​Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. But the terrorist attacks in the United States changed forever the lives of Iraqis.
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In their aftermath, the U.S. invaded Afghanistan, swiftly deposing the Taliban regime that had been sheltering Osama bin Laden, the leader of the al-Qaida terror network blamed for the attacks.

But it was not long before President George W. Bush shifted his attention to Iraq, identifying it, along with Iran and North Korea, as part of an “axis of evil” and asserting that its brutal dictator, Saddam Hussein, was armed with weapons of mass destruction and had ties to al-Qaida. No evidence of either was found.

What followed was a U.S.-led invasion of a country in the heart of the Middle East that spurred a decade of war, with consequences that reverberate across the region to this day.

The Bush administration was already planning to invade Iraq before 9/11, but the attacks supplied the necessary pretext. The catastrophic war that followed turned Iraq into an ungovernable wasteland.

​The invasion and occupation of Iraq was arguably the most consequential result of the attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. 9/11 did not motivate the Iraqi invasion, for which the Bush administration had begun actively planning before the hijacked planes hit the Twin Towers. But it did create the political atmosphere needed to justify an unprovoked invasion.

Relying on the shattered sense of US invulnerability, the Bush administration argued for a so-called preventive attack on Iraq to stop Saddam Hussein’s alleged project to build “weapons of mass destruction” and use them against the United States in the near future — a project which was entirely mythological. National security advisor Condoleezza Rice eloquently and dishonestly encapsulated this tortured logic with a celebrated comment: “We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.”

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989, a growing cadre of political, economic, and social elites had been advocating for the United States to assume its rightful place as the hegemon in a “unipolar” world, and to exercise direct control over countries that challenged its leadership. For these imperialists — most visibly located in the national-security apparatus — and their media cheerleaders, Iraq was the lynchpin for reestablishing US control over the Middle East.

Iraq and Iran have agreed to cancel visa requirements for visitors from both countries.

​Iraq and Iran both agreed on Sunday to cancel visa requirements during the Iraqi prime minister's second official visit to Tehran this year.

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi spoke of the "good news" he received from his guest, Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi, who informed him that visa requirements for citizens wishing to visit Iraq would be cancelled.

Iraqi citizens visiting Iran would also be exempt from visa restrictions.

Raisi - an ultraconservative politician who took on his role last month - stressed that his country is looking forward to consolidating relations with Iraq.

Iraq’s electricity ministry said on Wednesday that Iranian gas supplied to the central and southern regions was reduced from 49 million to 8 million cubic meters per day, causing a risk of serious power shortages.

A reduction in Iranian gas supplies led the national power system to lose about 5500 megawatts, the ministry said in a statement.

The ministry said that there has been contact with the Iranian energy ministry and Iran’s embassy in Baghdad to clarify the reasons for the reduction, the statement added.

Washington has repeatedly extended by 90 or 120 days a sanctions exemption to allow Baghdad to import Iranian energy after Washington reimposed sanctions on Tehran’s oil sector forbidding countries from purchasing Iranian energy.

America illegally invaded Iraq in 2003, occupied and destabilized and flattened it, and then never left. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have been killed, and millions more have been made refugees or internally displaced persons.

The consequences for the population are almost beyond comprehension: After decades of conflict, more than 2 million Iraqis are disabled, while the PTSD is inescapable. Entire generations have been left unable to look at the sky the same way.

The Iraqi people must be added, alongside the American dead and their families, to the register of 9/11’s victims, after that day’s events were used as a justification for war. The atrocities at Abu Ghraib prison, the bombardment of Fallujah, the attack on civilians in Baghdad’s Nisour Square by the military contractor Blackwater — these events are a small part of a long list, made exceptional not by the character of their violence but by their outsize impact on the collective psychology.

​America trained, funded, and commanded Iraqi Interior Ministry special police forces to run a network of torture centers across the nation. Parts of Iraq are now rubble, a ruin-monument to western folly. One hundred military orders were signed into law by the U.S.-backed Coalition Provisional Authority to privatize state-run companies and amend the tax laws to facilitate foreign ownership.

“UNICEF is deeply concerned after the reported deaths of a 10-year-old child on 24 August in Diyala by the detonation of an explosive remnant of war (ERW) and of an 11-year-old child on 25 August in Muradiya Village, South of Baquba, due to an Improvised Explosive Device (IED.) UNICEF expresses its deep sorrow and condolences to the children’s families, friends, and communities.

