Then
Under Saddam Hussein, the Iraqis had basic public order — garbage was picked up, trains ran, oil was pumped — but that order was enforced by the dictator's secret police. His sons were notorious sexual predators. Political dissenters were tortured, killed or forced into exile. Poverty was common while Saddam built palaces. He started two wars in a decade, against Iran and Kuwait, that killed hundreds of thousands and — along with U.N. sanctions — eroded Iraqis' standard of living.
Now
Iraqis have suffered since the U.S. invasion — often at each other's hands in cycles of sectarian revenge. Estimates of the civilian death toll vary wildly, from 100,000 to 1 million. About 1.7 million more are refugees abroad. Killings have risen again recently but sit far below the peak in 2006, when the United Nations estimated 100 people a day were dying. Iraqi forces — still backed by U.S. troops — are in charge of public order, and most of the concrete walls that once laced Baghdad are gone.
GOVERNMENT
Then
Saddam and his Baath Party, dominated by his ethnic group, the Sunni Arabs, had an iron grip on government. Iraq's two other main ethnic groups — the Shiites, who are Iraq's majority, and the Kurds, from the nation's northern mountains — were shut out of political life. Fear of Saddam kept them in line. The three main groups had never cooperated in a government.
Now
Iraq's constitution proclaims it an Islamic democracy in parliamentary form, though what that means in practice isn't yet clear. The newly minted political parties are based on ethnic lines; Shiites, though the majority, have divided their political loyalties. Several elections have been held successfully, the most recent in March. No party, however, has won a majority, and five months of negotiations aimed at forming a governing coalition have broken down. Privately, Iraq's national politicians — a narrow elite made up mostly of former Saddam opponents who spent his rule in exile — lament their lack of unity and say they fear a coup attempt more than the insurgency.
ECONOMY
Then
Iraq's economy was overwhelmingly based on oil — the world's third-largest proven reserves. But the Iran-Iraq war, the 1991 Persian Gulf War, mismanagement and U.N. sanctions tattered its oil infrastructure. Production had shrunk from 3.5 million barrels a day a decade earlier to 2.6 million, by U.S. estimates. The big economic growth of the late 1990s, thanks to high world oil prices, had flattened. Inflation was around 25 percent and unemployment was high. Debt to foreign creditors was a burden, perhaps $200 billion.
Now
The end of sanctions and Saddam means Iraqis who have survived the war can buy foreign goods again — if they have the money. Satellite TV dishes have sprouted on residences, shops have reopened and people go out in public again. Oil production has recovered to 2.3 million barrels a day, and experts say the countryside might be one of the last spots on Earth with large oil deposits waiting to be found. Unemployment remains high. After last week's bombing of an army recruiting center in Baghdad, for example, dazed survivors scrambled back into line, still clutching job applications. Electricity production has gone from 3,958 megawatts before the war to 6,202.
SOURCES: U.S. State and Defense Departments, Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, United Nations, World-Herald press services
