Is Iraq a better place or worse to live since the fall of Saddam?
Wael Al-Sallami
Im an Iraqi citizen and was just shy of four months old when the Iran-Iraq war ended. At three, I survived Gulf War I and then lived through the economic sanctions for the next 12 or so years. At age 15, I witnessed Gulf War II and spent my teenage years struggling through its aftermath. So needless to say, I spent my early years during Saddams worst days; that is, when he turned from Americas favorite ally to its sworn enemy.
But was it really safer back then? Did America really help? Or was it actually worse before 2003? Personally, I think those are all misguided questions and here is why:
Iraq was a wealthy nation throughout the 70s and 80s, despite the fact that it underwent an eight-year long war with its neighboring nation, Iran. The graph below closely follows the timeline I gave in Did the west encourage Saddam Hussein to attack and invade Iran in 1980? If so, how did they do it?. A decline is recorded around 1980 (the beginning of Iraqs war with Iran), followed by a steady recovery starting 1982, and coinciding with Americas very public financial and political support for Iraq.
Coming out of the war, Iraq needed a lot of capital to rebuild its damaged infrastructure. However, Kuwait was lowering oil prices in a successful attempt to harm Iraqs economy. Saddam tried negotiating with Kuwait on several occasions, but to no availKuwait didnt back down. So he decided to take back Kuwait.
Historically, Kuwait was a part of Iraq, and Saddam used this fact to cover up his blood-thirst. The results were devastating for Kuwait, a much smaller country with a fraction of Iraqs population. Responding to Kuwaits call for help, the US attacked Iraq in turn and the latter failed to defend itself against the formers military might. This explains the sharp decline around 1990 in the graph above. Fortunately for Saddam, however, the American troops backed down without capturing him and ending it all. The US then sought to enforce economic sanctions on Iraq, thereby sentencing Iraqis to a slow death. In the meantime, Saddam went on building lavish palaces for himself.
At the time, we were a family of two boys and a little girl. Formerly a government employee and now a Ph.D student, my father received a reduced salary of 8000 Dinars, while my mother, a full-time school teacher, was paid 3000 Dinars. The combined monthly income of the family, i.e. 11000 Dinars, was the equivalent of ~$6. Most other government employees made similar figures. Those were by far the worst years of my life, and Ive lived through some serious crap, trust me.
Towards the end of the 90s, things began to look better. Saddam was sensing his end and he tried to make a few improvements in income and infrastructure. He even tried to introduce a controlled version of satellite TV and wireless cellphones. But alas, America struck again in 2003; this time with the intention of removing Saddam while not really trying to avoid civilian casualties. Another important distinction here is that Iraqis didnt care to defend their country anymore. They just sat back while the US troops took over.
This is why this, and all similar questions, are misguided. Iraq was safer and much wealthier before any American intervention. It was Americans, their support for Saddam, and later their war and sanctions on him that made Iraq such a terrible place to live. It then shouldnt come as a surprise that Iraqis had grown sick of their way of life. So much so that they sat back and watched America save them from its own doing.
And that, my friend, is the most hypocritical move in modern history! Furthermore, the war didnt improve things much anyway; on the contrary, it worsened the whole situation. Instead of living safely in poor conditions, Iraqis became somewhat wealthy, but lost all measures of personal safety. Where once they just had one tyrant to be afraid of, now they have hundreds more! Even keeping their mouths shut, which used to keep them safe, didnt help anymore. People were dying for having the wrong religion, place of birth, or even the wrong name! The year 2006 was worse than 1991 and 2003 combined. Militias took over the streets, and it was chaos.
Post 2007, the violence surges became more tame; Babylon, where my family lives, was becoming a safer place to live. Baghdad and few other cities were struggling still and took longer to stabilize. Though every now and then, we still have the occasional suicide bombing and kidnappings here and there.
My familys income has seen a tremendous boost since 2003, and they now live comfortably. That being said, my brother has survived a car bombing and I about four thus far. Families that live in more dangerous cities, like Baghdad and Mosul, consider themselves lucky to be able to say the same.
In summary, Iraq was very safe for most of the Sunna before 2003, but was hostile towards the Shia and Kurds, depending on their affiliations. After 2003, the Sunna descended to become the oppressed minority while the Shia took control of the central government. That being said, the Shia still struggled with Sunni threats like Al-Qaida (and now ISIS); all the while the Kurds built a very stable regional government. Its like what they say about San Francisco; if you dont like the weather there, just wait ten minutes. With such a dichotomized atmosphere, who has the upper hand as opposed to who falls victim to the most dangers has followed a similar pattern for an eternity. So if you want to see what happens next; if you want to see who lucks out this time, just wait ten minutes.
I spent eight months in Iraq as a staff member of UNIRCU (UN Iraq Relief Coordination Unit now long forgotten) in from May December 1991. The most of that entitys work was in Kurdistan (maintaining a 600-strong multinational force of UN Guards there) along with some rehabilitation and reconstruction input in the heart of the country and in the marshes in the south. Since then I keep in touch with three of my former Iraqi colleagues, all of whom had emigrated to Canada since.
