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Rasha Al Aqeedi

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Rasha Al Aqeedi

Analyst and Writer

Rasha Al Aqeedi is a senior analyst and the head of the Nonstate Actors program at the Newlines Institute. Her writing on Middle Eastern geopolitics and Iraqi politics and society has been published in The Atlantic, The Independent and The New York Times.

The following interview was conducted by FRONTLINE’s Gabrielle Schonder on May 6, 2021. It has been edited for clarity and length.

This interview appears in:

America After 9/11

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Global Reaction to 9/11

So, Rasha, thank you for the time and for making this work for your schedule.We're just really grateful to have you.I want to ask you about 9/11, specifically your memories, where you were when you heard the news.

So it was in the afternoon.That day my mom and I had gone out shopping.It was the beginning of the school year.We had very, like—we had to wear a very specific dress type for university in Mosul [Iraq].It was my first year, and it had to be a white shirt.So we went to a very specific shop on the west side of the city, and when we came back home, my dad and my brother were glued to the TV, and they said there's been this massive accident in the United States.

I had lived my childhood in America, so my father was very familiar with the twin towers.So for him, it was, "This is so sad; these towers are beautiful."And at the time we thought it was an accident, just a tragedy, where a pilot had, you know, mistaken and just ran into the tower.But it turns out that when the second—I was watching actually live when the second plane hit, and it was clear that this was intentional.

And it was—I don't recall anyone I know from my direct family, friends, even our relatives, neighbors that expressed any sense of schadenfreude at the time towards the American people despite the—despite Iraq being under severe economic sanctions that were mostly imposed by the U.S.There was a loss of human life that—that did not have to happen.

That's my first memory.That's the earliest memory I have, before the fallout later.

Certainly within 24 hours, the international community really rallied with the U.S., right?And I wonder if you remember something similar to that in Iraq, just as you were talking to family.

I mean, again, the public perception that this was indeed a terrorist attack, there was a lot of analysis that, well, U.S. foreign policy has been at times the aggressor.But regardless, no one said that America had this coming or deserved it.There was never a sense of that.In Iraq, the conversation about war is always two sides that are kind of equivalent and at war with each other, not one side, not one attack, not dropping bombs.That's like unrequited kind of—nonequivalent kind of war.

But I do recall that—Saddam, of course, used to be on television every other day in Iraq, and we had only two television channels.So there was no escaping him, really.But after 9/11, he was on TV every single day speaking about 9/11.And the conversation was that yes, America's foreign policy and America's aggression—that was his narrative, of course—caused this.But there was still a sense of sympathy with the people.And I remember a time at school, and even with our family conversations, we would say, "Can this guy just zip it up, because we don't want to be the next target."And at the time, we would just say that.Not anyone in their minds, I think, believed that Iraq was going to be target after 9/11.

I wonder if I can ask you about your anticipation or thoughts about [the war launched in response to 9/11] perhaps coming to your country, when you were watching what you just sort of detailed.Was that in your mind at that moment, or—?

Again, at the time, the Iraqi state was very selective with what it would show, so we were not hearing about Iraq being the next target.I think I heard about it the first time on the radio.We used to listen to France's Monte Carlo and Voice of America at the time; the channel had changed into Radio Sawa.It was mostly songs and music, but also sometimes like every 15 minutes, there was a news brief.And then I heard the first time talk about Iraq being next.And we were mostly in denial; no one really believed it, because yes, Saddam, as bad as he was, we didn't think that Iraq had anything to do with 9/11.And just the idea that it was—that it had something to do with it, and then there were WMDs, was just—it just was a bit ridiculous.

Invading Iraq

We talked a little bit about this before, but what was the early confusion about whether an invasion would happen?Do you remember when that talk sort of began?Seemed a bit more real?

It was around I think late 2002 when the talk became very serious.There was a program on Al Jazeera called <i>The Opposite Direction</i>, I believe—again, we did not have satellite channel, but the state TV decided to broadcast this episode, and it was one—it included a guest.I do recall it was a woman—I believe she might have been Lebanese—and an Iraqi opposition figure.And this was—at this point, the U.S. had invaded Afghanistan.And the Iraqi guest was arguing that perhaps America could also invade Iraq and get rid of Saddam, and the female guest was opposing his idea.And that idea just sounded outlandish.We had no idea that it was actually in the works at the moment.

