Baghdad: Iraq on Tuesday marks a decade since US-led forces took control of Baghdad, sealing the ouster of Saddam Hussein’s brutal regime, but the country remains plagued by deadly attacks and mired in political crises.
Remembered the world over for the iconic images of Iraqis pulling down a statue of Saddam in central Baghdad’s Firdos Square – helped in no small part by an American military unit – the fall of the capital is a far more emotive day in Iraq than the anniversary of the invasion itself weeks earlier.
The day the statue fell on April 9, 2003, Saddam’s vaunted army had largely melted away, and was seen as defeated and demoralised. But the sense of elation felt by many Iraqis that day, at seeing a dictator who had ruled Iraq for more than two decades fall, was matched by a feeling of bitterness among others who felt their country had been occupied by a foreign power.
Those divisions in how April 9 is seen within Iraq have spurred the government to eschew any formal commemorations. Though the war itself was relatively brief — six weeks after foreign troops invaded, then-US president George W. Bush infamously declared the mission accomplished — its aftermath was bloody and fractious. Caught between Shiite militia groups and Sunni insurgents, US and coalition forces paid a heavy price: some 4,800 foreign troops died in Iraq, more than 90 per cent of them American. (AFP)