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Reflections from a visit to Iraq

Luke Wilcox is the Development and Communications Director for the Iraqi and American Reconciliation Project. Luke has also worked with The Advocates for Human Rights, the Muslim-Christian Dialogue Center, and  Washington Office of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Luke was a Katherine Davis Fellow for Peace in 2010 and graduated from Boston University with an M.A. in International Relations and speaks Arabic.  He writes about his visit to Iraq "Witnessing Our War and Its Consequences" on CommonDreams:

"While the US military withdrawal in December marked a symbolic end to almost 9 years of war and occupation, it’s not “over” for the people I met. They, their children, and future generations of Iraqis (as well as Americans) will live with the consequences of the war on Iraq.

In Iraq, at least 100,000 civilians died from 2003 to 2011 as a result of the war. Some estimates put the number at over 1 million. Approximately 4.7 million Iraqis were displaced by the war, including 40 percent of the middle class. Seventy percent of children in Iraq suffer from trauma-related symptoms and there are perhaps five million orphans in Iraq. Electricity comes and goes every couple of hours and 7.6 million still lack access to clean water. According to Transparency International, Iraq was the eighth most corrupt country in the world in 2011 – a legacy of both previous power structures and the American occupation.

Nearly everyone I talked to while in Iraq had a friend or relative killed, injured, or tortured during the last 8 years. Torturers included the Iraqi Army, American forces, Saddam Hussein’s henchmen, Al Qaeda, and sectarian militias. One of the students I helped teach, Muhammad, played on Iraq’s national tennis team. In 2007, his coach and three of his teammates were stopped in the car they were driving, ordered to get out, and executed “for wearing shorts.”

When Sami and I visited Baghdad, he said, “Look what’s happened to this city. It was such a beautiful place when I visited it growing up.” I saw buildings riddled with bullet holes, concrete walls and military checkpoints still dividing neighborhoods, and garbage covering street corners.

Iraq’s slow fall from regional leader in health and education to ruined state did not begin with the United States, but American involvement in Iraq over the last few decades (including bombing during the 1990 -91 Gulf War, international sanctions, and the most recent war and occupation) completed the destruction."

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