And then after that, the United Nations began meeting constantly.It was almost every other week, if I remember, to discuss this.Protests started around the world and with a massive international protest at a global scale.I believe it was on Valentine's Day, and that day was also—there was a U.N.—I think an urgent meeting or an extraordinary meeting about Iraq.If I remember correctly, the Russian representative at the time did say, "Today is Valentine's Day; let the value of love overcome," something like this.And the U.S. representative, again if I remember correctly, was John Negroponte.I remember watching this.And he was—the whole conversation that had just happened was completely irrelevant.He just said that, "No, we're going through [with] this war; it's going to happen," something within that context.And then, "We have taken preparations and we will minimize the loss of human life."And that's when it really hit us that this is actually happening.

What was your response when you realized?How did it feel?

For me, as an Iraqi, of course, fear.For me, as someone who lived briefly in the United States and had the most amazing childhood there and only had a good perception of America, it was heartbreaking, that—it made no sense to me that America did not know that Iraqis in Iraq were absolutely helpless and that, yes, no one wanted Saddam, but we also did not want a war or an invasion.And we were already very exhausted under the sanctions.So it was—it was fear and confusion.

The real moment it hit us, when George W. Bush announced the 48-hour ultimatum to Saddam, I went to college the next day.We went to the student center, had lunch with our friends, and then we said goodbye.And it was kind of like tears behind the laughter that we may never see each other again, or when we do see each other, we might be a separate state, or half of our friends might not be here; we don't know what's going to happen.

And then we just went home, and that was it.The countdown started, and we were just basically waiting for the sirens and the bombs.

You had described to me you saw some announcements on television, some public service announcements.Can you describe what you saw?

Yeah. So, on one hand, you had the state convincing us kind of that nothing was going to happen.There would be no invasion; there would be no military; there would be no war; no U.S. military was going to invade.But then there were like public service announcements of like, first aid, and if your house is bombed, how do you protect yourself?Where do you hide?How to make masks, just in case you need them.Another thing that was very interesting—and I remember just talking about it; I remember it now; it's kind of coming back to me—and especially placing it in with the context of Iraq today.I'm from Mosul, north Iraq.Mosul is a Sunni-majority city.We had no really collective information or knowledge of what the south was like, what the Shia south looked like.So there were representatives from the Marjaiya from Najaf on television condemning the war, condemning the United States, condemning the international community and saying that they would fight against any invasion.And I do recall my father saying, "They look—it's so clear that they've been forced to do this, probably under threat of the gun because this would not—this is not something normal for someone from Najaf to say."

So it was clear that the state was employing all it could, at least at a propaganda level, but also it kind of confirmed that there would be a war.

Did you happen to watch the Colin Powell speech and the case that he was making within the U.S.? It's OK if you—

Yes, I remember the speech.I remember he pulled up something, and I remember some of the comments, that that's just a lie.And the conversation that the opposition had been feeding false information to the United States, that was happening almost in every Iraqi household.We did not know the opposition very well; they had left Iraq at a very young age, most of them.And everything they had been saying, we would listen to their radio interviews, it just made no sense.

So that—it was hard at the time.I think the hardest part was seeing that the international community also didn't really seem to believe the narrative, but no one was able to do anything.It was like America was running this one-man show and had already made that decision to invade Iraq, and no one could stop it at the time.

Aftermath and Unintended Consequences in Iraq

What about the narrative of liberating Iraqis?

It's a bit—here's the thing.I don't want to deny agency for any Iraqi who definitely celebrated when Saddam fell or felt liberated.I know when the regime was gone, I felt that I could breathe a little bit, that I could say I was finally free, that we didn't have to fear to say anything.There was a sense of liberation.And however, that was kind of—it was kind of contradicted with the sight of army tanks in the streets, of a foreign invasion.But I don't want to deny that moment of joy for anyone who did not mind the tanks and felt that the freedom was more important.

Sometimes just the concept of, when you listen to it, especially now at a much older age, liberating another country, it has—it can be a bit condescending.Slightly.Because especially given what happened to Iraq later, the fact that the country was invaded and there was no proper planning.Everything was kind of—it felt that everything was kind of left to chance.Let's just take out the regime and leave the country, and then what else?Nothing.Everything that happened from there was basically a falldown.

Early, there's looting; there's violence; there's a lack of security.How did things seem to change overnight?What did you witness, or what did your family witness?

From the second day, we watched as the statue fell on April 9.By April 10, we woke up in the morning, and the university was being looted.Saddam's palaces, all open, all looted.We saw—I remember one site, a teenager, no way was he older than 13 years old, carrying this massive rifle, just walking in the street.I don't know who that was, who was behind him, where he got the weapon.And all the adults just stood there, not able to do anything, because he could actually unload it into anyone's body at any moment.That was kind of—it kind of symbolized a lot of the chaos that was going to happen.

