Just Stay the Course

Ann Clwyd in Baghdad:

Civic society is flourishing. There are 91 TV and radio stations, 106 newspapers are regularly published, hundreds of Iraqi journalists are being trained to question rather than parrot regime press releases. Voluntary organisations such as the Free Prisoners’ Association are proliferating. It gathers documents detailing the atrocities of the fallen regime to help to inform those who are still trying to trace their relatives. They have recorded 120,00 killings so far with a mountain of documents to work through. For them the grief and the suffering under Saddam is not yet in the past.

I asked the founder of the Free Prisoners’ Association, Ibrahim Idrissi, imprisoned 11 times, whether he had been interviewed by Al-Jazeera, the TV channel hated by so many Iraqis. Yes, he said, they have come to our offices three times but local people have always kicked them out. Why, I asked: “Because they say it is the voice of Saddam.” Yet another example of Iraqis asserting their new-found freedom.

There is little nostalgia for Saddam and a mixture of apprehension and optimism about the future. The task of rebuilding Iraq was never going to be easy. The years of brutalisation and deprivation brought Iraqis to their knees. I asked Dr Ali Allawi, the new Minister for Defence, what Britain could do now. His answer was swift: “Just stay the course.”