What happened to the millions of refugees and displaced Iraqis after the US-led war? The horrors of war, its long legacy, and its lost lives and heritage haunt Iraq two decades after the US invasion. My uncle had come over. He was putting duct tape on all the windows. I asked him why he was doing that. He said so the glass will not turn to shrapnel. While he was doing that, on our TV was the last time I saw Saddam as president.
On March 19, , a United States-led coalition began bombing Iraq. One day later, a ground invasion began. Al-Khatib was seven years old. At the time, al-Khatib and his family lived in Ramadi, km 70 miles west of Baghdad. They left their home during the early onset of the invasion, but the family was unable to meet their basic needs in Heet, a city in Al-Anbar province, so they returned to Ramadi to find that US forces had set up a base next to the family home.
I can recall that an attack or disturbance would occur at least once a week against this base. Later on, allegations that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction was used to justify the invasion of Iraq as a continuation of the US "war on terror".
Instead of the promised democracy, the US war and its destruction scarred the country, its people and culture. Everything that is happening in our lives - displacement, not having the life we deserve, The US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq lasted until and led to multiple waves of large-scale displacement.
The number of internally displaced people IDPs rose from zero registered in to 2. In addition to those internally displaced, millions more Iraqis became refugees. At their peak in , more than 2. As of , the United Nations had registered , Iraqi refugees living mostly in Germany 44 percent , Jordan 10 percent and Iran 10 percent.