Later on, when we found out that, OK, the U.S. Army is not shooting on sight, not killing everyone it sees, I think there was a sense of calm, because that was our perception of an invasion.We always thought—we thought about Israel and Palestine.And at the time, the Second Intifada had happened just a few years ago, so that was our—that was the fear that this might happen to Iraq.When that didn't happen and we were able to go back to school, and we were able to participate in kind of cleaning up our own college, I mean, there was a sense of kind of—there was cautious optimism that maybe things are not so bad, or if they're bad now, maybe they can—maybe they can get better.And even when the first informal Iraqi temporary government was formed, they looked like technocrats, highly educated.

But it was when the violence started, when people were kidnapped, when we would hear random gunshots at night, and then we'd listen to the first interviews and realize that this was a government that was completely disconnected to the reality—they had been living so long in the West that the realities on the ground in post-sanctions Iraq, in post-Saddam Iraq, were so far from what they had known, it felt like chaos immediately.

And within weeks, we started hearing about, in Baghdad, a campaign of assassinations against former scientists and former military personnel.And that was a bit scary.

Did it appear that the Americans had a plan?

From when we—when the military was disbanded and I think it was a few ministries as well that were altered or changed, and then we started hearing about the de-Baathification, it felt like it wasn't.It looked like it was the Iraqi opposition pretty much in the chair, setting the policies, and it looked more like a campaign of revenge than building a state.

The Insurgency in Iraq

How did you see the anger, the hopelessness growing in the form of an insurgency?

It depended on who you spoke to, of course.There were people that were victimized very much by the former army.I remember that we had a carpool going to school, and the driver said, "I used to be a soldier back in the late '90s, and my officer, he used to take my salary every single month."So naturally when the army was disbanded, there was—he was thrilled.He said, "He deserves—that person deserves to suffer all his life; I hope he goes to jail; I hope, you know, he's charged with corruption or something."And then if you spoke to other people whose father had lost their job, of course, there was a different reaction.

It just felt like the social fabric of the country was really falling apart, not just geographically.North, south, even within the same province, within the same city, it was almost like an instant us-versus-them narrative.

Let me ask you about the unintended consequences of this period.As Americans fought and encountered resistance, they seemed to push harder and harder.And I wonder if you could help us understand what America didn't understand about the harm it was causing to the Iraqi people and the greater mission here.

I guess the figures that come to my mind as you ask this question was seeing one of the large Stryker Army tanks.They came into Mosul; I believe it was sometime in 2004.I think they were—the Stryker was just in a hurry, and it crossed a red light and just ran directly into a civilian car, killing everyone in it, and it just didn't stop.It was not considered a hit-and-run.I don't believe there was an investigation.There was just an ambulance that came up later, picked up the bodies.I have no information whether that family was compensated or not.But these incidents happened a lot, and I don't believe Americans heard about them in the news.

And imagine this repeating at a scale, not just in Mosul but all over Iraq, and then wondering why there's an insurgency, and then wondering why are Iraqis so angry.There was a lack of respect of human life.And that happened even before the invasion.Iraq is—up until this day, Iraq is looked at almost as geographical space.The population is rarely mentioned.And numbers.They tell 20% Kurds, 20% Sunnis, 60% Shias.But what about those percentages?They represent human beings.That's not really looked at.No one really takes them into consideration.

That's what I think of.It's just the lack of respect for civilian life.And this is not even mentioning Abu Ghraib, not even mentioning so many other disasters and war crimes.Yes, you know, deaths happen in war.

It's coming to mind now something, I think an interview with Condoleezza Rice, just before the invasion, when they asked her about civilian casualties, and her answer was, "Well, wars happen, and people die in wars."You hear that; it's a narrative I think that you hear about wars throughout history.But when it's your people, your country that's being said casually, it's really hard to describe it.

I wonder if I can ask you about the impact of that violence on the average Iraqi, on your classmates, on yourself, what that's like to witness that level of violence.

It did leave us traumatized, of course.And sometimes this trauma is triggered in ways that we—you don't really think about.I have a very stark reaction when I hear a balloon, you know, just like pop off.Like, my reaction to it when I hear an airplane coming very close, the sound of a jet—I have a reaction different to other people.Usually when people see a—when they hear the sound of a jet or an airplane, it's exciting because it means there's an event or a celebration.They look up to the sky.I kind of automatically just shiver and just like—it's a very different feeling for me.That's that, for example.

