Baghdad: the psychological toll of being the world’s most attacked city
No city on earth has been attacked as often, or as brutally, as Baghdad. Once again, the residents of the Iraqi capital are bracing for another possible invasion, with the jihadist forces of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Isis) less than 50 miles north of Baghdad at the time of writing. For a force that is supposed to number only several thousand, Isis gains in Iraq have taken the world by surprise, turning old certainties on their head and prompting the US and Iran to think the unthinkable and cooperate on Iraq.
But for the city that is next on the Isis target list, the once glorious capital of the Islamic empire, the sight of a foreign army at the gates is all too familiar. Over the past 13 centuries, Baghdad’s population has been subject to rape, torture and indiscriminate slaughter, with terrible consequences: on the city’s physical infrastructure, on religious convictions, and above all, perhaps, on the minds of the long-suffering Baghdadis.
Speaking with Iraqi friends in Baghdad over the past few days, it is no surprise to hear the depth of their fears that Isis might take over – they know what happens when invaders storm their city. “We’re praying we’ll get through this,” said one friend. “This is what we’ve been doing ever since 2003.” When the national army charged with protecting you dissolves, there is little left but faith.
The past 11 years have been especially vicious for Baghdadis. The stomach-hollowing sound of a suicide bombing has become almost as natural as birdsong in London. Sectarian conflict has ripped families and entire neighbourhoods apart. Death squads, overwhelmingly Shia, have roamed across the city, seizing Sunni men, torturing them – cigarette burns, electric-drill holes in limbs, gouged-out eyes – and dumping the corpses in the Tigris, mirroring the tactics used by al-Qaeda in Iraq (forerunner of Isis) in the years after 2004.
Polarisation and cantonisation of the city have reached new heights. Sunni-majority areas (Saidiya, Hurriya, Washash) have become Shia-majority areas, while previously mixed districts (Hay Aden, Sahab and Hay Sumer, north of Sadr City) are now dominated by Shia. The luckiest Baghdadis have scattered in exile: to Jordan, Syria, the US, UK, anywhere to escape the chaos. Those who have stayed talk of recurrent nightmares, delayed marriages, lives put on hold. Survival is in the hands of Allah.
But the siege mentality that has afflicted Baghdadis so frequently during the centuries does not only arise from ‘traditional’ conflict. Even periods of apparent security and stability, such as the 24 years under Saddam Hussein, have been a sort of siege. Living in Saddam’s Iraq induced a form of nationwide split personality. Army officers, scientists, teachers, reporters – anyone and everyone in Iraqi society outside the tiny regime elite – led double lives....