odanny
Diamond Member
But not a hopeful one.
Today, Iraq is a very different place, and there are many lenses through which to see it. It is a far freer society than it was under Mr. Hussein and one of the more open countries in the Middle East, with multiple political parties and a largely free press.
Still, conversations with more than 50 Iraqis about the war’s anniversary offered an often troubling portrait of an oil-rich nation that should be doing well but where most people neither feel secure nor see their government as anything but a corruption machine.
Many Iraqis see a bleak economic future, because despite a wealth of natural resources, the country’s energy revenues have been spent primarily on the vast public sector, lost to corruption or wasted on grand projects left unfinished. Relatively little has gone into transforming public infrastructure or providing services, as many Iraqis had hoped.
“The living conditions are not good. The electricity is still bad,” said Mohammed Hassan, a 37-year-old communications engineer and father of three who supervises the laying of internet lines in a middle-class neighborhood in the capital, Baghdad. He is paid $620 a month. “I have hardly enough to get to the end of the month, so I cannot see much of a future,” he added.
“It’s a pity. We always wanted to get rid of Saddam,” he said. “We know Iraq is rich, and we hoped it would get better. But we did not get what we were hoping for.”
Iraq remains indelibly scarred by a civil war, an insurgency and the almost constant upheaval that the invasion unleashed, which continued even after U.S. troops pulled out in 2011. Wave after wave of fighting gave way to political strife, and the country never fully stabilized. Two major cities — Mosul and Falluja — have been largely destroyed, and damage is visible in almost every major town throughout central and northern Iraq.
It is hard to find anyone in this country who has not lost someone.
About 200,000 civilians died at the hands of American forces, Al Qaeda militants, Iraqi insurgents or the Islamic State terrorist group, according to Brown University’s Cost of War project. At least 45,000 members of the Iraqi military and police forces and at least 35,000 Iraqi insurgents also lost their lives, and tens of thousands more were left with life-altering injuries.
Edited for copyright compliance-meister
Go to the linked source for the entire article.
Today, Iraq is a very different place, and there are many lenses through which to see it. It is a far freer society than it was under Mr. Hussein and one of the more open countries in the Middle East, with multiple political parties and a largely free press.
Still, conversations with more than 50 Iraqis about the war’s anniversary offered an often troubling portrait of an oil-rich nation that should be doing well but where most people neither feel secure nor see their government as anything but a corruption machine.
Many Iraqis see a bleak economic future, because despite a wealth of natural resources, the country’s energy revenues have been spent primarily on the vast public sector, lost to corruption or wasted on grand projects left unfinished. Relatively little has gone into transforming public infrastructure or providing services, as many Iraqis had hoped.
“The living conditions are not good. The electricity is still bad,” said Mohammed Hassan, a 37-year-old communications engineer and father of three who supervises the laying of internet lines in a middle-class neighborhood in the capital, Baghdad. He is paid $620 a month. “I have hardly enough to get to the end of the month, so I cannot see much of a future,” he added.
“It’s a pity. We always wanted to get rid of Saddam,” he said. “We know Iraq is rich, and we hoped it would get better. But we did not get what we were hoping for.”
Iraq remains indelibly scarred by a civil war, an insurgency and the almost constant upheaval that the invasion unleashed, which continued even after U.S. troops pulled out in 2011. Wave after wave of fighting gave way to political strife, and the country never fully stabilized. Two major cities — Mosul and Falluja — have been largely destroyed, and damage is visible in almost every major town throughout central and northern Iraq.
It is hard to find anyone in this country who has not lost someone.
About 200,000 civilians died at the hands of American forces, Al Qaeda militants, Iraqi insurgents or the Islamic State terrorist group, according to Brown University’s Cost of War project. At least 45,000 members of the Iraqi military and police forces and at least 35,000 Iraqi insurgents also lost their lives, and tens of thousands more were left with life-altering injuries.
Edited for copyright compliance-meister
Go to the linked source for the entire article.
20 Years After U.S. Invasion, Iraq Is a Freer Place, but Not a Hopeful One (Published 2023)
Conversations with dozens of Iraqis offer a portrait of a nation that is rich in oil, hobbled by corruption and unable to guarantee its citizens’ safety.
www.nytimes.com
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