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Five years on, violence reigns in Iraq

The US-led war on Iraq that toppled the torturous regime of the late Saddam Hussein entered its sixth year yesterday, with millions of Iraqis still battling daily chaos and rampant bloodshed.

Five years ago on March 20, 2003, US planes dropped the first bombs on Baghdad, and within three weeks toppled Saddam's regime but left US forces battling a resentful and rebellious people.

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said the invasion ended Saddam's era of "torture and tyranny," but he acknowledged it brought with it the challenges of terrorism and corruption.

During the iron-fisted rule of his all-powerful predecessor, he said, the prisons were full of "innocent prisoners. These cells were Saddam's theaters for torture and brutal crimes."

But five years since then, Iraqis and US and allied forces still face daily attacks from insurgents and Islamist militants, and fighting between armed factions from both sides of Iraq's Sunni-Shiite sectarian divide goes on.

On Wednesday, Talabani summarized the present-day Iraq, saying the path that began five years ago after the fall of Saddam was full of "violence and terrorism" while "corruption has become a dangerous disease."

The war has killed more than 4,000 US and allied soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians -- between 104,000 and 223,000 died between March 2003 and June 2006 alone, the WHO said.

"The war has been an unlimited disaster in terms of US foreign policy, in terms of stability in Iraq and in the Middle East," Joost Hiltermann, an Iraq expert with the International Crisis Group, said by telephone from Istanbul.

"I can only hope the US finds a way to navigate itself out of the mess without allowing Iraq to fall apart," he said.

As the conflict entered its sixth year, US President George W. Bush once again defended his decisions that have already cost the administration more than US$400 billion in Iraq.

Bush acknowledged that the war has "come at a high cost in lives and treasure," but defended the decision to invade and to boost the number of US troops in Iraq last year.

"The answers are clear to me: Removing Saddam Hussein from power was the right decision -- and this is a fight America can and must win," he said in a speech at the Pentagon, US military headquarters.

Hours after his speech, al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden, in a video message, voiced determination to fight the US in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He said the "savage acts" of the US-led military coalition in Iraq and Afghanistan "haven't ended the war, but rather [have] increased our determination to cling to our right, avenge our people and expel the invaders from our country."

Baghdad residents are also not convinced of a possible victory.

Abu Fares al-Daraji, a tobacco shop owner in Baghdad, said the US "brought our way things we never knew [before] like terrorism and the killings we see on the streets."

Bush has taken heart from signs that the bloodshed in Iraq has fallen, but even the commander of US troops, General David Petraeus, admits that Baghdad had made insufficient progress toward national reconciliation.

"Scoring a military victory is easy, but a political victory is more difficult to achieve," said Mustapha Alani, director of security studies at the Gulf Research Center in Dubai.

He said the US had dismantled Saddam's regime and was now "unable to put it back together."

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