I spent half of my life before in the Soviet Union, so I have a good benchmark, a reference point to judge any totalitarian regime. In the USSR, there was no freedom of religion whatsoever (at least not if you wanted to be an active citizen), no free travel abroad whatsoever, no room for any private initiative, persistent scarcity of consumer goods and mediocre (albeit free) healthcare and education.
In contrast, in Iraq as I saw it in 1991 (after the first Gulf war) there was still the freedom of religion along with a firm policy of secularism. Among my staff in Baghdad, there was a retired Army major (retired because Saddam drastically reduced Army after the first war) who was a Kurd (which sounds as a surprise to most of my American friends who believe that under Saddam a Kurd would have been shot dead on sight), two Coptic Christians, an Armenian (Christian, naturally) along with Arab Iraqis.
Despite sanctions, there were plenty of consumer goods in private shops (remember, my comparator was the USSR), private restaurants were doing a brisk trade, people were enjoying mozguf on the river bank, alcohol was available for those who wanted to buy it, a burka-covered or veiled lady was a rare sight in Baghdad and gas was available plentifully and cost nothing (at least for those who had US$). All utilities worked mostly normally after the post-war reconstruction.
One notable point for me was the quality of healthcare. I have visited (as part of my work) the Al-Yarmuk hospital in Baghdad and was astounded (to my unprofessional eye) how superior it was to any public medical facility that I knew from my plebeian Soviet experience and to any others that I saw in other Arab countries. Later on, in Dohuk, I went to review the hospital there with a medic Lt.Col of Czechoslovak (there was such a country then) Army as a UN evacuation point (the emergency facility where you bring your wounded for treatment) and still remember his words: I would be a happy man if there was at least one such a hospital in Czechoslovakia. And his county was one of the most developed in the Eastern Europe.
Almost all of Iraqi professionals (engineers, administrators, technical managers) whom I dealt with spoke very good English which was not common then in the Middle East. Most of them got their professional degrees in Germany, UK or (not so often) in France. I understood that if they were at the top of their BA class in Iraq, their MA abroad would have been paid for by Iraq (they had to leave some lien on their parents property to guarantee their return from abroad).
They were all punctual, reliable and trustworthy (I was very impressed, especially because I was transferred to Iraq from Kuwait). There was no maana syndrome among them.
I (and anyone) could walk without fear to my Al-Hamra hotel at any time after dark. The violent crimes were exceedingly rare; rape was almost unheard of.
That was the snapshot of my time in Baghdad in 1991.
P.S. And contrary to what was said above, Saddam did not kill a million of Shiates, Kurds and Christians. Please do you homework and then you would be able to have an informed opinion.
TO SUM UP: not to leave a false impression that I am writing an ode/paen to the benevolence of Saddam, let me summarize my take of Iraq under him. You could have had (especially before the Iraq-Iran war) a good quality of life under the Saddam regime, with the modern social security safe nets, etc., travel abroad, practice your religion (whatever it was) or have none and so on, UNLESS you got involved in some dissident political activity (and any slight sign of disrespect or criticism of Saddam counted as one). If you did, the consequences would have been swift and deadly.
Still, it compared favorably with other totalitarian regimes (USSR , GDR, North Korea, etc.) that I have knowledge of, where the punishment for dissent was on par with the Saddams one, but the everyday quality of life was incomparably inferior.
In other words, he was a rather benevolent tyrant: if you did not cross him and paid your respects, he allowed you to live as you please. A much better deal, I would say, than you could have currently, for example, in Saudi Arabia or Iran.
Not that I wish it to anyone to be his subject, but a better option than in quite a few countries of the world currently.
WHAT DO WE HAVE CURRENTLY? A country split along religious chasms, where Christians are preyed on, Sunnis and Shias are at each other throats, with no first amendment freedoms to speak of, where women are forced to adhere to the Iran-type dress code, where secularism had evaporated, where personal security is on par with the Wild West of yore. The government is basically impotent, the utilities are intermittent, petrol is in short supply, and to organize the Arab League summit, the Government wastes millions of US$ and shuts down Baghdad for a week.
And all this misery was earned at the cost of some 5,000 dead American soldiers and more than 100,000 Iraqi dead? Does it make any sense?
Life for ordinary Iraqis is now more dangerous than under Saddam Hussein, according to the outgoing secretary general of the United Nations, Kofi Annan.
Mr Annan gave his hardest-hitting assessment yet, saying he believed we could have stopped the war if weapons inspectors had been given more time.
If I was an average Iraqi, I would make the same comparison [about life under Saddam], he told the BBC.
They had a dictator who was brutal but they had their streets.
They could go out, their kids could go to school and come back home without a mother or father worrying Am I going to see my child again?
[...] the latest UN report on human rights in Iraq says that 3,000 civilians are dying every month. There is also an accelerating exodus of Iraqis, with some 100,000 leaving each month for the safety of Syria, Jordan, and the Gulf states. www. quora.com
