Will Iraq regain its glory?

These days mark the 21st anniversary of the American invasion of Iraq, with its sad outcome, its harsh defeats, its estrangement from its Arab surroundings (that conspired against it) and it being, instead, embraced by Iran. Twenty-one lean years have destroyed the civilisation of an ancient country that was the strongest model of development and advancement in the Arab world. The Americans did the same in the capital of the Islamic Caliphate as the Tatars did in Iraq in 1258. They destroyed a sovereign state, killing and burning its ancient heritage. Not even Iraqi antiquities were spared from their crimes, as they burned them and stole what was left of them, plundered its wealth and fanned the spirit of hateful sectarianism among its people to ignite the fire of strife in the country. Terrible sectarianism became the most prominent political symbol of the new system established by Paul Bremer, the de facto ruler of Iraq after its occupation. He explicitly said in a televised interview that the Shias in Iraq represent approximately 70 per cent of the population, and yet since its establishment, Iraq has been ruled by a Sunni minority, and that the time has come to correct this mistake and restore balance in the country. So, this malicious, cunning person turned Iraq into an arena for terrorism and internal fighting, causing the civil peace and social harmony under which Iraqis had lived for many centuries and times to disappear.

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Bremer destroyed the Iraqi state institutions, dismantled the army and security forces, and discharged their officers and soldiers, replacing them with horrible Shia militias loyal to Iran. This caused killing, based on one’s identity in a country that represented a national model in which only the language of one nation and one people was superior, to become the norm. Bremer put together a list of those wanted by the leaders of the Iraqi state, including ministers, military commanders and scholars, so that they would be liquidated. It is heart-breaking that Iraqi scholars have been targeted for kidnappings and murders. Many of them emigrated to save their own lives. However, some of them were not spared from liquidation even outside of Iraq. What was wanted were the brains of these scholars and the secrets of making the nuclear bomb. The country also suffered the remnants of war and the uranium that was dropped by American missiles on the land, which filled the Iraqi soil with toxins and radiation and caused the spread of diseases among many Iraqis.

The Iraqi people suffered many tragedies as a result of this barbaric American invasion, and these were intensified by the inhuman violations that were committed in American detention centres and prisons in Iraq, which occurred in full view of the international media. Abu Ghraib prison is a testament to what happened during that dark phase in the history of Iraq.

They destroyed every aspect of Iraqi society so that the people live in chaos, misery and poverty in a rich country looted by its new rulers who came on the back of American tanks. WikiLeaks documents have shown the extent of the massive wealth accumulated by this gang that destroyed Iraq, led by Nouri Al-Maliki, the former prime minister. His wealth was estimated at hundreds of billions of dollars in foreign banks.

In short, after the barbaric American invasion and the arrival of that corrupt group of Iraqis who were raised in American and Iranian barns who landed with parachutes into ruling the country, Iraq was no longer the Iraq we knew, and the entire world knew for its knowledge, civilisation and tolerance. Rather, it became the ruins of a country divided against itself, as its enemies of the nation wanted it to be, beginning with the Zionists. These enemies intended for Iraq to go from a pioneering civilised state and a leader in the nation to a failed, disintegrated state, and this was stated in some UN reports.

The great conspiracy against the nation did not begin with the invasion of Iraq on 19 March, 2003, but in 1990, when the American ambassador to Iraq at the time, April Glaspie, gave the green light to Iraqi President, Saddam Hussein, to invade Kuwait, his arrogance causing him to fall into the American trap set for him by the CIA with great skill. This was to allow foreign armies, represented by the American army, to return to Arab lands less than half a century after the British and French armies had left the Arab region, and at the request of the Gulf rulers. This was under the pretext of their protection from the Iraqi monster that America had created for itself, so that the US power could be firmly established in the heart of the most important energy producing region in the world.

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All the Gulf rulers fell into the American trap knowingly and opened their treasuries to pour into the American treasury, to rid them of the Iraqi monster. Bush, Sr., started it with the Second Gulf War, or what was known as the Kuwait Liberation War, which completely destroyed the Iraqi army, after which a severe and unjust siege of Iraq began. It destroyed the infrastructure of the State, in general, and the Iraqi people. A UN resolution was issued banning Iraqi aviation over the Kurdish region in preparation for its separation from Iraq, under the pretext of the Iraqi army’s chemical weapons attack against the Kurds in 1988, in the Kurdish city of Halabja, controlled by the Iranian army during the last days of the Iran-Iraq war. Although the medical investigation conducted by the UN concluded that mustard gas was used in the attack along with unidentified nerve irritants, some indications or data revealed that the Iranian army was the one that used it, as it was occupying the town of Halabja at that time, but they held Saddam’s regime responsible for that attack.

The rulers of the Gulf and the Zionists were not satisfied with all the destruction and devastation that befell Iraq and the misery and injustice that befell the Iraqi people. They still wanted the head of the Iraqi monster, which continued to haunt their lives and disturb their dreams. The American and Gulf desires united to get rid of Saddam Hussein, once and for all, so George W Bush continued what was started by his father, George Bush, Sr., hence, the American invasion began from the US military bases in the Gulf at a time when Turkiye refused to allow its territories to be used to strike Iraq. The Western countries agreed, and the ground advance began from Saudi and Kuwaiti territories and the Suez Canal was used to transport American weapons during the war on Iraq.

The war was launched against Iraq, after falsification attempts made by Colin Powell, America’s Secretary of State at the time, in the Security Council, in which he claimed that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, which was later proven to be false through WikiLeaks documents and documents presented in the British House of Commons during the questioning of Tony Blair, the British Prime Minister at the time, who supported George W. Bush in his unjust war against Iraq. The decision for this war was made by the US and was outside the framework of the UN and Security Council.

After the US, the Zionists and the Gulf states got rid of Saddam, America gifted Iraq to Iran on a golden platter, which is what the late Saudi Foreign Minister, Saud Bin Faisal, said, as he blamed the US for handing Iraq over to Iran after it withdrew.

However, you have no one to blame but yourselves. You conspired against Iraq and wanted to get rid of the Iraqi monster, but you were met with the bogeyman from the East, that Saddam was protecting you from. You were surrounded by Iran from Iraq, Syria and Lebanon in the north and Yemen in the south. Will you be able to escape it?

Twenty-one years have passed since the Nakba of Iraq and, indeed, the Nakba of the entire nation, which is no less a tragedy than the Nakba of Palestine, which hurt and broke the nation. They are both links in a long chain of setbacks that began since the fall of the Islamic Caliphate and are still continuing. Only God knows when it will end and what other calamities or victories that will restore the nation’s glory and eliminate those calamities that fate has in store for us.

Twenty-one years have passed since the American invasion of Iraq, which sent the country back to the Middle Ages. It is not far off from the catastrophe it suffered during the Tatar invasion on 13 February, 1258, as they are very similar.

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