Two decades on, trauma from America’s war continues to haunt Iraqis
Salah Nsaif was 32 years old when American soldiers imprisoned him in the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq in 2003.
Twenty years later, he has left his country and settled in faraway Sweden with his wife and three children, but the horrors of the war there continue to haunt him.
“What happened to me was very painful. It impacted my personal relationships when I left Iraq,” Salah told CNN, adding that he felt like he was in a prison of his own mind. “I didn’t want to see my baby or anyone else and I isolated myself. It took me a long time to stop having nightmares.”
Two decades after the start of the US-led war in the country, Iraqis say that while some of the physical wounds may have healed over time, the psychological trauma from the conflict and its aftermath persists to this day.
On March 20, 2003, US President George W. Bush announced the beginning of the invasion of Iraq under the pretext of disarming it from weapons of mass destruction, a claim that was later debunked.
The invasion of Iraq evolved into an eight-year occupation with American military bases, checkpoints and soldiers dotted all over the country. It was followed by a civil war and a brutal Islamist insurgency that saw Iraq overwhelmed by sectarian violence and communal divisions.
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