By Ramzi Kysia

When I first visited Iraq in the summer of 1999, I wrote that nothing could have prepared me for my trip - for the incredible hospitality of the people, or for the incredible brutality of the sanctions. Since then, I’ve seen reports that sanctions against Iraq were crumbling, and I had hoped that the lives of the Iraqi people were much improved.
I was wrong.

Chronic unemployment, underemployment, and hyperinflation are still the rule, and most Iraqis are still struggling in terrible poverty. 11 years after the Gulf War, the electricity has not yet been fully restored, and much of the country’s infrastructure remains in disrepair. The hospitals here are just as crowded, and almost as poorly stocked, as I remember from 1999. The doctors complain just as much about not having enough medicines, or the proper medicines. And the children are still dying by the thousands every month.