Not long ago I had a dream that I was driving into Baghdad. In my dreams about Iraq, I'm always driving into the city, always moving. I'm not sure why. Of course, these dreams tend to turn into nightmares very quickly. Bombs go off, children are mutilated and I watch, unscathed.
I haven't been there for several years now, long enough so that my memories share the quality of the dreams, disjointed but vivid. They come back suddenly after disappearing. Like the ones about the children killed near the beginning of the war.
Part way through the U.S.-led bombing of Baghdad in the spring of 2003, journalists heard that missiles had landed on a market in Shula, a Shiite neighbourhood, killing nearly four dozen. The dead in Iraq tend to be measured by the dozen, like eggs. It was dusk when we got there, and in the back streets, I was dragged into a house. There was a coffin and inside a body in a blanket. I couldn't stop the mother unwrapping her 12-year-old boy. We took some pictures. He wore a T-shirt that read, “Eat.” Back at the mosque, they lined up more bodies on the floor. In the small morgue at the back, they washed the bodies of the dead children. One was laid out on the stainless-steel table like a fish at the market, eyes open. Men in white coats scrubbed his greyish yellow skin.
The death of poor Shiites seemed especially unfair – they were the Iraqis who were supposed to benefit most from Saddam's overthrow. A coalition spokesman claimed that it was the army killing its own people, which seemed possible in Baathist Iraq. I thought about leaving, just driving out of Baghdad. My editors at The National Post hadn't wanted me to stay to begin with. If Saddam was killing them for us to report, it was time to go. But then a piece of the missile turned up with coalition markings.
Confusion, fear, death, lies.
And the implication you were involved, somehow. Those were hard to convey. Whenever I scan an analysis of Iraq, I'm reminded of the sex education we got in Grade 7. The simple figures projected on slides meant to mislead as much as inform.
The last American combat troops have just pulled out after nearly eight years, leaving behind 50,000 non-combat troops, whatever they are. By next August, there will be several thousand American diplomats guarded by far more combat non-soldiers, or mercenaries. That's the plan but, as they say in the U.S. Army, “No plan survives first contact with the enemy.”
An array of obstacles line up against Iraqis, some immediate and others waiting to explode like buried ordnance. There is still a good deal of fighting to be done, especially around Kirkuk between Kurds and Arabs, both of whom have been well armed, and trained, by the Americans. The Kurds themselves are virtually an independent state, kept in Iraq by threats from Turkey, and the southern oil reserves are located near Basra, another area of the country with a history of independence from Baghdad. The petroleum industry with its decaying infrastructure must now support an economy long ago destroyed by Saddam and sanctions. Fighting is still one of the only jobs, which is why so many recruits were killed by a suicide bomber this week. Much of the population bears tremendous psychological scars from decades of oppression and turmoil, making them volatile and difficult to motivate. Neighbours like Iran, Turkey and Syria, have meddling interests in the country that can upset whatever balance of power Iraqis establish. The insurgency has produced battle-hardened believers with easy access to Saudi Arabia and Yemen who will come home again. Iran may get a nuclear weapon or become the next war.
Politicians, historians, columnists are taking stock. Again. What went wrong? Most things. Whither Iraq? It's already withered. The resilience of Iraqis is astonishing, but history and geography work against them. The U.S. is leaving at a good moment and can be upbeat without too much ridicule. The bar has been lowered and by now Iraqis are tired to death of it all. But even the young departing soldiers were ironically mocking in their declaration of “victory” as they crossed the border into Kuwait. They, at least, get the joke – everybody lost, nobody won this war.
