How Blair's war shattered Iraqi lives
Updated on 29 January 2010
"Was the war worth it? My brother was shot, my son crippled and my family made homeless" - a personal account from an Iraqi TV producer on the day Tony Blair gives evidence to the Iraq inquiry.
Ahmed Abdulrahman*, an Iraqi TV producer who has worked in Baghdad throughout the past seven years, reflects on whether the war to overthrow Saddam was worth the suffering it caused. *Ahmed is not his real name.
Supporting the war in Iraq: an Iraqi NHS consultant writes a personal account of why he is grateful coalition forces changed the Iraq regime and "gave Iraqis hope". Read the article here.
When the multinational forces advanced on Iraq, hopes and dreams beguiled the hearts and souls of people who had tasted the miseries of the iron regime that had dominated the country for so long.
All of us danced when we saw the statue fall of the man whose iron grip had stolen the resources of a country with 6,000 years of history.
At the beginning, there was a flurry of rumours among the masses of people who had been spiritually and materially denied for so long.
Iraqis had suffered under the burden of unbearable trials, such as the wars which the former regime imposed on the country: "The Defence of the Eastern Frontier"; "Confronting the Islamist Hordes of Persia"; and "Avenging the Honour of Iraq Against from the Sheikhs of the Gulf", and many other false myths.
People imagined that the era of injustice and contempt for ordinary citizens had passed, consigned to the rubbish heap of history.
You could hear some real gems in people's conversations. Some said that the new age ushered in by the multi-national forces, and particularly the Americans, would change every aspect of daily life for ordinary Iraqis: the time had come when simple people would find themselves and achieve everything they had dreamed of during the rule of so many past governments.
Funnily enough, there were people who thought their ration cards would enable them to buy "special American delicacies"; some people even insisted that rations would include "finest-quality alcoholic drinks".
The first days went by filled with fantastic freedoms which nobody in Iraq had ever imagined existed. Then, unexpectedly, Iraqi human beings began to die all around as if they were flies - in fact, flies were better off by far than humans.
Bodies began to be dumped on rubbish tips near homes, for no crime other than being Iraqi. Fear and terror began to take hold of people throughout Mesopotamia. Fear crept into the soul of high officials, common labourers, professors, engineers and doctors.
Security disintegrated and people became walking skeletons gripped by terror even when they were asleep. Silence overwhelmed people’s spirits in a way we had never experienced. People increasingly began to fear the American and British presence.
This situation made itself felt in the everyday lives of Iraqis, myself included. To be honest with myself and with history, I should record some of the incidents which changed my life and affected my family in the most fundamental way.
People of one sect began to fear people of another. Everybody was afraid of everybody else. A person living in a Shia area could no longer go into a Sunni area for fear of death. All of us lived in a state of unending hysteria.
I was forced to flee the house I was born in, along with my family, to save our lives. I knew that others on the other side were doing the same.
My brother, on his way home from work, was shot and riddled with bullets and left in a pool of blood in the middle of the road. The real tragedy of what happened to my brother at the hands of these bestial enemies of humanity is that we don't know who they were.
Everything became muddled. I no longer knew right from wrong and good from evil. Those who came claiming to save us destroyed Iraq and the Iraqis.
Do I not have the right to feel this way? I have my reasons, may God make my pain and the pain of all Iraqis easier to bear. What happened to my son is just one example of what has happened in Iraq.
The problem was caused by these evangelists of humanity: he was struck down because of a curfew and closure of roads.
When you have a child, you can hope for little more than that the baby is born fit and well; and, indeed, God had given me a baby boy who was fit and well. Misfortune struck on the sixth day, when he developed jaundice.
There was no way to treat him because we could not reach the hospital or a doctor because we were stuck at home under curfew.
Death reaches us everywhere but death was too good from my little boy. Finally, after much trouble and many fierce confrontations at checkpoints we reached the hospital, and how I wish I hadn't, because it was too late.
The jaundice had developed too far. He had suffered brain damage which left him with cerebral palsy. It paralysed my life and and the life of my whole family too. I, my son and all of Iraq have become victims of Bush and Blair and their allies.
Who is to blame for this complete moral destruction of Iraq? The war, directly or indirectly, was to blame for it all.
I wish the previous regime could have been removed, but our moral and spiritual decency had been preserved. I wish those responsible for poverty and deprivation had vanished, but our security had remained.
What did we gain from this war? Nothing but unemployment throughout the country. University graduates sit around dreaming of a job to feed themselves.
Regime change was brought about on the grounds that Iraq possessed dangerous weapons; but the dangers we have lived through during this regime change have been far greater than any danger from weapons of mass destruction.
This unplanned change plunged the spirit of Iraqis into a pit of revenge and grief. We will not recover for centuries.
Our families have been dismembered, tribal solidarity between different sects has been destroyed, and the spirit of brotherhood and self-sacrifice among sons of the one nation has vanished. This war of regime change was truly destructive, in every meaning of the word.
We will need centuries before we can emerge again. The tentacles of this war have lashed every family in a country which has never had a chance to catch its breath throughout its long and bloody history.
The worst state a human being can live through is to sit in his own home and fear his neighbour - who, in turn, is afraid of him. What good are democracy and freedom when I have to worry about whether or not I will return at night when I leave to make my living in the morning? What good is liberty when I cannot express even my smallest thought?
Tony Blair and those who supported him have the blood of many hundreds killed in the alleyways and streets of Iraq on their hands. He entered the war without thinking about the feelings of ordinary people like me whose only concern is to provide a decent life for our children. The political class which was responsible for regime change committed sins whose consequences will take centuries to wash away.
It is fine with me that Saddam died, and that those who were responsible for the suffering of the people of this country for so long have been removed. Yet I ask: can Blair or Bush make thousands of orphans smile again? What will they say to widows whose husbands were killed in a dusty, fleeting moment of sectarian madness? How will those widows feed their children?
This war was not worth all the blood that was spilled and the destruction that was visited on generations of innocent people. It was a political move to break an opponent, without any thought for the lives of other human beings who have shared the world with you throughout history.
