Iraq: After the Americans – Part 1

“If they claim they bring democracy, that means they have demolished democracy from existence. If they claim they want your freedom, they will enslave you. Whatever becomes reality here is in total contradiction to their slogans. These slogans are just cover-ups for their violation of all kinds of human rights.”

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Published by AlJazeeraEnglish
July 25, 2012

In keeping with Barack Obama’s presidential campaign promise, the US has withdrawn its troops from Iraq and by the end of 2012 US spending in Iraq will be just five per cent of what it was at its peak in 2008.

In a special two-part series, Fault Lines travels across Iraq to take the pulse of a country and its people after nine years of foreign occupation and nation-building.

Now that US troops have left, how are Iraqis overcoming the legacy of violence and toxic remains of the US-led occupation, and the sectarian war it ignited? Is the country on the brink of irreparable fragmentation?

Correspondent Sebastian Walker first went to Baghdad in June 2003 and spent the next several years reporting un-embedded from Iraq. In the first part of this Fault Lines series, he returns and travels from Basra to Baghdad to find out what kind of future Iraqis are forging for themselves.