Opinion

Iraqis never got the democracy we were promised. We are paying the price.

Tallha Abdulrazaq researches counterterrorism and security issues of the Middle East at the University of Exeter.

Since the United States led an international “coalition of the willing” to militarily enforce regime change on Iraq in 2003, Iraqis have been called to vote in their fledgling democracy half a dozen times. As an early voter in the election in December 2005, I recall visiting a polling station for Iraqi nationals in London with my father, who had fled Iraq due to the Baathist state’s persecution decades ago.