BAGHDAD (AP) – Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. But terrorist attacks in the United States changed the lives of Iraqis forever.
After that, the U.S. invaded Afghanistan, quickly ousting the Taliban regime that had been protecting Osama bin Laden, the leader of the al-Qaeda terrorist network guilty of the attacks.
But it wasn’t long before President George W. Bush shifted his focus to Iraq, identifying it, along with Iran and North Korea, as part of an “axis of evil.” and claiming that his brutal dictator, Saddam Hussein, was armed with weapons of mass destruction and had links to al-Qaeda. No evidence of either was found.
What followed was a U.S.-led invasion of a country in the heart of the Middle East that spurred a decade of war, with consequences that reverberate throughout the region to the present day.
“In the beginning, I was happy with the invasion of the United States, everyone was happy. It filled us with hope for a better future, “said Mohammed Agha, an Iraqi Kurd who was 27 when the invasion began.
“But then what happened was that the country’s institutions were destroyed and never rebuilt,” he said. “There was no planning for the next day or nation building.”
Agha’s words reflect the lingering anger and bitterness that many Iraqis feel for what they see as a missed opportunity to rebuild their country after the expulsion of Saddam, who ruled with an iron grip for nearly 30 years.
The invasion reshaped Iraqi politics, including a shift in the country’s power base from minority Sunni Arabs to majority Shiites, with the Kurds gaining their own autonomous region. But while many Iraqis welcomed Saddam’s ouster and the degree of democracy that followed, they hoped the U.S. would provide good governance, security, and reliable basic services such as electricity.
Failure to do any of these things fueled resentment and sparked an insurgency that eventually turned into civil war, with Shiite and Sunni militias fighting Americans for control of the country.
After decades of conflict, Iraq now has a relatively stable government and car bombings, suicide bombings and death squads have subsided. But the economy is in ruins, its infrastructure is collapsing and corruption is spreading. The government, with its forceful policy, is unable to control the dozens of powerful militias backed by Iran that exercise enormous control.
For some, the loss is also personal.
On the night of April 7, 2003, two missiles crashed with a sound and force so deafening that they dropped Itimad Hassoun on the floor of his home in Baghdad’s Jadriyah district and ripped open the doors of his hinges.
The Americans had been bombing for more than two weeks as part of their “shock and fear” campaign to overthrow Saddam, and the Iraqi capital was in the dark. Hassoun had been sitting by candlelight with her husband. The next few moments were a blur, as she scoured blindly, screaming for him and his children.
Her son, two daughters and a granddaughter were dead among the rubble of her house next door. Only one newborn granddaughter survived.
Twenty years after 9/11, Hassoun is 74 years old and still wears black after losing his son 18 years ago. He says he will never forgive the United States for killing their loved ones.
“There is nothing that makes me happy. I have a pain that can’t be removed and an injury that can’t be healed. It’s inside me, ”she said, looking fragile and tired, as she sat in a chair in a large guest room.
Baghdad fell on April 9, two days after the airstrike that killed Hassoun’s family. Many Iraqis cheered when U.S. Marines pulled up a statue of Saddam in the capital’s Firdous Square.
But the euphoria did not last long, as hope gave way to occupation, as well as more daily deaths and destruction after the Americans disbanded the Iraqi army. The move led to the rise of al-Qaeda and later the Islamic State group in the country.
The following years were stamped with images of terror. Among them: the bodies of four U.S. security contractors hanging from a bridge over the Euphrates River in Fallujah in March 2004; photos cataloging the abuse of Iraqis in the U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison; the bloody battles between American troops and Al Qaeda militants in Fallujah in 2004; the February 2006 attack by Sunni extremists that broke the golden dome of a revered Shiite shrine in Samarra, triggering a spill of sectarian blood.
When Washington withdrew its last combat troops in December 2011, tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians had died, along with 4,487 Americans. U.S. troops were called in 2014 after Iraqi security forces collapsed in the face of an Islamic State group attack there and in neighboring Syria. Tens of thousands more Iraqis died before the last pockets of these militants were defeated in 2017.
“A dictatorship was removed for a supposed democracy and we found ourselves in a civil war, al-Qaeda and ISIS, with no services and only thieves around us,” said Assim Salman, a 53-year-old neighbor of Hassoun who went help him dig out the bodies of his relatives that fateful night.
“To hell with this democracy.”
In his 2010 memoirs, “Decision Points,” Bush admitted mistakes in Iraq, including the decision to disband the Iraqi army, and said he felt “a sense of illness” every time he thought of failure. of Finding Weapons of Mass Destruction. main justification of the war. But he maintained his decision to invade.
Political analyst Bassam al-Qazwini said the people of Iraq and Afghanistan paid the price for the U.S. invasions after 9/11, not for the regimes that quickly collapsed in those countries.
Instead of building democracy in Iraq, he said, the Americans supported a political class that created networks of corruption and militias that continue to rob the country. Although rich in oil, Iraq suffers from chronic blackouts and dilapidated infrastructure due to grafting, profits and mismanagement. Tens of thousands of students graduate each year with no hope of finding work.
“This corrupt network is capable of killing Iraqis to survive, just as Saddam killed Iraqis to stay in power. So what has changed?” Al-Qazwini said, citing the crackdown on peaceful protests. against the government in 2019.
Today, Hassoun lives in the same house as Jadriyah, 200 meters from the Tigris River. Black and white photos of her husband adorn the walls.
Dina, her granddaughter who survived the bombing, is now an 18-year-old dental student.
Hassoun wants the few thousand Americans still in Iraq to leave, “this time a no-return trip,” because of what they did to his family.
But its neighbor Salman, like many other Iraqis, sees with concern the withdrawal of the United States from Afghanistan, worried about the return of militant groups such as the Islamic State.
“The United States needs to fix things,” he said. “He can’t do to us what he did to Afghanistan, where he fought the Taliban for 20 years and returned the country to them.”
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Karam reported from Beirut.