January 27, 2005 - It's been over 600 days since the sovereign nation of Iraq was invaded, and by all accounts (compiled from journalists, think tanks, experts, Iraqi intellectuals, and political scientists) Iraq is far, far from reaching the end of the so-called democratic tunnel. Indeed, Iraq—in its disparaged, decimated state—has no tunnel lying ahead of it.

In the buildup to the March 2003 invasion, the world community was forced to believe that Iraq, which had been reduced from a major economic powerhouse to a third world consumer due to the 1980 – 1988 Iraq-Iran war and the subsequent 13-year punitive sanctions for its 1990 invasion of Kuwait, was in possession of weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

Iraq threatened US shores and US allies in the Middle East; and if such scenarios weren't enough to shock you to wear a swastika armband and pillage a few Arab stores, the world community was forced to believe that secular Iraq was on the verge of handing over its WMD to Islamic terrorists.

The solution to this Iraqi anschluss? Invade the country, remove its dictator who was the figurehead of evil (he's evil because we're good, simple!), find and destroy the WMD stockpile (because we insist they are there and we know exactly where they are), and build a democracy to flourish and inspire other democratic seeds in the Middle East.

This was the plan made public. A plan built on numerous lies, mass deception, the use of dubious intelligence sources, and a self-styled Iraqi opposition who armed themselves with fancy cars and Rolex watches, and frolicked about the halls of Europe's finest hotels and eateries.

Reports of mass graves, flying WMD labs, and the regurgitated Kurdish plight were brought up every time a demonstration or some Hollywood actor braved the media onslaught and spoke against the rationale for going to war. It's unpatriotic—indeed, un-American—to ask for the case for war to be proven without a shadow of a doubt.

(Last week, there was scant mention of the official US statement that the search for Iraqi WMD was over with nothing to show. No weapons existed at the time of the invasion, the official US position read.)

But the war went full-throttle, and the capitulation of Baghdad in near-record time was highlighted as a paragon of US military ingenuity. A few weeks later, the Iraq-wide resistance movement took to the streets. US soldiers came home in body bags or maimed beyond recognition, their Iraqi collaborators executed on sight, usually in public display.

And such has been the immediate history of Iraq.

However, warfare is about deception.

The non-public, covert plan for Iraq is far more destructive, ominous, and manipulative than the layman could imagine. It is directed towards the wholesale destruction of a society, from the grassroots up. It is hinged on the decimation of the political institution in a country that has long been a center of Arab politics.

The first sign of this covert plan to reduce the country to fragments came within hours of US military entry into the center of Baghdad: Banks, museums, schools, libraries, universities, hospitals, and clinics were looted and then burned to the ground while US soldiers looked on. A country and its representative military that profess to be invading a country to protect its people and their future must also commit themselves to protect those said people's heritage and culture.

Iraq was quickly stripped of its heritage, its history, its place in the development of civilizations.

Why? Simple—if you want to ensure that a country is fragmented at its roots, you must seek out and destroy those roots themselves.

Historic Baghdad, stretching from Karada, has all but been destroyed. Once a center of literacy with tens of thousands of texts on Arab and world literature, history, and science, Karada is now festooned with burned buildings, the result of many pitched battles between US forces and Iraqi resistance.

Second stage in the covert scheme is to ensure that those founding elements that through generations have added to the heritage and culture of the country are no longer visible, viable contributors.

During the early days of the fall of Baghdad, stories emerged that Iraqi intellectuals and scientists were assassinated, often with their families in tow.

A recent report in USA Today puts the number of members of the Iraqi intelligentsia killed at more than 300 since the invasion. That's almost one killed every two days. This campaign has spared no one—scientists in all fields, prominent doctors, internationally recognized university professors, historians, and academics have been rooted out and murdered. Others escaped to Syria, Jordan, and Turkey to await immigration elsewhere.

Effectively, after the destruction of cultural icons comes a brain drain.

The third stage is to hold an election under the guise of promoting democracy, self-governance, self-security, and stability.

However, the real intentions of the elections are rooted in the early days of the formation of a quasi-governing body comprised of so-called Iraqis. This came in July 2003 in the form of the Iraqi Governing Council (IGC), which was doubly flawed in composition.

First, it entreated itself to near-domination by the exiles who had been out of Iraq for several dozen years—the same voices that had participated in the wholesale marketing scheme to convince the world community that the invasion and occupation of Iraq was a moral and humanistic necessity.

Second, the IGC was divided along sectarian lines, slowly removing Iraqi nationalism and nationalistic aspirations from the fore and pushing it to the kind of back-room, under-the-stairs campaigning for sectarian interests.

Iraqi intellectuals complained at the time that this was a formula for later civil war. They were hushed, as mentioned above.

When the IGC was dissolved after the farce of "handover of sovereignty" in late June 2004 , sectarianism also played a major role in the formation of the interim Iraqi government.

As the country comes to vote, Iraqis are aghast that there are no nationalistic parties in the running. The elections are to be decided along religious and sectarian lines: the Kurds have their voting bloc, the Shia their various lists of unnamed candidates, and the Sunnis—other than those like Pachachi who have tried to bring together nationalistic parties—have decided to entirely boycott the elections.

Perhaps the only non-sectarian party is the communist party, which, ironically, seems to be the only alternative to sectarian voting trends.

The mood in Iraq before the elections has been one of suspicion and caution. Age-old sectarian rivalries are beginning to slowly foment. Could the elections themselves be a platform for eventual civil war and fragmentation?

If the Kurds are to come to power, it is only logical to extrapolate that they will find a way to pull off a national referendum for secession with oil-rich Kirkuk as their new capital. This move would likely be refused by both the Shia and the Sunni political. Are we to believe that Kurdish nationalistic aspirations will be discussed in an even-handed manner in Baghdad? Hardly.

Furthermore, if Shia parties win the election—and that is the likely outcome—will they be able to forgive the Sunnis for 1,400 years of political repression? Will they be able to forgive some 3 million Baathists — many of them Shia, too — of supporting a Sunni government for the past 35 years?

But the above is mere child's play when one factors in the regional aspirations of Turkey (with its Turkic minorities in Iraq and its vehement opposition to Kurdish statehood), Iran (with its age-old lust for southern Iraqi oil fields and the influence it wields among its Iran-trained Iraqi clerics), Syria (which fears it might witness a mini-US invasion, spurred on by Israeli ambitions in the Levant), and Saudi Arabia (which has an incredible distaste for the Shia and would like nothing more than to see Iraqi Wahhabism take root).

Firas Al-Atraqchi is a Canadian journalist of Iraqi heritage. Holding an MA in Journalism and Mass Communication, he has eleven years of experience covering Middle East issues, oil and gas markets, and the telecom industry. You can reach him at firascape@hotmail.com.