A nation ruined

The war against Iraq, now five years old, is unquestionably one of the most unpardonable crimes against humanity.As the world marked the fifth anniversary of the American invasion of Iraq, the number of American soldiers killed in the country crossed the 4,000 mark. Another 60,000 soldiers have been wounded. The war, which many American commentators have described as the greatest self-inflicted blunder in the history of the country’s foreign policy, continues with no end in sight. However, the number of American casualties is insignificant compared with the death toll among Iraqis.

The number of Iraqis killed under American occupation varies from 100,000 to more than a million, according to the source. The British polling agency ORB says more than 1.2 million Iraqi non-combatants have been killed in the last five years. Another recent poll jointly conducted by leading Western television networks including the BBC and ABC revealed that half the residents of Baghdad lost at least one of their relatives in the violence following the U.S. occupation. Seventy per cent of the respondents wanted the immediate withdrawal of all U.S. troops.

More than two million Iraqis have been displaced from their homes and have become refugees in neighbouring countries such as Syria and Jordan. For the pauperised Iraqi middle class, the violence and anarchy that followed the American invasion was the last straw. Most of them have fled the country. Another two million Iraqis have become refugees inside Iraq. As a result of the occupation, there are now around 4.5 million orphans. Many of them are homeless.

All sectors of Iraqi society have been affected, with women bearing the brunt of the war. Under Saddam Hussein and the Baath Party, women were represented in all sectors of society. More than half of the civil service personnel were women and a fourth of the parliament members since the 1980s comprised elected female members. Today all the gains made by Iraqi women have been negated. Even girls in Christian schools are forced to wear veils. According to the latest statistics provided by Iraq’s Ministry of Education, more than 70 per cent of Iraqi girls and women no longer attend school or college. More