Amid official silence, ordinary Iraqis mark end of 8-year war with Iran that killed millions

Iraqis on Monday commemorated the end of the Iraq-Iran war (1980–88), one of the most devastating conflicts of the late 20th century, but the government did not mark the occasion formally. 

The eight-year-long war which had an estimated casualty count of up to two million combatants and civilians by some estimates, began on September 22, 1980, triggered by a border and maritime dispute over Shatt al-Arab at the confluence of the Euphrates and Tigris between the two states. The war ended on August 8, 1988, when Iraq announced that Iran has accepted the United Nations-brokered ceasefire under Security Council Resolution 598 and formally on August 20, of the same year.

Iraq under the former ousted Baath regime of Saddam Hussein considered Iran’s acceptance of the ceasefire as a victory while Iran’s former Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini considered it as “drinking a poisoned chalice".

Following the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the toppling of Saddam's regime, successive Iraqi governments and ruling elites have not marked the day, even as a day for peace, although many Iraqis and the Iraqi civil society are commemorating the war and its casualties.  

“The day of the greatest victory is a great occasion that deserves to be marked annually on the Iraqi territory, but that has become uneasy due to Iranian hegemony [over Iraq],” Omar al-Samarae, an Iraqi journalist working with Al-Hurrah channel wrote on twitter. The hashtag of the day of the victory is one of the most trending topics in Iraq. 

Ordinary Iraqis interviewed by The New Arab expressed similar sentiments, blaming Iranian dominance for the lack of official recognition of the occasion.

Estimates of total casualties of the war from 1,000,000 to 2,000,000, with Iran suffering the greatest losses.Moreover, between 50,000 and 100,000 Kurds were killed by Iraqi forces during the series of campaigns code-named Anfāl that took place in 1988 which also saw the use of chemical weapons.

“August 8 brings awful memories...on August 6, 1988 my brother, an Iraqi soldier fighting against the Iranian army, was martyred in Shalamcheh Iranian town near the Iraqi border,” a Kurdish man told The New Arab, on condition of anonymity.

“The former Iraqi regime was paying my parents a monthly salary...but after my parents died they cut off the salary because my brother was not married".

Since Iraq's independence from Britain in 1932, its relations with Iran have been strained, particularly over the strategic Shatt al-Arab waterway that flows southeast through Iraq before discharging into the Arabian Gulf. 

The war cost hundreds of thousands of lives on both sides, but Iran has become increasingly influential in Iraq since the 2003 US-led invasion that toppled Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.