Firas Al-Atraqchi recalls his memories on the third anniversary of the US-led invasion of Iraq It was in the spring of 2000 that I began to understand that a new, more terrible war with Iraq was in the brewing. Presidential hopeful Governor George W Bush had brought Richard Cheney on as his nominate for vice-president. Cheney had been the secretary of defense during the 1991 Gulf War. Colin Powell, who had been the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the Armed Services during that war, was now being showcased as the secretary of state. A few months after his election victory -- December 2000, Bush said Saddam Hussein was a major threat to the United States. The reason? Through several strategic moves including threatening to hold off on selling oil in international markets and using the euro as the hard currency of choice, Iraq had helped raise the price of a barrel of oil from $10.7 during the Clinton era to $28. Iraq had been holding several commercial fairs, luring French, Chinese, Russian, Venezuelan, and Arab oil and telecommunications companies to Baghdad. Iraq seemed to have learned how to survive and begin to thrive after 10 years of sanctions. But there were murmurs in select newspapers and magazines urging Iraq be invaded. When the two towers plummeted in New York in a crime that shocked the world, it might as well have been Iraq's history and infrastructure crumbling with them. Horror gripped me as I knew that the tragic deaths of 2,700 Americans would be used as a clarion call to justify the killing of tens of thousands of Iraqis. Almost immediately, Iraq was allegedly linked to the 9/11 attacks and a thirst for revenge became commonplace. Missing from the debate (or lack thereof) was any talk of how sanctions had crippled Iraqi industry and society. As the end of 2002 rolled around, I and others felt frenzy overcome us, as if we were in a race against time, a race pitting reason against ignorance, to prevent destructive forces from being unleashed. It was clear that Iraq would be invaded. Iraqi exiles belonging to various outlawed organisations or former Saddam henchmen -- most of whom Iraqis had never heard of -- began to commandeer the discourse on Iraq. Books by so-called Iraqis who feared for their lives hit the bookstands, claiming Iraq was the US's eternal enemy and that Saddam would nuclear-strike at the continental American heartland if permitted to do so. There seemed to be no details at all concerning reconstruction in Iraq, nor on how to systematically build a democratic state that transcended ethnic, tribal, and sectarian divisions. We never heard of how a US occupying administration would draw on the large pool of domestic Iraqi intellectuals, technocrats, and academics to build a new government. All we heard from the military talking heads were how to wage war. I, like many others, was shocked by the ferocity of the bombings and awed by the world's apathy. Why did no one prevent this? I shivered for a few moments as I saw the city I called home in the 1970s and 1980s burn like a modern-day Dresden. I imagined that all Iraqis had been wiped out. And then I was numbed. And, that is how Iraqis today are -- numbed. Numbed because of the great hopes they carried on their backs which they saw shatter in the burst of wanton violence and lawlessness. Numbed because after enduring sanctions for 12 years they had to endure foreigners of all ilk (mercenaries, death squads, and intelligence units) and design (embezzlers) walk across their country. Numbed because they would watch as their children would be killed, maimed or kidnapped as they walked to school. Numbed because of the sectarianism that is now tearing families apart, drawing barricades within neighbourhoods and leaving nothing sacrosanct in Iraq. But not broken. When US tanks first rolled into Baghdad on 9 April, I sighed that it was finally over. Khalas, I said, now maybe the Bush administration can produce something resembling a democratic, pluralistic system, rebuild some of what it destroyed and get out. But almost immediately, the first hope was dashed when looting broke out. It was a destructive, vengeful kind of looting -- hundreds of schools, hospitals, clinics, research labs, government ministries, warehouse and theatres were burned to the ground. It seemed like what US bombing spared was now being systematically destroyed. Why would Iraqis destroy the very schools their children would hope to go to one day? Why loot and burn hospitals which serve the Iraqi populace? The Iraqi museum was pillaged of its historical wealth, the national archives were destroyed. Destroy a nation's heritage, its cultural history, and you will be able to refashion it to your own whims -- imperialist and otherwise. Many Iraqis believed the US had come to liberate them, remove a dictatorship, and empower the people and leave. This was my faintest of hopes as well, but history's anecdotes said otherwise. By the first week of May, all my hopes had been burned to a cinder in the vengeance-filled carbine of a US machine-gunner's thirst for action. The first massacre of the post-war occupation would come to light quickly, and profusely, in Falluja and would ignite a resistance movement the US and its allies to this day do not understand and continue to belittle. Yes, all my hopes had been burned to a cinder. There were those in Iraq who dared to imagine the US military occupation as a friendly beast. I cannot really blame them, for they likely had no other choice but to hope. And now, three years on, what have we learned? As a journalist, I have come to be ashamed of the profession (as practised in the "free" world) which systematically rewrote the rules on objectivity and allowed every official pronouncement to pass to the audience unchecked. I have also learned that democracy cannot be instilled into a system. The system itself must reform, adapt, and evolve. The system itself must understand, embrace, and develop its version of civil liberties and freedoms. Iraqis have learned that they are not yet free, that they are not yet sovereign and that a dysfunctional government has added to the violence which eats away at their numbers every day. Iraqis are now learning of what a civil war would look like, a civil war which some predicted would unravel itself if the country was invaded and occupied. But has the Bush administration learned anything? US President Bush is still rallying for success and "total victory" in Iraq. Vice- President Cheney is still saying the administration's appraisal of the situation in Iraq is based on reality. But the reality of Iraqis is sorrow, mourning, despair and disdain. Iraqis are leaving their homeland not for greener pastures but for the sake of survival.
