The 'New' Iraq

Iraq’s once exemplary public health and education systems have been ravaged and the status of women has declined dramatically; religious and sexual minorities are under attack and over 400 academics have been murdered by death squads since the invasion. Despite $53 billion in ‘foreign aid’, basic infrastructure is still in dire need of repair, unemployment is over 50 per cent and the Iraqi government barely pays lip service to the concepts of human rights or democracy.
And yet, even with ongoing car bombs and militia violence, Iraq has faded into the international background, barely a blip on the screen of Western media. Ongoing countrywide anti-government protests that began last February have often been violently suppressed but have been virtually ignored in Western coverage of the ‘Arab spring’. From New Internationalist here.