Reuters World News - The Iraq War, 20 years on

Episode Date: March 17, 2023

Two decades after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq we look at the legacy of the war, we talk to the reporters who were there when the statue of Saddam Hussein was toppled and for the chaos that followed, and we hear from Iraqis about the future. *This podcast incorrectly referred to the date that the Saddam Hussein statue was toppled in an earlier version. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Iraq War. An invasion meant to topple a dictator and usher in democracy and freedom. The United States and our allies have prevailed. Instead, unleashed years of chaos. Thousands killed in insurgencies, first by Saddam Hussein loyalists, later al-Qaeda and a sectarian civil war. The conflict reshaped the region and altered the international order. It was a profound event, and it still ripples today.

Reuters journalists paid the ultimate price. Seven were killed covering the war. In today's podcast, we marked 20 years since that invasion. Look at its legacy, Iraq today, and honour those colleagues we lost. This is Reuters World News. I'm Kim Vinal in London. First, the latest headlines around the world. Extraordinary moves in the United States.

where a group of large banks are injecting $30 billion in deposits into First Republic Bank. The rescue package is meant to stave off a wider crisis in the banking system. Panicked depositors have been pulling funds out of some smaller US banks and stashing them at major lenders after the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank. Chinese President Xi Jinping will visit Russia from March 20th to the 22nd for a state visit. The trip comes as China offers to broker peace in Ukraine. The Kremlin says the two sides will discuss. strategic cooperation. Spontaneous protests kick off on the Place de la Concorde in Paris,

after President Emmanuel Macron forces through a bill raising the pension age by two years to 64. Across the Sen, Parliament is suspended for two minutes, while lawmakers sing the national anthem in dissent. A vast majority of voters oppose the reforms and more protests are planned. The US invasion was meant to be swift. Of course, it didn't work out like that. But for one symbolic moment, it seemed the US could make good on its promise to literally topple Saddam Hussein. Reuters' executive editor, Simon Robinson, tells us about that day. So Simon, in Baghdad, you were actually there as what became an iconic moment, the toppling of the statue of Saddam Hussein happened.

What was really happening? On the morning of the April 9th, I don't think there was any idea that the battalion, the Marine Battalion, that I was with would end up in the square. I was in the vehicle. We were moving towards central Baghdad. The lieutenant colonel got a radio call to move toward the Palestine Hotel, because the day before a U.S. tank shell had hit the hotel and killed a couple of journalists and put a Reuters journalist in hospital, Samir Nakul, our now Middle East news editor. When we got to the square, which is outside the Palestine, there's a large statue of Saddam, And there was an Iraqi bodybuilder who was a former bodybuilder who was whacking the bottom of the statue with a big sledgehammer.

The Marines ended up helping pull the statue down by backing in this tank, this kind of tank recovery unit to where they put a chain around the neck of the statue and pulled it down. And when the statue actually hit the ground, there was an incredible explosion of joy from the Iraqis who took their shoes off and smashed the face. of Saddam of the statue, which is a real insult in the Arab world. The toppling of that statue became a symbol of victory, a symbol of operation Iraqi freedom. But was it? Did it live up to expectation with 20 years hindsight? I think within about 24 hours, it was pretty clear that it was going to be a lot more complicated than toppling a statue. There was a lot of looting already going on in Baghdad, and that only got worse over the next couple of days. There was a real sense that,

many Iraqi people were waiting to kind of get orders from the Americans as to what to do next. But of course, those orders were never going to come because I think from the American side, there was a feeling, well, now you're liberated, now it's time for you to take over. So there was a real, almost a sense of a big communication gap. And as we saw, over the coming weeks and months, an insurgency would slowly build that would end up bogging the Americans down in Iraq for years to come. One incident early on telegraphed the chaos that would ensue, the killing of four Americans working for the Blackwater Security Group.

Reuters Michael Georgie was in Fallujah and tells us what he witnessed. A warning that some of our listeners may find this next segment distressing. When I arrived, basically, it was complete chaos. Residents from the town did various things to the corpses of these four Blackwater guys. dismember them, burn them, kicking them, stepping on their heads. And what I remember very clearly, which to me was the most telling moment of my many years in Iraq, was when a boy of about nine years old came up to me, stood above the, above two corpses, and said, we've dragged the others on ropes attached to cars, and we've hung them from a bridge.

