by Jamal Hashim

BAGHDAD, Jan. 26 (Xinhua) -- While political heavyweights and leading analysts around the world are tussling over what a more interventionist America will mean for the globe, we Iraqis already know the answer all too well.

On Jan. 18, Iraq announced the full withdrawal of U.S.-led coalition forces from Iraq's federal government-controlled areas.

In a world consumed by headlines speculating whether America will take military action against Iran or attempt to seize Greenland, this news might have gone largely unnoticed.

Yet for the people of Iraq, this announcement marked the dawn of a new era -- a heavy burden weighing on the more than 40 million Iraqis for more than 20 years had finally been lifted.

I still remember the dawn of March 20, 2003, as if it were yesterday. I was a young correspondent for Xinhua, anxiously sitting in my office in Baghdad, satellite phone in hand, straining to catch every sound and movement outside my window.

The tension was palpable, as my colleagues and I concluded that, after all the threats and warnings, America was on the verge of launching its military campaign against Iraq.

At 5:33 a.m., an explosion rang out with a deafening roar. "The U.S. invasion has begun!" I shouted into the satellite phone, my voice quivering. Almost simultaneously, Xinhua sent out the world's first flash on America's invasion of Iraq.

Within minutes, missiles rained down. Thunderous blasts echoed through the city. Explosions lit up the early-dawn sky, casting a red glow across the Tigris River.

One of my colleagues, Musa Jaafar, lived just a short distance from then-leader Saddam Hussein's residence. When the shelling began, a bomb exploded close to Jaafar's home, obliterating his kitchen.

While our lives were torn asunder by the ravages of war, a part of me, like many Iraqis, still held on to a faint, almost naive hope: under America's intervention, we might break free from the shackles of poverty wrought by years of sanctions, and step into a new dawn of freedom, democracy and prosperity, just as America had touted before unleashing the machinery of war.

But the years that followed brought not a new dawn, but a long, dark night woven from broken promises.

Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, nearly 80 percent of them civilians, lost their lives during the American intervention. Saddam was hanged, but our lives plunged into an even deeper abyss. Instead of the promised stability and prosperity, we were swept into a maelstrom of sectarian violence and chaos that unraveled the very fabric of our society.

In Baghdad, death and the constant threat of terror attacks became a regular part of life. A pickup truck loaded with potatoes could at any moment become a vehicle of terror, with someone inside firing a machine gun indiscriminately into crowds.

One morning, a suicide bomber detonated his vehicle barely 100 meters from where I stood on the main road leading to my office. I watched in horror as flames consumed nearby cars, bodies were scattered across the street, and the air was filled with anguished screams.

"The chaos unleashed by the invasion did not just produce violence and terrorism. It made them borderless and relentless," veteran journalist Hashim al-Shammaa told me.

Deaths and explosions shattered our hopes for America and woke us from the delusion that outsiders could help us realize our dreams of progress and peace.

More and more Iraqis, myself included, have gradually come to terms with the harsh reality that the freedom and democracy promised by America were just a facade to further its own geopolitical interests. When Washington bombed the very foundation of our lives into pieces, clinging to the American fairy tale was nothing more than an act of self-deception.

But the price of learning this lesson was ruinously high. Today, even after American forces have withdrawn, Iraq has yet to heal from the wounds of invasion.

Those who lost loved ones in the war continue to live with their grief. The terrorist forces that took root in the aftermath still threaten our daily security. Children born long after the invasion suffer from illnesses caused by the long-term contamination left behind by depleted uranium and white phosphorus munitions.

Now, as the last American forces have left our government-controlled areas, is the nightmare finally over? Perhaps not, at least not so quickly. But it does offer something no less precious for us: a glimpse of possibility -- the possibility to reclaim our own destiny, to rebuild our country with our own hands, and to realize our dream of prosperity in our own way.

On the morning the American troops withdrew, I took a walk to the al-Sarafiya Bridge after finishing my report on the pullout. From March 20, 2003, to Jan. 18, 2026, it felt as though I had also completed a mission that spanned 23 years.

A breeze stirred, and for a moment, I felt a sense of ease I hadn't experienced in a long time. Beneath the bridge, the Tigris River flowed -- steady and unhurried -- its waters murmuring as if speaking a timeless truth the river has witnessed for centuries: Outsiders may come and go, but only the descendants of this land can make it prosper. ■