In 2003 the United States of America (USA) launched a war against the regime of Saddam Hussein and toppled it. It oversaw a transition process in the country that intended to bring democracy. 18 years after that war Iraq is instead a collapsed state. An article written by Lily Hamourtziadou and published by Open Democracy examines Iraq’s democratic disillusionment. Here is an excerpt:

Iraq in 2021 is still a state afflicted by poverty, injustice, the trauma of great loss of life, and daily fear. Iraqis still suffer from a sense of powerlessness, defeat and humiliation. Since the start of the year, 330 civilians have been killed, including 27 children. Iraq Body Count has now documented more than 208,800 violent civilian deaths since the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, most of them occurring after the country became a democracy in 2005.

Democratically elected governments in Iraq, supported by the US-UK coalition that invaded and occupied Iraq in March 2003, as part of the ‘War on Terror’, have so far killed more than 4,000 Iraqi civilians through bombing and shelling aimed to destroy the insurgency and in the last years the Iraqi police force and militias it supports have killed hundreds of protesters across Iraq. The Iraqi governments also allowed the killing of thousands more in airstrikes by Coalition and Turkish forces or Iranian-supported militias such as the Popular Mobilisation Forces.

Iraq held its first parliamentary elections in December 2005, while the country was still under US and British occupation. It was meant to hold its fifth elections a month ago, in June, but they have been delayed until mid-October, because the country’s Independent High Electoral Commission asked for more time to organise “free and fair elections“. Yet, from their very start, Iraq’s elections have been marred by violence, fraud and protests.

Read the full article here.

Western-style democracy has failed Iraq, bringing a dystopian economy, an ineffectual government and more pain for its long-suffering people