Opportunity knocks in Iraq

摘要

For almost 30 years, and up until quite recently, news coming out of Iraq was unremittingly bleak. The 1980s were marked by the bloody and brutal war with neighbouring Iran, the 1990s by the first Gulf War and a subsequent decade of harsh economic sanctions, and in 2003 the United States and its allies undertook a controversial invasion to remove the regime of Saddam Hussein. As a result, the country was effectively closed to the outside world. But gradually, since early 2008, the security situation has shown marked improvement and the death count has steadily fallen.