Introduction
Iraq War is one of modern world’s most long lasting conflicts. Having started in 2003 with the invasion of the U.S. armed forces in Iraq in 2003, aiming at changing existing political regime of Saddam Hussein, and ended only in 2011, the war was concerned with variety of long-term effects-related events for the people of Iraq, namely extremely high costs of the war, severe humanitarian crises and wide range of human rights abuses, being committed by Iraqi government, coalition forces and private contractors, as well as insurgent groups. With these events of war in mind I will be researching into the ways the war altered the lives of people in Iraq, finding out whether the people of Iraq live better in 2013, than they did in 2003 and considering public opinion about the war. In conclusion I will make an attempt to estimate the influence of war on development of the country and provide arguments to support my thesis. Starting my research, I would like to, first of all, refer to basic aims and results of the war.
Aims and general results of war in Iraq
American invasion in Iraq in 2003 was formally justified by the need to stop programs of the development of weapons of mass destruction, which were believed to be developed by the former leader of Iraq Saddam Hussein and thus contribute to the protection of the Americans with regard to the threat of terrorism. Here I cannot help mentioning that since the events of September, the 11th, 2001, combating terrorism is the most important goal, pursued in terms of the U.S. security policy. According to the work by Lucas Robinson and Steven Livingston (2006), there were significant fluctuations in reporting the links between the weapons of mass destruction, Iraq and terrorism (p.32). While in the early winter 2002 references to connections between Iraq and terrorism began to decline, they climbed up again between February and April 2002 after so-called “Axes of Evil” speech by George Bush with ever more media stories, relating these notions every month. High level of Americans’ supporting invasion in Iraq can be partly explained by the fact that American leaders’ public speeches and news stories of that time period created an erroneous vision of the connection between the events of 9/11 and Iraq, thus convincing people of the fact that Iraq represents a threat to the security of the nation.
While it is hard for me to estimate the extent of formality of this justification for the American invasion, it is still necessary to underline that there are many opinions, which stress that a central element of the hidden agenda of the U.S. in Iraq was the oil issue (Ryan&Kiely, 2008, 209), namely strengthening the U.S. presence in Iraq, which is one of most rich-in-oil OPEC countries, along with Saudi Arabia. Moreover, increasing the U.S. presence in Iraq could be viewed as a tool to get an Iraq as a cooperator in possible operations against Iran. Another aim, which was often referred to in the media, was establishing democracy in Iraq instead of authoritative regime of Hussein. In spite of the fact that it seems to be impossible to single out formal and declarative, as well as most and least important aims in the U.S. invasion in Iraq, none of these aims was in fact reached in terms of ten years of war.
In a result of the war the regime of Saddam Hussein came to the end of its existence. Instead of well-designed democracy, which was firstly planned to be established by the U.S. in Iraq there is currently the war of everybody against everybody as conflicts exist between Arab and Kurdish people, Shia and Sunni Muslims, as well as Sunni Muslims against Al Qaeda. The situation of increasing contradictions between historically formed opponents in Iraq calls forth instability in the sphere of security and strengthening of religion-based contradictions. It is worth mentioning that more severe religious contradictions in Iraq tend to influence interreligious relations outside the country, thus contributing to the evolvement of conflicts on interreligious basis worldwide. Overall instability in the country results in the fact that there is still a significant threat for the lives of civilians as terroristic attacks have been regularly performed since the end of the war in order to destabilize the situation in the society. The most stable situation since the need of war can be traced in Kurdistan, nevertheless, there are still conflicts between Kurdish people and representatives of other groups of Iraqi population. The peculiarity of current relative stability in Kurdistan may be explained by the fact that Kurdistan is the only region in Iraq, which had been receiving constant financial and technical support from the UN over the period from 2008 to 2011 years and thus the infrastructure there is less influenced by the destructive implications of the war as in other regions of the country. The situation becomes even more dangerous if we take into account existing tension in the whole region, connected with changing regimes in such countries as Tunisia, Libya and Egypt. Moreover, an important outer political implication of the war lies in the fact that Iraq is currently highly influenced by Iran, which means significant strengthening of Iran’s position in the Middle East. This fact, along with the fact that Iran still develops nuclear programs, contributes to the great threat to security in the region and worldwide. After having briefly highlighted major changes in political situation, which occurred after the War in Iraq, we would like to refer to economic and human rights implications of the war.
