TEHRAN- When the residents of Baghdad and Basra saw an all too familiar site last week, wiser heads prevailed and the scenes of violence in two of Iraq’s largest cities gave way to peace. 

Everyone knows very well how insecurity can take center stage and then sweep across the nation. Over the past three decades alone, there has been a number of calamities that form dark chapters in Iraqi history.  

The people lived under a dictator who ruled with an iron fist yet still enjoyed the support of the West. More than one war has been endured by the average Iraqi family during that time, along with tough and deadly U.S. sanctions. Then came the American occupation and the ugly side of that military presence, an occupation that continues until today, with the exception of breathing space from 2011 till 2014. 

Even during the 2011 to 2014 period, the huge American embassy, with hundreds of U.S. troops guarding the heavily fortified military complex, occupied a large swathe of land in the Iraqi capital as it does today.

With the American occupation came terrorism and different terrorist groups, most notably al-Qaeda in Iraq and heart-eating Daesh terrorists. 

It’s fair to say Iraq has foreign enemies who are keen on not seeing this country prosper. According to government officials, the biggest enemy that appears determined to see this nation mired in unrest is the United States. 

Over the past 31 years, the U.S. has been bombing, invading, killing, sanctioning, starving, occupying, and conspiring on Iraq soil. American troops have travelled some 7,000 miles to attack, invade and occupy Iraqi land. 

It is difficult to find somebody in Baghdad that has anything nice to say about the role of the U.S., especially over the past three decades. Nobody here forgets the support Washington offered to the former Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein. 

In 1991, when the U.S. sensed the people in southern Iraq were about to start an uprising against the former Iraqi dictator, America egged “the Iraqi military” on “and the Iraqi people to take matters into their own hands and force Saddam Hussein, the dictator, to step aside”. This is while warplanes dropped leaflets calling on Iraqis to “fill the streets and alleys and bring down Saddam Hussein and his aides.” The U.S. said it would be safe as claimed to impose a no-fly zone. 

No assistance was sent and as locals revolted one of Saddam’s generals asked the U.S.-led coalition for permission to fly helicopters, including armed gunships. As it turns out Washington was only interested in protecting its own troops on the Kuwaiti border. Saddam’s slaughter kicked off and with it hundreds of thousands of civilians perished as American troops looked on. One of the beneficiaries of an unstable Iraq today is remnants of the Ba'athist regime. 

The U.S. then imposed sanctions which, according to some international estimates, starved an entire nation, killed one and a half million Iraqis many of them children and doubled the child mortality rate. 

In 2003, the U.S. bombed and invaded again, this time under the guise of regime change. Very few Iraqis were interested in Saddam staying, but no one wanted a dictator to be replaced with the United States. As America found out when it tried occupying the country. 

It was now facing a popular armed resistance and the actions of its military in Abu Ghraib prison made the occupation even more loathed until it was forced to reluctantly withdraw in 2011. But that didn’t stop the U.S. again in 2014 from bombing and occupying Iraqi land, this time under the pretext of fighting Daesh. 

Why does the U.S. keep returning to a country where it is hated by the locals and where it has no business to be militarily present? Baghdad accuses the U.S. military together with the American embassy of fomenting sedition in the country. 

America is widely accused of seeking chaos and instability in a country where there is vast oil wealth, enough for Iraq to be a strong country in West Asia. 

This is something America appears afraid of. It needs Iraq to be weak as a powerful Iraq would no doubt seek sovereignty and independence away from the shadows of its occupier. Baghdad has been demanding U.S. forces leave the country. Since 2020 Parliament, the Prime Minister’s office and the people have all demanded the U.S. pack up and leave. 

The U.S. is feeding on any fighting and insecurity and is going to any length to stir unrest. Instability is something the Pentagon can use to prolong its military activity in Iraq. 

This explains why Washington has played a big part in the country’s power outages, an issue that triggers anger and mass protests that turn to unrest among Iraqi people.

Without electricity, businesses are failing to succeed, students cannot study and the nation struggles to develop. Not when the power is off and the country plunged into the dark. 

In 1991, at least 11 of the 20 major Iraqi power stations were bombed out of service by a U.S.-led coalition while 119 substations were totally destroyed and a further six major power stations were damaged. In 2003 the U.S. hit the powers plants again and then terrorists began blowing up the infrastructure. In 2014, under the pretext of fighting Daesh, more carpet bombing by America damaged more stations. 

Iraq had a U.S.-trained army that collapsed to Daesh in 2014. The Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), volunteer forces answered the call of Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani in 2014 to help fill the void and battle the terrorists. The force received training, arms and logistics from neighboring Iran. 

The PMU proved effective and Daesh was defeated in 2017; it’s terror activity in the country, region and world took a heavy blow. The PMU defied the predictions of some American generals who expected Daesh to rule for another ten years. Nevertheless, an insecure Iraq will serve Daesh to make a return. 

Today when the U.S. government and media refer to the PMU as Iranian backed militias, it highlights the arrogance and disinformation campaign that Washington is waging. 

The PMU liberated Iraqi soil, receives its paycheck from Baghdad and answers to the Iraqi commander in chief while trying to reinforce Iraq’s sovereignty. Naturally the force would be opposed to the U.S. occupation. 

It is a vital part of the country’s military; if the force is called to deal with unrest, it’s not Iranian backed militias clashing as some Western media tried to have their audiences believe. Under the Iraqi constitution the PMU obeys its orders from Baghdad. 

Peace and security in Iraq will benefit and its people while Iran's political, economic and security interests also depend on peace in its western neighbor. 

On the other hand, like the U.S., a secure and unified Iraq does not serve Israeli interests or the regime’s plans of division in the region. As Iraq works towards greater unity and improved security, Israel has tried to sabotage those efforts; with most of its recent attempts coming through the northern region of Iraq.   

As America and Israel view Iraq as too strategically important to leave alone, both regimes will continue to push for unrest to maintain their presence and continue violating Iraqi sovereignty.