One woman’s ordeal as she races to free her brother falsely accused of terror charges. After finding a helping hand, she is told his release is negotiable for sex.

Sat at home, a notification came through with a beep. The video my eyes would lay upon would offset memories I had long suppressed.

With a swipe I open my messages to find the video that a friend in Baghdad had sent.

The content was expectedly violent. Iraqi police jeering as they beat a shopkeeper of a clothes store in Baghdad’s Karrada district.

He was of a similar age to my brother, early twenties, whose unlawful arrest was the final straw that forced me to flee Iraq and never look back.

Almost a century separates America’s intervention in Iraq and Haiti but the outcomes look uncannily similar. The populations of both nations have not reaped full benefits from American-backed development prescriptions. Unfulfilled promises and incomplete programmes are historically consistent with cases of military interventionism beyond Iraq and Haiti.

Plans intended for reshaping economies have impaired the path of progress in both states. Results that include chronic mismanagement, economic decline and corrosive corruption, calls intervention and the nature of America’s reconstruction project  into serious question.

​In fact, intervention has reversed developmental gains made previously, but America’s economic and security interests across both geographies have remained secure.

What then can account for these failures; misuse of foreign policy tools or a wanton disregard for the fate of states undergoing US-imposed democratisation.

Biological warfare use by foreign powers in Iraq has perished uncountable lives. Even for those whose lives have been spared, are left permanently incapacitated after coming into contact with biological agents and toxic chemicals.

Lead poisoning and white matter abnormalities are two of the most lethal toxic outcomes, the impact of which can be irreversible. The toxins can poison both one's physiology and mind.

Against the prohibitions set out in international agreements, biological agents have become a consistent theme of the past 30 years.  

With time, the legacy of toxin warfare becomes more crippling. The number of children born with birth defects, lead poisoning and cognitive and respiratory illnesses are higher now than they were in the 90s.

Desperate to survive the newest US led aerial offensive against the Islamic State, an estimated 1, 000 civilians fled their home towns of Rawa, Ana and Qaim, west of Iraq.

​The air offensive that began at the start of September this year, is part of the Iraqi government efforts to flush out terrorists scattered across the planes of Anbar, in a phase that resembles many others before it.

Lacking passages to safety, families had little choice but to cross the border via Qaim into Syria where they arrived into Deir-e-Zor. Their journey back into Iraq involved travelling through another battle zone, the western town of Ramadi.

To add to their misfortunes, their convoy was intercepted by Islamic State (IS) fighters as they passed Ramadi, forcing the families to split in two groups. The first headed into the barren desert, 35 kilometers north of Ramadi.

In light of their latest statehood bid, onlookers have applauded Iraq’s Kurds while responses from communities bound by the same geography has been relatively muted.

Excluding Iraq’s Sahwa players (remnants of Anbar Awakening Council), Sunni figures, so far, have excluded themselves from the ‘Kurdish Independence’ debate.

The Sunni position as articulated by The Association of Muslim Scholars in Iraq (AMSI), views the referendum as another scheme designed to dismember Iraq. This perspective views the vote as an extension of America’s foreign policy designs in Iraq. AMSI like others, forsee another boobytrap whereby Sunnis are given no choice but to accept rogue characters and the polity they gave life to.

The Sahwa camp, contrastingly, has adopted an opposite approach as displayed during last Thursday’s ‘Sahwa-Kurdish’ get-together. Tribal elders and former Sahwa commanders congregated in Erbil in attendance of a conference organised by Sahwa-turned politician and millionaire businessman Khamis al Khanjar.

The race towards self-rule in Iraq’s Kurdistan region has never been more cautiously watched than now. The words Biji (viva) Kurdistan sprawled across billboards, signal a change in the air, as do the colours of the Kurdish flag, painting towns red, green and yellow.

Missing from the statehood debate however, are important questions. How might an overwhelming ‘yes’ vote cast in favour of secession alter the existing equilibrium; what shape will be an independent Iraqi Kurdistan assume, and will it cost Kurdish regional leader Massoud Barzani his most enduring alliances?

Having proven to global onlookers that the people's appetite for divorce is unsuppressable, is only half a victory for Barzani. His allies have in reciprocation proven uncompromising in their rejection of Barzani’s free Kurdistan.

Baghdad, Tehran and Ankara have unequivocally recognised the vote as ‘unconstitutional’. They have also pinned accusations of land theft and oil smuggling to KRG figureheads. United in their opposition, the trio authorised countermeasures last week including border and airspace closure to derail KRG’s secessionist scheme. Much sympathy for Iraq’s Kurds has been drummed up in the media sphere but the point bypassing most is that the hands of Kurdistan’s political elite are far from clean.