Economic implications of the war
The war in Iraq was associated with extremely high financial losses for all the participants and extremely destabilizing impact for economics of Iraq, which manifested itself in the forms of infrastructure destructions, high unemployment rates, inflation and even humanitarian crisis. The world-known report “Civilians without Protection: The Ever-Worsening Humanitarian Crisis in Iraq” by ICRC (2007) highlights major elements of humanitarian crisis, which accompanied the war in Iraq and inflicted significant suffering on the entire population. The most important roots of humanitarian crisis were associated with constant manifestations of violence, such as shootings, lootings, bombings, murders and abductions, which made lots of people in Iraq leave their houses and seek protection outside the country, becoming refugees. Lots of displaced people are still seeking protection both in Iraq and abroad. Health care facilities in Iraq were unable to maintain the pressure, posed by daily violent actions and thus are highly limited till now. Lots of people suffered from food shortages and lack of clean drinking water.
The problem with getting the humanitarian security system renovated after great negative implications of the war lies in the fact that lots of health care professionals, engineers and other well-educated people have left the country during the war. Moreover, it is hard to continuously run large-scale works under the circumstances of political instability and lack of costs. Here it is worth referring to the fact that the oil extracting industry in Iraq, which represents the major source of wellbeing for Iraqi’s is also suffering great losses and destructions of facilities and, therefore, the level of wellbeing of the population is hard to be brought back to the one, which existed prior to the U.S. invasion.
The fact that oil extracting industry is now unable to supply population of Iraq with sufficient amounts of oil, the government is now forced to import oil from Iran and Turkey. Both oil extracting industry and port infrastructure is in high need of modernization as its current state represents significant threat to security. The only optimistic trend to be mentioned with regard to oil extracting industry lies in the fact that active works are being conducted to enhance the volumes of oil, being extracted, and there are beliefs that particular emphasis on this segment of economy will allow to achieve higher oil extraction rates than the ones, which were reported by Iraq before the war. Nevertheless, the minus here lies in the fact that oil extracting industry is fully controlled by government and, therefore, the implications of its growth will affect the population through the lens of Iran influence and corruption of Iraqi own government.
American plans, concerned with large-scale renovation and modernization of Iraq economy failed to meet the challenge of highly instable political situation in Iraq and in the region in general, influence of Iran and overwhelming corruption. Transitory governments of Iraq tended to misuse American funds, thus preventing the U.S. from making further investments into economy of Iraq. Two more really optimistic economic trends to be mentioned are continuous growth of export (despite the fact that Iraq continues to import oil to satisfy its own needs, extremely active export of rough oil helped Iraq to significantly increase its export as opposed to the figures, which characterized it before the war) and decreasing war costs.
As for human rights, human rights conditions in Iraq remain poor, particularly for detainees, women, girls and human rights activists, as well as journalists. Unlawful and arbitrary detentions are currently representing significant human rights threat. Hundreds of people are reported to be killed in different types of attacks. Over the period of the war itself lots of people became victims of war crimes and severe human rights violations.
Public opinion on the war in Iraq
Lots of polls were conducted in Iraq over the period of active U.S. presence there to get to know public opinion on such presence and the issues, which Iraqis consider most topical to be solved. The large poll, which was conducted in 2007, showed that vast majority of Iraqis oppose active presence of the U.S. troops in the country and report problems in such spheres as availability of jobs, electricity, clean water and fuel (D3 Systems, 2007). After the war ended, political instability did not allow people to express clear hopes for better future. Nevertheless, current improvements in economic sphere are reported to be positively perceived by population, creating a hope for recovery.
Was the war positive development for Iraq?
In 1970s Iraq was one of world’s most successfully developing countries with quite high standard of living. Over the period between 1980s and the beginning of the U.S. invasion, Iraq has experienced a range of devastating experiences, such as the war with Iran, the invasion of Kuweit, the Gulf war and the sanctions, applied to the country by international community in the 1990s, which prevented it from active development and devastated its recourses.
Conclusion
Despite the fact that there are some positive trends in current development of Iraq, I cannot help concluding that from the point of view of people the life after the war – in a new highly instable and corrupted society is even worse than the one, which they were experiencing in 2003, when the conflicts were inside society were not as sharp, and the influence of Iran was not as severe.
References
ICRC (2007). Civilians without Protection: The Ever-Worsening Humanitarian Crisis in Iraq. Retrieved 25 November 2013 from http://www.icrc.org/eng/assets/files/other/iraq-report-icrc.pdf
D3 Systems. (2007).Iraq Poll. Retrieved 25 November 2013 from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/19_03_07_iraqpollnew.pdf
Robinson, L., Livingston, S. (2006). Strange bedfellows: the emergence of the Al-Qaeda-Baathist news frame prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. In A.Nikolaev&E.Hakanen (Eds.). Leading to the 2003 Iraq War. The global Media Debate (pp.23-39).London: Palgrave MacMillan
Ryan, D., Kiely, P. (eds.). America and Iraq: policy-making, intervention and regional politics. London: Routledge
