LONDON, March 20 (Xinhua) -- An Iraqi writer has condemned "American terrorism" 20 years after the U.S.-led invasion into his country, British newspaper The Guardian has reported.

In an article titled "A million lives later, I cannot forgive what American terrorism did to my country, Iraq" published Sunday, Sinan Antoon, an Iraqi poet and novelist, said the "new Iraq" that the warmongers promised did not bring Starbucks or startups, but car bombs, al-Qaida and Islamic State.

Today, there are 1.2 million internally displaced people in Iraq, most of them in camps. An estimated 1 million Iraqis have died, directly or indirectly, as a result of the invasion and its aftermath, said the article.

The depleted uranium left by occupying forces has been connected to birth defects still today, especially in Fallujah, where there are also elevated rates of cancer, it added.

Meanwhile, in a separate article titled "The U.S. army destroyed our lives" published Sunday on The Guardian, five Iraqis spoke of the devastating impact of the U.S.-led invasion 20 years on.

In the article, a wife elaborated how her husband was shot by U.S. forces on July 26, 2007, one of numerous civilians killed by the coalition troops.

A member of a farming family that lives in the west of Baghdad also told a story of how he was detained and tortured in the notorious prison Abu Ghraib after a false accusation.

The U.S.-led invasion, "based on flawed intelligence, months of lying to the world, and a casual disregard for international law," led to hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths, decades of civil war and vicious sectarian violence in Iraq, and the rise of the Islamic State militant group, said the article.