Mohammed Ali was 20 years old when he sat in front of his television in Baghdad on Sept. 11, 2001, watching the news unfold from half a world away. He had little interest in what was happening in the United States. The images of airplanes crashing into the World Trade Center towers in New York were staggering, but to him they belonged to a distant world — an event that seemed to have little to do with Iraq or with his own daily life.
Ali switched that day between Iraq’s state television and Al-Shabab, the channel run by Saddam Hussein’s son, Uday. He remembers being stunned by the scale of the attacks. But what stayed with him just as vividly were the scenes of celebration and schadenfreude broadcast on Iraqi television — images that, in retrospect, seemed to foreshadow how profoundly Sept. 11 would alter his own country.
At the time, Iraq was living under sweeping international sanctions imposed after Saddam Hussein’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait. The Iraqi government repeatedly accused the United States of prolonging the economic embargo, which had devastated the economy and contributed to severe shortages in basic services.
“Perhaps that is why the authorities treated the September attacks as if they were a victory,” Ali told MBN. “But they certainly did not know that the world would change after that date — and that Iraq would become a central part of that change.”
After the attacks, the United States went to war with al-Qaida and the Taliban in Afghanistan. The administration of President George W. Bush then broadened its definition of the threats facing the United States, bringing Saddam Hussein’s regime into the American debate over terrorism and weapons of mass destruction.
By March 2003, the United States and its allies had invaded Iraq and toppled Saddam Hussein as part of the broader war on terrorism launched by Washington after 9/11. There was no evidence, however, that Iraq had been behind the Sept. 11 attacks or that Saddam’s government had cooperated with al-Qaida in carrying them out.
For millions of Iraqis, Saddam Hussein’s fall marked the end of a regime that had ruled through repression and violence. At the same time, it opened the door to a much larger dream.
A country rich in oil, endowed with vast natural resources, strategically located and home to an educated population could, after decades of war and sanctions, would finally become a stable and prosperous state.
“The U.S. primary goal in 2003 invasion was to ensure Iraq would no longer be a threat to the region…Despite Iranian involvement today this goal has been basically met,” said former U.S. diplomat and the Philip Solondz Distinguished Fellow at The Washington Institute, James Jeffrey.
“It is a much better country,” Jeffrey told MBN. “From 1980 onward, Saddam Hussein was all about war after war and extreme oppression leading to international condemnation and sanctions impoverishing the people. Iraq today is at peace and a functioning democracy.”
Still, Jeffrey acknowledged that Iraq continues to face “serious problems,” including corruption, bureaucracy and Iranian interference, among others.
It is true that Iraq is no longer a one-party state ruled by a single leader. Iraqis elect their governments and live in a far more open political and media environment. But the country has paid an enormous price in war, violence and destruction, while the new state has struggled to address corruption, failing public services, economic weakness and fragile institutions.
After Saddam’s fall, Iraq descended into an armed insurgency. Sectarian violence then intensified, followed by attacks by al-Qaida and, later, the Islamic State, which seized large swaths of the country in 2014. The group’s rise unleashed another wave of killings, displacement and destruction.
In recent years, Iraq has become significantly more secure than during the bloodiest years following the invasion and the war against the Islamic State. But that security has not resolved the problems that helped weaken the state in the first place.
Corruption remains widespread. The economy is heavily dependent on oil, while public services remain far below what Iraqis expect. The government continues to struggle to assert full authority across the country, while political parties and armed groups retain considerable influence over political and security affairs.
Faisal Al-Istrabadi, a former Iraqi ambassador to the United Nations, believes that comparing Iraq before and after 2003 is difficult. Iraqis, he argues, enjoy far greater freedoms today.
“There are dozens of television channels, and you can criticize the government without that, in itself, leading to your execution,” he said.
But Al-Istrabadi argues that the new state has failed to establish a monopoly on the use of force. “Instead of the state apparatus that controlled the instruments of repression under Saddam, there are now political parties, and armed forces close to the ruling political class that are capable of performing that function.”
Independent assessments reinforce some of those concerns. Freedom House, in its 2026 report, classifies Iraq as “Not Free,” giving it a score of 31 out of 100.
The group acknowledges that Iraq holds regular competitive elections and that political, religious and ethnic groups are represented in the political system. But it says corruption, militias operating outside the law and weak state institutions continue to obstruct democratic governance.
Freedom of expression and the media also receive poor assessments. Iraqi media outlets are diverse and active, the organization says, but few are politically independent. Journalists and activists have faced attacks, detention and threats from authorities and armed groups.
Corruption is another problem. Iraq scored 28 out of 100 in Transparency International’s 2025 Corruption Perceptions Index, ranking 136th out of 182 countries. Its score improved by only two points from the previous year, leaving Iraq firmly among countries with high levels of perceived corruption, according to the group, which works with governments to improve transparency.
The country’s fragile economy remains almost entirely dependent on oil revenues. Those revenues were supposed to help improve public services and finance schools, hospitals, roads, electricity grids and modern water networks. Much of that promise, however, has gone unfulfilled.
Public services remain one of Iraq’s most persistent weaknesses, particularly electricity, which has failed to improve despite billions of dollars in spending since 2003. Heavy dependence on oil, coupled with high government spending on public-sector salaries, has also left limited room for long-term investment.
Human Rights Watch, in its 2026 World Report, said deteriorating public services remained one of Iraq’s major sources of concern, alongside restrictions on civic space and impunity.
“Problems have accumulated over the past 20 years, and no real long-term solutions have been found,” Al-Istrabadi said. “In fact, long-term plans have not even been developed or prepared.”
The new Iraq, then, bears little resemblance to Saddam’s Iraq when it comes to politics and the media. But neither has it come close to the model of a stable democracy that some of the architects of the invasion envisioned.
“Even with U.S. assistance in establishing a democratic system in Iraq, the fact that Iraq was left militarily weak was an obstacle to restoring stability and consolidating democratic institutions,” said Hamza Haddad, a fellow at the Center for a New American Security in Washington, in an interview with MBN.
All three analysts agree that Iraq’s problems were not simply the result of removing Saddam Hussein. The greater failure, they argue, was in how the country was governed after his fall.
“A larger U.S. military presence and far better planning could have avoided much of the chaos of 2003-04,” Jeffrey said.
Haddad believes Iraq is better off today than it was in 2003. Yet, he said, “Iraqis paid an extremely high price for the war because of the destruction caused by the U.S. invasion, and the terrorism and civil war that followed.
“It is often said that the United States went to war on dishonest grounds because no weapons of mass destruction were found,” Al-Istrabadi said. “But that is not true. Saddam Hussein himself was the weapon of mass destruction that destroyed Iraq in every sense.”
Still, Al-Istrabadi recalls a saying he heard from a relative who was a professor of English history: “’There is one thing worse than tyranny, and that is chaos.’ What the United States achieved in Iraq was chaos.”
Nearly a quarter-century later, Iraq has undeniably changed. Saddam is gone. His regime has fallen. Elections are held, and freedoms exist that were unimaginable under his rule.
But war, killing, sectarian violence, corruption and failing public services have eroded much of the optimism that accompanied the regime’s collapse.
Ali no longer looks to the future with the same expectations he had in 2003. His ambitions have shrunk considerably — from a dream of a free and prosperous country to something much more basic: reliable public services that Iraqis have been demanding for years.
“If you ask any Iraqi what he wishes for, the answer will certainly be electricity and nothing else,” Ali said. “Do you see where the ruling political class has brought us?”
Adapted and translated from the original Arabic.
