Along the way from Amman to Baghdad it is dusty, dry and hot. In this oil rich country not a single drop of petrol can be found. I am traveling with Fadhil Kanje Ali, who has worked for HELP in Iraq for years and knows this land. We stop passing cars. Suspicious of me as a westerner, happy to help once they realise I’m German. After a 14-hour-drive we finally approach Baghdad. Destroyed tanks and military equipment line the streets. Everybody lives in fear of looters. Strangely for a country supposedly in the “aftermath” of a war: the gunfire never stops. At nights beds shake with every passing tank. Because of the risk even a simple journey to see friends or get food involves, women and girls are kept at home. Hardly anything works. Liberation? They have been liberated from phones, from traffic regulations, from rubbish collection and even from electricity. How could any people but be grateful. In most regions the water system no longer operates, food is scarce and hospitals are completely overloaded. The lack of water is no hoseban inconvenience: it results in epidemics that will kill thousands. Hospitals lack the drugs to treat people, but even in hospitals water is scarce- reducing the advanced medical care to a worse than medieval state. Everyday children die because of malnourishment and diseases that require simple treatment to cure.

Everything is in short supply. The war, following hard on the heels of over a decade of international sanctions has reduced everyone to mere subsistence. Wages have not been paid for months, the production capacity is nil and meanwhile, inflation pushes prices up and up. Queues at petrol station run for kilometers. Schools have been stripped of furniture, teachers like other civil servants have not been paid for months, but continue to work. As do doctors and nurses. “ We have no option but to go on” they say.