Other things are just—it leaves us very hopeless, I would say.It's hard to take even life seriously after that.We have right now in Iraq, for example, a very high number of suicides happening, especially amongst youth, because of hopelessness.And it's the natural outcome for years and years of war and nonstop violence.And this is not to say that Iraq pre-2003 was utopic in any way.Living under a dictatorship was not fun at all.And it's just—it's heartbreaking because, yes, it might have been an unlawful invasion.Yes, there were no weapons found.There was a dictator that was toppled, and there was that very slight window opening for Iraq to be a stable, prosperous state.And that opportunity, I believe, has been lost for good.

Abu Ghraib

We jumped over Abu Ghraib, and I want to ask you about those images, what that showed the world, what that showed about how far we were going.

Yeah, Abu Ghraib was—that was—it was heartbreaking.It was shocking.I wanted to believe very—I so wanted to believe those pictures were not real.I didn't want to think that Americans could do this to Iraqis.And it was—there was some slight relief knowing that there was a trial, but I think they received a minimal punishment.Was it two and a half, three and a half years only of jail time, versus a lifetime of humiliation?

I recently connected with the prisoner who was put in black, that famous Statue of Liberty mocking position, and he's still broken, even after all these years.It was—that definitely—that definitely changed whatever hopes that had remained that possibly the United States has good intentions towards Iraq.It was that and the murder of Abeer al-Janabi as well, the young teenager who was raped and then burned with her entire family.¹

NBC News: Killings shattered dreams of rural Iraqi family

That kind of killed it, and it gave ammunition to not only Al Qaeda and the insurgency, but also to the Sadrists and the insurgency in south Iraq, too, that Americans needed to leave; this was not a war that they were fighting for us.

What was lost in that moment?

What was lost was the hope that Americans had good intentions, that they were trying to rebuild Iraq, that they were protecting the Iraqi people.It did not look like that at that point.Anyone who still had some hope at that point I think was faced with that reality.And was it a case of a few bad apples perhaps contaminating?Yes.I don't believe for one that the entire—all of the U.S. Army were bad in Iraq; I don't believe they all participated in crimes.Absolutely, the majority, in fact, definitely did not.But that was enough for Iraqis to see that, OK, we're not the ones being protected here.

The Obama Years

Let me switch over to Obama and his election.I wonder if Obama felt like something different to Iraqis.

At the time, yes.I think the talk about peace and withdrawing from Iraq, again the idea that if America were to withdraw from Iraq, unlike the invasion, it would definitely have a plan.I think our hopes—well, speaking about myself, my hopes in President Obama having a plan for the country were dashed quite quickly.Less than two years later, the Obama administration supported Nouri [al-]Maliki's second term, and he was a disaster for the country.I don't think two people disagree on that at this point.

It was clear by then that no, America just wanted an exit without really bearing the consequences or responsibility, without even acknowledging that there was a moral responsibility to at least help Iraq get to the next stage of security.That appeared that that was not going to happen.

So when the U.S. military withdrew, it was very clear that the country, at least from our side, from what we were seeing, that the country was going to deteriorate quite quickly and that violence was going to break through.

He doesn't seem to invest diplomatically, and the results are that a vacuum is created for other terrorist organizations to grow.Did you see that pretty early on?

Yes, yes, of course.When, after the U.S. withdrawal—and at the time the government, the Iraqi government then was very emboldened, and it was free to practice, to carry out sectarian policies, and its agenda was very clear—the Iranian influence definitely grew.And of course, when that happens, there's a reaction to that also.Al Qaeda had went through various stages until it was able to create the Islamic State, ISIS, and then take over one-third of Iraq.It was all very related.I think the signs were there, but there was not so much investment or appetite to invest in Iraq anymore after 2009.

The Rise of ISIS

Obama calls ISIS the "JV team."What did that tell you?

It told me two things: either he didn't have a clue, and I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt at the time; or he didn't care.And I think right now it was kind of both.He probably was not aware of how dire the situation was or what ISIS exactly were, but that was because the region, the Middle East as a whole, Iraq in particular, was no longer a priority for him.

You witnessed the growth of ISIS firsthand.

Yes.In 2007, I received a death threat.I was—I had just graduated college, and I was working at the governorates in Nineveh, and I received a death threat on my personal cell phone from the Islamic State of Iraq.And this was 2007.They were the first incarnation, kind of, and it was just for being a female employee and working at a place where there were American troops at the time, but I was not engaging with them at any level.And it was funny that that threat kind of pushed me towards another path in my career, in my life.And I am in Washington, D.C., today kind of because of that, of that threat.

