In Iraq, the treasury does not appear as a sovereign box where the state preserves the strength of its people and the dignity of its present and the future of its children, but rather a city isolated from the people, surrounded by walls of influence, and planted by those who learned how to turn the homeland into spoils and authority into an open table upon which the lust for plunder never extinguishes.
There, in that country that the poor only see through news bulletins, billions disappear as a raindrop disappears in a thirsty desert, without their disappearance leaving any trace except for more cold pavements, exhausted hospitals, and faces consumed by waiting. It is as if Iraqi money was not created to build a nation but to be drained in daily rituals resembling the sacred routine of a class addicted to devouring the country piece by piece, until corruption became an undeclared job, and the thief came to wear the nation's tie while stealing its heart openly.
So Iraq, which floats on seas of oil, appears like a great sheikh who possesses the treasures of the earth but is unable to buy medicine for his children. It is a country where the doors of deals are opened more than the doors of schools, and tables of privileges are spread for the influential while the poor are asked to subsist on patience and to applaud the phrase "sacrifice for the homeland." How harsh this phrase becomes when it turns into a moral knife that slaughters the simple people every day. The homeland that asks its children for continuous sacrifice while its resources are plundered before their eyes gradually transforms from a nurturing embrace into a painful question: who sacrifices for whom? And is it written for the poor alone to carry the homeland on their backs, while others carry the homeland in their bags to distant banks?
The ordinary Iraqi has become like an unknown soldier in an endless war, paying its price from his life, health, and dignity, while the brokers of ruin sit behind air-conditioned desks, exchanging the homeland as contracts and loyalties are exchanged. When the voice of hunger rises, he is told: be patient. When he demands his rights, he is told: the country is going through difficult circumstances. But as for those who made the homeland itself a condition for theft, no one asks them where the palaces came from, nor how the accounts swelled, nor why Iraq, despite its wealth, leaned on the pain of its people instead of its glory. Therefore, the most painful thing in Iraq's tragedy is not the loss of money alone, but the people's habituation to the idea of "loss," so that the disappearance of billions becomes ordinary news, and the disaster turns into a daily bulletin that does not awaken astonishment. When corruption persists, it does not only steal treasuries but also steals feeling, and makes the nation coexist with its bleeding as if it were an eternal fate from which there is no escape.
Yet, Iraq will remain greater than all those who plundered it and conspired against its disappointment, waiting for a generation that sees in the homeland a mission not a deal, in authority a responsibility not an inheritance, and in public money a trust not war booty. History will always remind us that nations do not fall because of poverty alone, but because of those who made its treasures a private "Eldorado" city, sailing to it every morning and returning loaded with the wealth of a nation that left its people alone under an old and tired slogan titled "sacrifice for the homeland."
