​"Freedom gone wrong is the portrait of Iraq after 2003. Expectations do not stack-up against realities," said Imad Salim, a 25-year-old unemployed medical graduate from Baghdad.

​Post-Baathist Iraq has spawned weak governance and hostile political blocs unable to unite under a common vision - particularly in the run up to Iraq's presidential election next year.

Religious elites thrust into power by the US have shown avowed loyalty to the ethnicised political system the American occupiers planted during their uninvited stay.

​Securing US backing meant forfeiting popular support. The vacuum empowered religiously affiliated groups, ordained by God, in their view, to become political actors.

“Either I’m crazy or, the media is feeding audiences around the world a reality far removed from that which, we, Iraqis experienced”, said engineer Hashim whose brush with death in 2007 brought him to Britain.

Speaking in a thick southern accent, the 38 year-old told stories about life in Iraq and the changes his country underwent over the decades — not excluding the happier or darker times.

Since he arrived to Britain ten years ago, Hashim was struck -- in his words -- by “unevenly told accounts of Iraq’s past”.

“Our history has been consistently twisted and refashioned” he said, “but as individuals that have benefitted from the business of war, our stories are not heard.” ​

Slowly and quietly, Iraq is slipping off our news pages. The faraway conflict that poisoned politics in Britain for five years is becoming history.

This started as an impression. I noticed, as you may have done, that there seemed to be fewer of those mayhem stories that were a daily staple a year ago: fewer ghastly suicide bombings, fewer vanloads of corpses discovered at dawn, fewer kidnappings and beheadings. Horrors of the kind described so vividly by Dahr Jamail on the pages that follow now come our way only occasionally.

A trawl of our national press over last weekend appeared to confirm this. In the four days from Friday to Monday the downmarket papers barely mentioned Iraq, and where they did it was usually in the context of “our boys” going out there or coming home. At the upper end of the market, with one exception to which I will return, any attention given to Iraq was focused on the danger of a Turkish-Kurdish conflict in the north. All was quiet, it seemed, on the Baghdad front.

Could this be good news? Perhaps General Petraeus’s surge is making headway, bringing some order and humanity to this blood-soaked place. That is certain what the general himself would have you believe. He recently told reporters that the threat from Al Qaeda in Iraq was “significantly reduced. The group had fewer strongholds, fewer hiding places and less support among the Sunnis, he said, though he warned it was still capable of landing a “big punch”.

Iraqi poet and fellow at the Council of At Risk Academics at King's College, Nadia Fayidh Mohammed, rewinds the clock in remembrance of the fateful war on Iraq, and the shape of the country 14 years after.

I am frequently asked questions about 2003, and what happened to me and my family then. When people in London learn I was one of million Iraqis that survived the war, they eagerly ask for my opinion, account and personal experiences.

Their questions were never free from prepackaged assumptions. Pro-war interrogators sought confirmation of their firmly held belief that the war was necessary. They wanted me to satisfy their fantasy that young boys clad in uniforms saved primitive Iraq from its demonic dictatorship. They saluted their troops as saviors of the 'third', 'uncivilized' world, and wanted me to subserviently concur.

On the other hand, there are anti-war activists, who stormed the streets one month before the war, calling on politicians to prevent it -- to save young men from entering a war they did not understand or need to fight. They hoped I would assure them that before 2003, Iraqis were fine and had everything under control.

Both camps seek simple answers to validate concrete ideas and beliefs, and misconceptions of Iraq, my country. For these questions, there cannot be a one-size-fits-all answer.

A British perspective on the 14th anniversary of the invasion.

Thousands, possibly millions, of protesters waved placards angrily in a march now regarded as the largest protest of its kind in history, against the Iraq war. Reclined on my sofa, age 13, I watched, as streams of people formed large crowds, not entirely aware of the situation, but thinking this much: war is not the answer.

