Iraq News Now

• The 20th anniversary of the start of the Iraq war highlighted deep identity conflicts for many of those identifying as both American and Iraqi.
• The consequences of U.S. forces entering Iraq in 2003 are still acutely felt today.
• America has offered acceptance, comfort and a new life for those seeking a fresh start in the U.S.

"I was embarrassed by my last name, and embarrassed of my Arab heritage," 26-year-old Minnesotan Leila Hussain recalled.

Born to a Muslim Iraqi father, Hussain grew up in the north midwestern state at war with her own identity, she told Newsweek.

"The two different aspects of my identity really conflicted when I was younger," she recalled. "I couldn't reconcile it or make sense of it."

This month marks the 20th anniversary of the beginning of the Iraq war, dredging up memories from decades ago for many of those who remember U.S. troops entering the country in 2003.

President George W. Bush told the American people on March 19, 2003, that U.S. soldiers were in "the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people, and to defend the world from grave danger."

Bush told the U.S. military personnel heading for the Middle East that "the peace of a troubled world and the hopes of an oppressed people now depend on you."

Two decades on, the cost of the controversial war has proved high. The conflict, which officially ended in 2011, has claimed the lives of more than 4,400 U.S. troops and around 300,000 Iraqi civilians, according to Brown University estimates.

Death toll figures vary, but figures released by Statista show that 2006 was the deadliest year of conflict for Iraqi civilians.

Couldn't 'make sense' of dual identities

Yet the war has also presented unique personal challenges for those civilians who lived through the war. Many have close ties to the U.S., complicating the identity journeys many Iraqi-Americans have embarked on through the decades.

"I suppressed that piece of my identity when I was young," Hussain said. She even attempted to change her name to try and "make sense" of being at once American and also Iraqi in a post-9/11 world.

Shaymaa Khalil is now 37 years old but was living in Baghdad when U.S. forces entered the city. Still a teenager at the time, she remembers seeing fear and sorrow fill her family's eyes. The entire family left their inner city apartment on that first night, heading out for open space as they waited to see what the next few hours would hold. The world felt as if it were "collapsing on my head," she told Newsweek.

Just weeks after Bush's announcement, U.S. forces were among those who claimed control over Baghdad in April 2003, toppling a statue of the country's leader Saddam Hussein in the capital.

Khalil's family couldn't go to work, and living in close proximity to government-held buildings in early 2003 left the family nervous at the prospect of becoming collateral damage in the hunt to tear down Hussein's regime.

Feelings of 'anxiety' surround U.S.-Iraqi identity

Khalil left Iraq in March 2019 after studying translation and interpreting and has settled with her family stateside. Moving with her husband and children, they eventually landed in the U.S. as the place to build a "stable foundation" for their new lives, and she now works for the Iraqi and American Reconciliation Project.

But a feeling of "anxiety" lingers, rooted in her arriving in the same country that invaded her homeland, she said. Iraq now is a country "forcibly" reshaped by U.S. military involvement, and "everything changed" from 2003.

Yet these feelings of conflict are directed towards policymakers, not U.S. citizens or war veterans, Hussain and Khalil said. The foreign policy is separate from how many Iraqis see the people of the U.S., and vice-versa, they added.

The same sentiment is described by Faisal Saeed Al Mutar, who moved to the U.S. in 2013 after staying put in Iraq for years after the war began.

Celebrating his ten-year anniversary of living in the U.S., "my experience with the people here has been very positive," he told Newsweek. Curiosity about his life in Iraq is a common response, he said, and he has grown to feel simultaneously American and Iraqi.

"When I travel overseas, I think of my home as America, not Iraq," he said.

"Home is where I can fulfill my dreams and follow my opportunities, and America was able to provide me with this," he reflected. "I'm an American with an Iraqi background."

The U.S. is where the opportunities lay for Al Mutar, and you don't have to "pick and choose" between co-existing identities, he said. This is also what Hussain came to feel once she became an adult and headed off to college, she said. The source of "inner conflict" slowly became a part of her identity she felt "pride" for, rather than shame, she said.

She spent time living in Iraq during her college years, which acted as a "personal reconciliation of who I am and where I come from," she added. And the American side of her identity drew not "one ounce of hostility," she recalled with a clear fondness for her time in Iraq.

Although the war came with a "heavy cost," Al Mutar reflected, he holds onto the hope that Iraq's path is one towards stability and prosperity. But the people who survived the violence, who may have lost loved ones or emigrated away from Iraq, are "still struggling," Khalil said.

"It's not easy for us to start from zero," she said, "especially as immigrants."