“Sadly, these are not isolated losses of innocent lives. UNICEF expresses its alarm over the increase in child deaths and injuries due to landmines and ERW in Iraq in recent months. Between January and August 2021, the UN has recorded the loss of the lives of 35 children from ERW across the country, and 41 more were maimed. This represents an alarming increase in child casualties compared to 2020 when the UN verified the killing of 6 children and maiming of 12 children for the same period as a result of ERW and landmines.

“Child safety must remain as the primary consideration in all contexts. Landmines and ERW often result in civilian casualties, with children being the most vulnerable. Since children are smaller than adults, they are more likely to take the full impact of the blast and are therefore more likely to suffer death or serious injuries.

“UNICEF urges all parties to accelerate every effort to clear existing mines and unexploded ordnance and promote victim assistance and to uphold children’s right to a safe and protective environment.

“UNICEF also urges the Government of Iraq and the donor community to support the scale-up and provision of Explosive Ordnance Risk Education activities so that children and other community members receive explosive ordnance risk education in schools and communities in all areas previously affected by conflict in Iraq.”




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“I experienced the worst days of my life. As soon as I arrived, the officers beat me using metal pipes. In the following days, they used two exposed electricity wires to electrocute me. In my second week of detention, they made me squat and they tied my legs to a metal pipe, so that I could not stand up. They then beat the palms of my feet with a hard object, that brought me terrible pain. I fainted. When I woke up, I saw the other detainees were rubbing my chest to revive me.”

This testimony from one of the detainees is only a small fraction of what is happening in Iraqi prisons, according to a report by the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). The report, under the title, “Human Rights in the Administration of Justice in Iraq: Legal Conditions and Procedural Safeguards to Prevent Torture and Ill-Treatment”, was issued on the 3rd of August this year.

Other testimonies include one prisoner saying, “They cuffed my hands behind my back and hanged my handcuffs from a hook on a chain from the ceiling. They didn’t really ask me questions, they just kept shouting to confess”.
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Another detainee revealed, “It was the same routine, every day hanging me up and beating me. There are things they did to me there that I am too ashamed to talk about — but one thing I can tell you is that two times they made me sit on a bottle”.

Baghdad relies heavily on American military and economic aid, and the fall of Kabul demonstrates the inherent instability of US client states.It really did not take very long at all.

When even some intelligence assessments were stating that Kabul could hold out against the Taliban’s inexorable advance for at least 90 days (itself a downward revision from the Biden administration’s original assessment that the US-backed regime could survive an American departure), the world watched on in awe as the Taliban defied all expectations and simply walked right into the Afghan capital, taking photographs from inside the now-abandoned presidential palace over the weekend. 

As easy as that, it was done. The American project in Afghanistan went out with the tiniest of whimpers, the mass carnage predicted by any Taliban return to power did not materialise, and Kabul was retaken relatively bloodlessly.
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One can only imagine the shivers going down the spines of the Iraqi political elite, another American client regime, as they watch events in Afghanistan unfold as they sit huddled in the relative safety of Baghdad’s Green Zone.

UAE's ambitious plans for solar investment in Iraq feed directly into its broader regional strategy, but they have received little public scrutiny, writes Taif Alkhudary.

​In June, Iraq signed an agreement with Emirati-owned energy company Masdar to develop solar plants in central and southern parts of the country that can generate up to 2GW of power. 

The deal is part of Iraq's wider plans to lessen its dependence on fossil fuels and diversify its economy. In parallel, it is indicative of the UAE's "climate diplomacy". That is, the use of its renewable energy capabilities to increase its ties with Iraq and counter the influence of regional powers such as Iran. While the Emirates has invested money in Iraq to this end since at least 2003, little will be gained if such projects do not materialise. 
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Emirati interests in Iraq 

Iraq has long been an arena where rivalries between regional and international powers have played out. This is no truer than in the case of tensions between Iran and its neighbours in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), including the UAE. Since the US-led invasion, the Emirates has relied on soft power to keep Iranian influence in Iraq at bay. In doing so, it has been able to bolster its own defences and increase its ties across the region.

Iran’s ambassador to Baghdad highlighted the Islamic Republic’s support for Iraq’s national unity and close relations with all political currents, stressing that Tehran will not support any specific party, group or individual in the parliamentary elections slated for October.

In comments about the Iraqi parliamentary elections, due to be held on October 10, Iranian ambassador to Baghdad Iraj Masjedi said the Islamic Republic maintains firm and friendly ties with all Iraqi political currents and will not support any specific party or figure against another one.

Iran has always supported the national unity of Iraq and backs cooperation and fraternity among Iraqi parties, currents and coalitions, he added.
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The frequent visits that the Iraqi officials pay to Iran indicate that the Islamic Republic has broad relations with all Iraqi parties and groups, the ambassador stressed.