But that's how deeply infiltrated they were from 2007 in north Iraq.And the overtake of Mosul in 2014 should not have come as a surprise.They had established themselves deeply by 2012.

How much had changed in that decade that we're talking about?

Everything.Everything changed.Growing up in kind of in a bubble of stability—yes, it was a dictatorship, and that's why I call it a bubble, that we were very isolated.We could not think for ourselves.We had our futures kind of determined already.And then all of a sudden we're connected to the world.There is freedom, but there's so much violence, to the point that you can't leave the house even at times.

The one thing that remained, I think, constant was, under the dictatorship and post, under freedom, is that we were hopeless.We had no real ambitions.Whatever ambitions were killed.I think that what kind of—our lives have just not been stable.And I've personally kind of given up on seeing a stable, prosperous Iraq during my lifetime.I don't see that happening.I'm not going to live another 60 years to see that, really.I hope that future generations have a chance, though.

The Election of Donald Trump

I wonder if I can ask you, because you're here for the 2016 campaign in the U.S., what it was like hearing candidate Trump and later President Trump talk about the Muslim ban and what it told you about how much America had come again from this 2002 period, 2003 that we're talking about, to 2015?

A lot happened that led to—that led to that.I left Mosul in late 2013.I moved to Dubai at the time, so when the speech happened I was in Dubai.And initially Iraq was on the ban list.And I had planned to come to the United States for a conference, and my trip was delayed because of that.And then Iraq was removed from the ban.And yeah, it was a bit, you know—it sounded familiar.I mentioned earlier the us-versus-them narrative in Iraq.It sounded that that had become the norm in the United States, too, where there was this social division within one country that perhaps had—the seeds had been there for a while and kind of left under the rug; no one really wanted to talk about it.But now there was this presidential candidate that was stoking up, you know, these sentiments, and he had given a platform not to address them, only to incite them.That sounded very familiar.

The Human Toll in Iraq

We talked about this a little bit, but I want to make sure I get this from you, which is one thing that seems to have gotten lost from the beginning, is the sheer death toll of civilians.And looking back over two decades of war, what does it tell you that the cost of Iraqi lives seem to not be part of the conversation here, domestically and in our media?What was sort of the human cost of the last two decades?

It kind of tells me that "America First" is not necessarily a Trump invention.It's been America First always.

What do you mean by that?

Well, you don't hear them talking about Iraqi lives.I know some people do, and I know that some people care about Iraq deeply, even in this administration, at the government level, and they wish things did not happen.But things did happen, and they still are.Like I mentioned before, there was a protest not too long ago, 700 lives were lost.²

CIVICUS: Over 700 people killed and 2800 arrested since protests started in October

I have not spoken to an American here who is not like, in the close-knit policy circle that has heard of this.I speak to random young people.When the Black Lives Matter movement happened, I would tell some of them, "We have protests in Iraq, too.""Oh, really? When?Did anyone die?"I say, "Oh, 700."And they all look at each other saying, "How come we never heard of this?"

That's an example of Iraq not being ever in the discourse.And it's very hurtful because, you know, having to constantly use the death toll of your own countrymen and -women just as a way of getting someone's attention is quite humiliating.

I understand when you said that hope was lost. Can we be just a little practical; that also, on top of that, what was lost besides hope?Families, cities, the destruction, the magnitude of the destruction of your country.Please share with us a sense of what that feels like.

So as it was clear that nation building or rebuilding was not happening, and that we had now sectarian strife; we had now armed groups killing whoever they wanted; we had now Al Qaeda rampant in the country.I remember in 2006 I said goodbye to seven of my friends.They had decided to leave the country.I don't know where they are now in the world.I've tried to look up their names on social media; I have not been able to find them.The ones who stayed in Iraq, I lost one who lost her life during the war to liberate Mosul.

So friendships were torn.Families were torn apart.Cities will never be the same as they were.There's a generation that has grown up that has never known one day of stability in their entire lives.So, of course, hope would be lost amid all of this.

I think the heartbreak is that the social fabric of the country, it was, it had also—it had always been kind of pretend.Under a dictatorship, they impose a social fabric that does not exist, but you have to commit to it, or else, you know, there's the death squad waiting right there.But—and we had that opportunity post-2003 to build the social fabric, and the Iraqi government at the time failed.The Iraqi people were not prepared for this, for this kind of freedom; they did not understand it as well.And the international community felt that, "We had done our job; the mission had been completed."

And that opportunity was lost, and the social fabric forever is—has been forever completed, you know, dismantled.It's been forever gone.

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