Five years after fall of Baghdad, all-day curfew is imposed

Five years ago we all witnessed the historic moment when a group of jubilant Iraqis, aided by the US forces, toppled a statue of Saddam and brought it, and Saddam's rule, crashing down.

Five years after that event one would imagine that neither the Iraqis nor the Americans ever believed they would find themselves where they are today; half a decade on from that milestone.

The Iraqi capital remains under curfew after another round of bloodshed in which mortar rounds landed in Sadr City, killing seven people, including two children, and injuring 24 others. Further gunfights in the sprawling Shia slum led to six more dying and 15 others being wounded.

The area is a centre of support for the radical Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, and came after days of clashes between his militia, the Mehdi Army, and Iraqi government forces in which 55 people have been killed and more than 200 injured. The Shia fighters vowed last nightthat retribution would be taken for the "unprovoked attack" in Sadr City which they claimed was the responsibility of the US forces.

Much of Baghdad was a ghost town yesterday, with the government imposing a curfew from 5am to midnight on vehicles in an attempt to stop car bombings. Similar restrictions were imposed in Saddam Hussein's home town of Tikrit. "This is not quite what we had expected five years on," a State Department official in Baghdad acknowledged.

I am not sure any of us expected things to look this bad after five years. It seems astonishing to me that the US has now been involved in Iraq longer than they were involved in WWII and with much less success.

Indeed, even General Petraeus was less than exuberant when he recently admitted that the champagne had been moved to the back of the fridge in a campaign which has failed to deliver anything like the optimistic outcome that was promised the day that statue fell.

Of course, we now know that the toppling of the statue was far from a spontaneous act and that the entire thing was stage managed from beginning to end.

The "impassioned populace", it turned out later, were people bused in from Sadr City, then called Saddam City. Ibrahim Khalil, who was in the crowd that day, said yesterday: "If history can take me back, I will now actually kiss the statue of Saddam. I am sorry that I played a part in pulling it down. I think now that was a black day for Baghdad. We got rid of Saddam, but now we have 50 Saddams. In his days we were safe. I ask Bush, 'where are your promises of making Iraq a better country?'"

Many who took part in this Pravda-style propaganda photo shoot now have similar feelings:

Abdullah Jawad, another who took part in the destruction of the statue, said: "Let me see what has happened since then, just to me. I have had a brother killed and a niece who has been kidnapped and we have not seen for five months. Our country has been destroyed by foreigners, not just the Americans but the extremists who came to fight them on our soil.

"Saddam was a brutal man and we were supposed to be free when he went. But there is no freedom when you fear for your safety every day. When I see on television people in America and England say things are getting better in Iraq, I think, why don't you come and live here and see what it is really like?"

Jawad is forgetting that people like John McCain - and his supporters - actually don't give a shit about the Iraqi people, despite the claims they may make. They care about the Republicans remaining in power and they feel the best way to do that is to proclaim Iraq a success, despite the fact that the failure of the entire operation is clear to anyone who can cast their mind back five years to the day that statue fell.

Who would have honestly said that day that, if we could have projected you forward five years, you would consider the present situation a success? Who would have ever believed that some of the people who were pulling down that statue would one day wish that they had kissed it instead and would rue the day the US got rid of Saddam?

I don't think any of us would have thought that. And that's the true indicator of just how disastrous this occupation has been.

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Tags: Iraq, Iraq war, Saddam Hussein, statue, toppling, five years later, US occupation