U.S. Imperialism Still in Iraq, One Year after Troops Withdrawn

Jan 21, 2013

Nine years of war in Iraq, which were supposedly to bring democracy and freedom to the Iraqi people, have only made the country more ungovernable.

More than a year after the official retreat of the U.S. army’s last troops, the country is divided between Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds, and is being devoured by corruption. The population has been decimated by the war with officially 122,000 civilians killed–1.5 million deaths according to certain estimates–and seven million people who fled and took refuge in camps. The population is paying a high price for the instability generated as a consequence of the “divide and rule” policy and the bloody confrontations between rival militias. All of 2012 was marked by terrorist bombings.

If officially U.S. troops have left, U.S. imperialism keeps a massive presence in Iraq. U.S. troops have been replaced by the large army of 35,000 mercenaries paid by the U.S. and its corporations. The U.S. embassy in Baghdad is the biggest in the world, with no less than 17,000 employees.

U.S. imperialism protects what it came looking for and which it got after nine years of war: close control over oil production. The divisions which have been maintained in the country allow such control. A part of the oil wealth is controlled by the central Iraqi government, the other part by the Iraqi Kurdish regional government, to the great satisfaction of the oil companies, and in particular the biggest in the world, Exxon Mobil. Iraqi oil production has now surpassed its peak of the pre-war years.

The fact that Iraq is racked by misery and bloody chaos as a result of U.S. intervention does not change their intention to remain present and dominant over the Iraqi population.