The world was told that the removal of Iraq’s despotic leader Saddam Hussein would free Iraqis from their suffering. A few months into its invasion, the US assured us that it was ‘Mission Accomplished’. President Bush, just a year later, declared that Iraqis “daily life is improving”.
​
Even after war was declared ‘over’, a dystopian reality had settled. The war never left the country, and the number of innocents killed has multiplied.

​Aspirations of a better Iraq were quickly dashed for a population suffering under the reality of what the war invited in and what it took away. On the 14th anniversary of the invasion, what little hope there was has dissolved entirely.

​We will never forget those who died, but we should also remember the lies of those who took us into these wars and continue to justify them.

The area around Whitehall and Westminster in Central London is full of statues and memorials to - sometimes forgotten - wars and the generals who fought them. It is unusual however to have a memorial to wars which are continuing and which are highly contested.

Yet the latest war memorial in London – to commemorate the Iraq and Afghanistan wars – is exactly that. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it has been unveiled against a background of rows and controversy. The unveiling of the new memorial took place at a ceremony where, astonishingly, many of the relatives of those who died were not invited – some did not even know it was going on.

The project was launched by a financial appeal through Rupert Murdoch’s Sun on Sunday, and among those contributing to the cost were the arms company BAE Systems. ​

Between 250 and 370 civilians killed by US-led air strikes in seven days of fighting, says monitor Airwars.

The US-led coalition fighting the Islamic State may have killed hundreds of civilians in the first week of March in support of Iraqi forces storming western Mosul, according to reports by monitoring group Airwars.

Using open-source data and witness reports, the group estimated that between 250 and 370 civilians had  been killed in 11 incidents in the heavily populated western side of the city since 1 March. Out of the 11 incidents, four were backed by two or more sources saying the coalition was responsible for the strikes, it said.

Airwars is an independent monitor that uses all available sources, cross-referencing them with the coalition's own official lists of air strikes.

A US-orchestrated attempt to lure Sunnis into legitimising the next round of elections in Iraq has backfired spectacularly, leaving its post-Daesh roadmap in tatters. 

The deathblow to America’s plot was landed by Iraq’s Association of Muslim Scholars (AMSI), who not only spiritually represent the nation’s Sunnis, but are also considered one of main players between the nationalist organisations currently united against the current political process in Iraq. 

The US pressured its regional Sunni allies to hold a conference where they would coax the Iraqi Sunnis into running in and legitimising the 2018 Iraqi general election, which will most likely take place after the military defeat of Daesh.

The conference was held in the Turkish capital Ankara last week, on 8 March 2017.

Iraqi TV host Ahmed Mulla Talal unmasked Iran's future ambitions in the region and highlighted the danger this poses to Baghdad's sovereignty, especially regarding the growing influence of the al-Hashd al-Shaabi militia coalition. Speaking on his program, called ‘To The Letter’ on al-Sharqiyah TV, Talal said that while al-Hashd might claim to respect the state, they were ultimately an ideological group with their own agenda. 

“The mentality of al-Hashd is sect over state,” Talal said. He quoted Abu Ala’ al-Wala’i "ابو الاء الولائي", secretary general of Sayyid al-Shuhada Battalions, to back up his assertion. Sayyid al-Shuhada Battalions are a Shia militia and part of al-Hashd al-Shaabi, which is in turn a coalition of predominately Shia militias who fight on behalf of the government in Baghdad. Speaking from Aleppo, northwest Syria, where his group are fighting, Talal quoted al-Wala’i as saying: “We support respect for the Iraqi state’s sovereignty, and abiding by its constitution and the decisions of its government.” 

​“But at the same time,” the militia commander continued, “we support respect of Sharia and religious commands, which we believe is more important than any other commitment.”

“We have given Syria long columns of martyrs, and we are prepared to offer more,” al-Wala’i continued.
“After Syria, we will not stop,” he said. “We will go to the further than the borders of the Arab world so long as our presence is needed there.”