I arrived in Baghdad in early May 2003, a couple of weeks after US President George W. Bush had announced the end of the war. The ungoverned city was in chaos. The looting of palaces, homes, hospitals, museums and any public building was continuous and in broad daylight. During the first few days I accompanied a team of Spanish surgeons from the NGO Médecins du Monde to the Al Karj hospital, where they performed several operations every morning. The spectacle was devastating; people with savage burns from explosions, bullet wounds, mangled legs and arms? I wondered if it was true that the war was over.