Do you want me to show you? And remember, this was about a year after Bush stood on the aircraft carrier under a banner which said mission accomplished. Actually, it was all starting at that point. I found it completely shocking, even though, of course, there was an occupation and a bit of an insurgency. I found that very shocking, and to me, it just spelled trouble for many years ahead. The Americans had disbanded the Iraqi army, so you had tens of thousands of men. unemployed with weapons, angry, I definitely knew in Fallujah that it's going to be a long haul. I'm not saying the Americans are responsible for Okada or the civil war,

but a lot of stories do trace back to the early days of the insurgency. Michael, thank you. Thank you. How do Iraqis feel about the future? This is Khanim Mohammed. She was nine when Saddam Hussein ordered a gas attack on her community in the country's Kurdish north. At least 5,000 people were killed on that spring day in 1988. She says she was happy when he was captured and felt so angry about what he'd done.

She tells us she wanted to go and tear his flesh off with her teeth. Another Iraqi celebrating the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003 was Ahmed al-A. but like thousands of others, celebrations soon turned to despair. The biologist turned journalist had to flee his homeland because of death threats. His wife, Samar Aziz, says the hurt runs deep. Sometimes, you know, now with the baby we're expecting, sometimes I'm like, are we going to be able to break that trauma circle that we're through? I don't even know if we could.

That trauma circle is a consequence. of years of violence in Iraq. But it has gone through enormous changes too. Royt's producer, Charlotte Pranou, is based in Baghdad and walks us through what Iraq's capital city is like in March 2023. The sectarian war that followed a U.S.-led invasion, turned the city into what was known for years as one of the most dangerous places in the world.

Explosions, killings, abductions, many Iraqis fled the country. But Baghdad is much safer today. It is a different city. Explosions have become very rare. The number of people, traffic in the city is increasing. There are more restaurants and malls. People enjoy going out. Here in Abu Nawaz Park, alongside the banks of the Tigris River,

families come to picnic, to smoke shisha. Children are playing football and you can rent a horse for a short ride. At the end of the park, we get to Tahrir Square. This is where mass anti-government protest broke out in 2019. Today, the tents have gone, but many of the protesters' demands still echo around the city. Better basic services and infrastructure, clean water, electricity, people want more jobs, less corruption. I'm Charlotte Brunard in Baghdad. Reuters' editorial safety field specialist Alison Baskerville is pivotal to making sure Charlotte can do her job.

The journalists, risk, even when minimised, can't be fully eliminated. Here's Alison, who served in the British military and was a photo journalist for 10 years. I approach safety from the perspective of using my own lived experience as someone in the military, then working away from that and being also a journalist and working with journalists and the community of journalists. And that's helped forge a much deeper understanding of how we work on the ground. Now, our journalists are not children. Their intelligence, smart, capable, focused and passionate about what they do.

So we try to tailor what they need from a safety perspective based on what particular assignment they're on and all the inherent risks that might come with that. From 2003 through 2007, Reuters lost seven people in the Iraq conflict. In 2007, the US military's Apache helicopters killed civilians in Baghdad, including two Reuters' news staff. The list includes Tharas Protsyuk, Mazendana,

Diyah Njim, Wali Khalid, Namir Noor al-Din, Saeed Chama. It's a toll that we never want to see repeated. Reuters continues to honour the courage and dedication of our fallen colleagues in Baghdad and all journalists who have died in the line of duty.

Many of us remember the Iraq war as night skies lit with treasons Tracer bullets, or the toppling of a statue, George W. Bush declaring victory. But for Iraqis today, the fallout of that war continues. Today, 60% of Iraqis are under 25, and have little to no memory of American and British soldiers crossing over into their country, promising peace. They do, however, live with its consequences. That's it for this edition of Reuters' World News.

We'll be back on Monday. In the meantime, you can find more trusted news at Reuters.com.