at the same time as a democratic system, but with “failures”.

Bush warned of this from the USS Abraham Lincoln when he acknowledged that “the transition from dictatorship to democracy will take time”.

“The main question is: have we achieved an integrated democratic political process? The answer is no,” said Al Anbaki, pointing to the country’s high level of corruption.

Big challenges

Mismanagement and the destruction of institutions that are still being rebuilt have led to a great plague in what was the cradle of universal civilization: corruption.

According to Transparency International, Iraq ranks 157 out of 180 countries in the corruption indexwhich has serious consequences for its reconstruction and development.

The Iraqis don’t understand how OPEC’s second largest producer generates that approx $8 billion a month in oil exportsis unable to provide basic services to the population.

More than 90% of the state’s income depends on crude oil, and these are mainly used to pay the salaries of public sector workers, who employ more than 60% of the population.

“I don’t think it’s fair to say that Iraq is a failed state, but it is certainly fragile. It will certainly take a few more decades for it to become a stable and strong player in the region,” says Shams.

We recovered this video that the EITB made on the 10th anniversary of the invasion, because of its documentary value: