With infrastructure in mess uncertainty awaits country

Along with pictures of US troops pulling out of Iraq, a foreign correspondent wrote that as a US convoy reached the barbed wire at the border crossing out of Iraq a few days ago, the soldiers whooped and cheered, then they scrambled out of their stifling hot armoured vehicles, unfurled an American flag and posed for group photos.

Iraqi people on the other hand were equally jubilant to have the foreign troops leave the country, and some even celebrated by hitting Baghdad's International Zone with rockets.

However, as I look back at the past seven years, I cannot help but surmise that the only two positive outcomes of the US invasion on Iraq in 2003 were the toppling of the Baath regime and General David Petreaus.

It may be appropriate here to clarify that Iraqis lived through extremely difficult circumstances over the past 35 years of the Baath regime and before.

In 1963, and for eight short months, Iraq experienced the Baath regime in its first version. People remember the jails and assassinations which stormed the country and I remember my family often referring to a house my father owned in Al Askari Street in Baghdad which was taken over by the fearsome Haras Al Qawmi (National Guards) without permission.

Coordinated

The revolution soon ended and the guards abandoned my father's property, after leaving behind their military fatigues and a house that badly needed maintenance.

Five years after Iraq's first encounter with the Baath regime, a full-fledged revolution took place, where Baathists coordinated with other groups on the July 17, 1968. Another revolution took place a couple of weeks after July 17, when the Baathists turned against their allies, stabbing them in the back and controlling the country single handedly.

Iraq was never a happy country afterwards. However, one may rightly assume that Iraq had a stable system and a reliable infrastructure for a while, but the house of cards soon collapsed after former Iraqi president Saddam Hussain took over from his predecessor, former president Ahmad Hassan Al Bakir.

Before that, the cycle of blood turned fiercely in Iraq, as people were taken to jail and executed all the time, in a notorious prison called Qasr Al Nihaya (the name literally translates to the Palace of the End, because no-one ever exited the torture chamber alive after being sent in). Needless to say, hundreds of thousands of innocent people were killed.

Undisclosed wars started in Iraq as early as 1968 against the Kurds in which so many Iraqi youth lost their lives. However, the beginning of the end started in 1980, when Saddam Hussain decided to crush Iran and as a result, the whole regime and Iraq got caught in the quagmire of another war and 13 years of inhuman sanctions.

So when the US decided to invade Iraq, a lot of Iraqis who had lived under Saddam's infernal rule believed that conditions will improve after removing the dictatorship.

Stalemate

It is my belief that neither the Americans nor the Iraqis imagined the outcome of the invasion. In all truth, the country stood on the abyss of a civil war if it were not for the strategic thought and clear vision of General Petreaus.

However, today is a different story.

Everyone had hoped that by now a third democratically elected government would be functioning in Baghdad, but six months after the March elections, the political stalemate continues. The democracy installed by the US in Iraq is looked upon as a bizarre creature throughout the Arab region, simply because Iraq's politicians do not know how to share power, live or let live. Moreover, and as a result of the political situation in Iraq, no one can say for sure that the country may not return to the sort of violence witnessed in Iraq in 2006, threatening another civil war.

This leads us to the fact that over the past seven-and-a-half years, very little has been accomplished in the country. Iraq is still under UN Security Council Chapter 7, the infrastructure is in shambles, there is no trustworthy educational system, Iran's currency is used in everyday life dealings in the south, and Iran's tentacles are all over the country, except for the Kurdish region with has an almost complete autonomy. The judiciary and the overall administration of the country leave a lot to be desired.

Al Qaida is still able to inflict harsh and painful blows, the Iraqi security forces are infiltrated, and corruption in the country is higher than it ever was during the former regime, placing Iraq as the fifth most corrupt country in the world. Moreover, Iraq's technocrats are either killed or are residing in other countries and to top it all, there is an unaccounted $300 billion (Dh1.1 trillioni). All these factors are plausibly accepted by all. However the big scare comes from the fact that the country has no real army or aerial defence.

By the end of 2011, when the final drawdown takes place, neither jet fighter planes nor Iraqi pilots will be ready at hand.

Many concerns mar the jubilant atmosphere caused by the US troops' withdrawal, but the least of the worries are a probable return of the Baath, a takeover by the Al Qaida-led Iraqi Islamic state or a full-fledged civil war.