With the Pope preparing to visit the war-torn country, a veteran Middle East correspondent looks at the prospects of a return to security in a nation haunted by its blood-soaked past

I have always admired Iraqis for the way they have struggled to survive – though many of them failed to do so ­successfully – over 40 years of violence and fear. Nobody living in Iraq during that time of war and deprivation could escape ­having an interesting life. Few peoples in the world have suffered so much and for so long as them. A friend in Baghdad once told me that “no Iraqi can be proved to be paranoid because in our country there is always ­something to be frightened of”.

Iraq is a diverse place, permanently divided between different communities – Shia, Sunni, Kurds, Christians, Yazidis – each with their own religious or ethnic culture. But Iraq was never a melting pot, because the pot never melted and each community carefully guarded its identity and traditions. An Iraqi might be a Syriac Catholic from Qaraqosh on the Nineveh Plains outside Mosul in the north, or a tribal Shia from the marshes outside Basra in the south. “Two Iraqis, three sects”, used to be a joke among Iraq’s neighbours.

Foreign governments have almost invariably failed to understand the country, frequently paying a high price for their ignorance – though not as high as that paid by Iraqis themselves. At the time of the US-led invasion of 2003, President Bush and Tony Blair did not see, what was obvious to every Iraqi, that overthrowing Saddam Hussein meant replacing Sunni dominance with Shia dominance and this was unlikely to happen without violence.