When Alissa J. Rubin first arrived in Iraq in April 2003, she expected to stay for about a week. More than two decades later, the New York Times foreign correspondent is looking back on the invasion, the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s regime and the long aftermath that reshaped the country.
Rubin arrived in Iraq just weeks after US forces entered the country and only days after American Marines and others helped bring down a statue of Saddam Hussein in central Baghdad.
At the time, she was working for the Los Angeles Times and had told her family she simply wanted to spend some time in Iraq and see what was happening on the ground.
The assignment lasted far longer than expected.
In a retrospective account of her two decades covering Iraq, Rubin argues that the United States struggled to understand the country from the beginning — and that the consequences of that failure continued long after the invasion.
The contrast between the first days of the occupation and the situation years later was striking. When US troops initially entered Iraq on March 20, 2003, they were greeted by a country emerging from decades of authoritarian rule. By the time the final US forces formally withdrew, their presence had become almost invisible in the daily lives of many Iraqis.
Early hopes quickly gave way to uncertainty
Rubin recalls entering Iraq through the western desert and passing the remains of Iraqi military vehicles destroyed in US attacks. Smoke still hung over the horizon, while the smell of burning tires filled the air.
In Baghdad, food was scarce and the atmosphere tense. Yet the Iraqis she encountered initially appeared more curious than hostile toward the American troops.
That did not mean Iraqis universally welcomed the invasion or viewed American forces as liberators. But, Rubin writes, many people appeared hopeful that the fall of Saddam Hussein could open the way to a future no longer defined by his repression.
The optimism, however, was short-lived.
The Bush administration had initially justified the invasion by arguing that Saddam’s government was developing chemical weapons, a claim that was later discredited. After the invasion, the rationale increasingly shifted toward building democracy in Iraq.
US officials operating from the Green Zone began describing the mission as an effort to help Iraqis establish a democratic system in the heart of the Middle East.
For Rubin, the changing explanations reflected a broader uncertainty over the purpose and duration of the American presence.
The decision that helped create a security vacuum
One of the earliest decisions that stood out to Rubin was the order by US civilian administrator Paul Bremer to dissolve the Iraqi Army.
She recalls asking whether the order meant the entire army was being disbanded. Iraq had roughly 400,000 soldiers.
The decision left thousands of former soldiers without jobs or income. Many began gathering outside the Green Zone, demanding answers.
Some expressed relief at Saddam’s removal but anger at losing their livelihoods. One former soldier told Rubin that he had five children and could no longer support his family after being dismissed from the army.
For many Iraqis, the consequences went beyond losing a job. The occupation had disrupted the economic and social structures on which families depended.
Rubin also recalls encountering more direct signs of growing hostility. On one occasion, an Iraqi man asked where she was from. When she answered that she was American, he spat at her.
At the time, she struggled to understand what the gesture meant. Looking back, she came to see it as an early indication of the widening gap between Iraqi expectations and what the occupation was actually delivering.
Insurgency and sectarian conflict
As the occupation continued, the Sunni insurgency expanded and became increasingly sophisticated. Militants attacked American checkpoints and military vehicles and developed more advanced roadside bombs.
US troops, many of whom had not been prepared for the nature of the conflict, became increasingly wary. Rubin describes incidents in which American forces opened fire on vehicles near checkpoints because they were perceived as threats.
There were also major allegations and documented cases of abuses by US personnel, including torture and sexual abuse at Abu Ghraib prison and the killing of civilians in Haditha.
The violence helped deepen resistance to the occupation and contributed to the environment in which the precursor to ISIS eventually emerged.
The dissolution of the Iraqi Army also created a major security vacuum. At the same time, Iran expanded its influence by supporting Shiite political groups and figures.
More than two decades later, Rubin notes that politicians with close ties to Iran have become influential figures in Iraq, while Iranian allies have established themselves across parts of the Iraqi state apparatus.
A country divided after Saddam
The sectarian fault lines that would later shape Iraq were already becoming visible soon after Saddam Hussein’s fall.
Yet Rubin also witnessed moments that illustrated what the end of Saddam’s rule meant for Iraq’s Shiite population.
Only weeks after the invasion, Shiite Muslims were able to openly observe Ashura for the first time in more than a decade. Thousands of people travelled on foot to Karbala in southern Iraq, gathering at the city’s ornate shrines with their golden minarets.
Rubin recalls being unprepared for the intensity of the religious observance.
While taking notes near one of the shrines, she suddenly found herself surrounded by angry clerics and other visitors. Her translator was nowhere to be found, and she initially had no idea what she had done wrong.
A woman wearing an abaya eventually pulled her away from the crowd.
The problem, Rubin soon discovered, was her head covering. A strand of her hair had slipped out.
The women she was taken to did not appear hostile, but they took the issue seriously. They spent around half an hour adjusting and pinning her headscarf so that not a single strand of hair was visible.
When they finished, one of the women produced a small mirror from her pocket so Rubin could see the result.
The encounter, like many of the experiences she describes from her years in Iraq, reflected the complexity of a country that could not easily be understood through the lens of the American occupation alone.
For Rubin, the events of the past 20 years underline how difficult it was for the United States to grasp the political, economic, religious and social forces shaping Iraq — and how decisions made in the earliest days of the invasion continued to influence the country long after American forces arrived.
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