Iraq: A Decade of War

Yesterday Iraq experienced a bloody day in which more than 100 people were killed and another 214 were injured after 22 bomb attacks were carried out in 14 cities, including Baghdad. Most attacks were directed against the minority Shiite community, in what was interpreted as a counterattack by al-Qaida ― of Sunni origin.

This tragic series of attacks is the latest expression of violence unleashed by the U.S. after its invasion in March 2003, which ended up in the destruction and occupation of the country, and the removal of the regime headed by Saddam Hussein. It is worth mentioning that the then-president, George W. Bush, argued that the government of Baghdad possessed weapons of mass destruction and supported terrorist acts by al-Qaida ― statements that were proven false. Indeed, it was the invasion and subsequent war that allowed the fundamentalist organization responsible for the 9/11 attacks in Washington and New York to operate in Iraq. As it is known since then, the main motivation of the White House was to seize Iraq’s oil reserves and to add the land of ancient Mesopotamia to the geostrategic control of the Middle East.

Following the removal of Saddam’s regime and the dismantling of its armed forces, the occupants installed, in a mortgaged country and controlled by private Western companies (mostly American and British), a docile government that has failed, since its formation in 2006, to end the ethnic clashes that erupted after the collapse of the old regime and only so far this year have left ― counting the victims of yesterday ― about 1,500 dead people and a higher number of wounded, mainly Shias and from government forces.

The ongoing war in Iraq also constitutes one of the explosive factors in the Middle East and in the Persian Gulf region, together with the expected destabilization of Syria by Western powers, the increasing hostility of the United States and Europe toward the government of Iran, the old Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the war in Afghanistan and the uneasy peace in neighboring Pakistan. In fact, the circumstances in Iraq and Syria are interconnected by the presence of thousands of Iraqi refugees in the neighboring country and the ties between Syrian rebels, predominantly Sunni, and its community in Iraq.

While the war in Iraq has been ongoing for almost a decade ― even though George W. Bush declared the end of armed conflict in May 2003 ― the entire region moves toward destabilization. In both scenarios the main factor is the criminal and clumsy intervention of the West.