Iraq 20 years on: Insider reflections on the war and its aftermath

Dr Renad Mansour Senior Research Fellow, Middle East and North Africa Programme; Project Director, Iraq Initiative Email Renad Twitter Publication date: 20 March 2023  I grew up in exile. Throughout the 1990s, I met many exiled Iraqi political leaders opposed to Saddam Hussein’s rule in Iraq, including Ahmed Chalabi, who was one of the most influential and infamous voices that played a part in persuading the US to invade Iraq, and later became a president in the rotating Iraqi Governing Council. ‘Anyone is better than Saddam’, they would tell me, as they compared the Iraqi president with Hitler and Stalin. I would watch and read news reports and stories of Saddam’s attacks on his own people, including his use of chemical weapons. The comparison resonated.   Every Iraqi I knew had a family member affected by Saddam Hussein’s regime. My father was a political dissident, forced to flee Iraq under fake names and with forged passports; his family members were often visited and interrogated by Iraqi government officials. These stories were formative for me – terrifying tales of Saddam’s depravity, dreams of Iraq’s bright future and an end to exile if the regime was gone.  Still, in the process of forming my political consciousness, I listened to these opponents of Saddam, and I believed them. Like many, I thought that removing Saddam and establishing a democratic and representative state was best for Iraqis – and that it was possible for an outside power to bring about such a change, even the George W. Bush administration, regardless of what I thought of its specific policies and views. I had hope in Iraq’s future.   Twenty years ago, in 2003, Iraqis across their country and abroad anxiously celebrated the US decision to remove the Saddam Hussein regime, which had degraded the wealthy country of Iraq from a regional powerhouse to a pariah state. On the eve of the invasion, a Gallup opinion poll in Iraq found that 72 per cent of respondents favoured the war. This optimism was certainly underlined by trepidation: many still did not know what would come next.   Very few observers would have imagined that the years following regime change would be marked by civil wars, the rise of genocidal groups like the Islamic State (ISIS), and the emergence and establishment of a political system defined by endemic corruption that has gutted the country’s basic public services. Iraq has one of the highest national revenues in the world ($115.7 billion in 2022) but one of the lowest life expectancies (69 years) and human development index (HDI) scores. This disparity is directly linked to the nature of the system set up 20 years ago. Iraq has one of the highest national revenues in the world but one of the lowest life expectancies. Today, almost two-thirds of Iraqis are under 25, and they are too young to recall anything other than their life after 2003. Although too young to remember a time before the invasion, many of them believe that their lives are worse off as a result.  After years away, my family started going back to Iraq. Over time, a new reality began to emerge, one far different from the rosy picture of life without Saddam that had been presented in exile. The US did not seem to have a coherent plan for the day after, for when it became the occupier. It allied with the exiled politicians, themselves rendered foreign after decades abroad, who were returning to a changed and relatively unfamiliar Iraq. Many of Baghdad’s new political leaders were lost in the city – unable to find their way around, and disconnected from the people they sought to lead or represent.   To consolidate their power, the new rulers built a Green Zone – a fortified area in central Baghdad housing domestic authorities and foreign governments. They wanted themselves and the new government to be safe from the rest of the city and the country, which was under fire from a breakdown in law and order.   Iraq’s new leaders and their foreign backers hid behind high blast walls. At first, aspiring local leaders remained in their homes or offices in the wider city. However, in short order, the entire collection of ruling elites – foreign and domestic, new and old – decamped to the fortified Green Zone. Iraqi politicians commandeered houses in areas under US protection and hired bodyguards to transport them around the country in armoured cars.