IRAQ TODAY
13/01/2014 17:39
On 20 March 2003 the first U.S. and British soldiers entered Iraqi territory , initiating what is known as the Second Gulf War.
The rapid fall of Saddam Hussein was supposed to be followed by a process of fundamental reforms in the field of democracy and human rights , what was the hope of the Iraqi people after years of war and repression.
In a decade away is possible to draw a balance sheet of the intervention and what followed it and, unfortunately, all agree in making a judgment disheartening .
Reconstruction never started, corruption at every level of government administration , sectarian violence , terrorist attacks . These ills that plague the country, where a deep groove was dug between the various ethnic and religious groups .
If the end of the regime has meant greater freedom, this is especially true for the population of the autonomous region of Kurdistan , which remained partially stranger to violence and tightly controlled by the two historical Kurdish - Iraqi parties , the Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union , for the Shiites and Sunni is meant to fall into a politico-religious conflict without end.
If between 2006 and 2008, the clash between the two branches of Islam has turned into a real bloodbath , with tens of thousands of deaths and millions of displaced people , the approach of the tenth anniversary of the war brings with it more ominous .
The Shiite component , which has found its strong man in Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki , has basically taken control of all armed forces , sidelined the Sunnis, whose resentment manifests itself in periodic waves of terrorist attacks and events.
Since December 2012, thousands of people took to the streets in Sunni -majority areas , to protest against arbitrary imprisonment , abuse of detainees, the use of anti-terror laws and to demand an end to discriminatory attitude of the government towards them. Meanwhile, the Sunni armed groups continued to attack not only government targets , but also the civilian population Shiite , not sparing even groups of pilgrims .
This situation has even led many Iraqis to regret the times of Saddam Hussein , especially his hometown , Tikrit , who remembers him by the wrist firm and the ability to hold together a country ethnically mixed . The repression of the opposition, murder, mass arrests are of secondary importance in the eyes of the population that suffers today for the almost total lack of basic services and the high unemployment rate.
The regret for the lost stability is exacerbated by fears that the Syrian civil war contagion the country and is in addition to the inability of Iraqi security forces to stem and stop the daily terrorist attacks carried out by extremist militias .
The situation that has arisen in Syria has further deepened the division between the government and Shiite-led pro-Iran , and the Sunnis , who sided with the anti- Assad rebels .
The interventions and the assistance provided in support of the Syrian regime by the government in Baghdad led to the creation of a Free Iraqi Army , apparently linked to his Syrian counterpart , is composed of Sunni militiamen who oppose the central government.
The first clashes at Syrian border show that the risk of a widening of the war is far from hypothetical and definitely could overwhelm the country.
There is no doubt that for the tenth anniversary of Western intervention in Iraq, the Iraqis have little to celebrate.