Iraq War

Overview

The Iraq War began with the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003 and continued as a prolonged conflict over security and political authority. American and allied forces rapidly defeated the government of Saddam Hussein, captured Baghdad and ended the rule of his Ba’ath Party. The invasion’s stated aims included eliminating suspected weapons of mass destruction and removing a government the United States regarded as a security threat. Investigations after the invasion found no active stockpiles of those weapons. The failure of that central premise became a lasting focus of debate over the decision to go to war.

The collapse of Saddam’s government did not end the fighting. Coalition occupation, the dissolution of Iraqi security institutions and the exclusion of many former Ba’ath officials from public service contributed to a security vacuum. Former officers and soldiers joined armed opposition, while militias, jihadi organizations and criminal groups expanded. Violence struck coalition forces, the new Iraqi authorities and civilians. Sectarian attacks deepened divisions between communities, and major cities became repeated battlegrounds. Al-Qaeda in Iraq, led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, became a central force in the war’s jihadi violence.

U.S. forces withdrew in 2011, but the war reshaped Iraq and its neighbors. The overthrow of Saddam enabled greater Kurdish political power while opening space for the Islamic Republic of Iran to cultivate armed and political partners inside Iraq. Al-Qaeda in Iraq’s successors developed into the Islamic State, whose 2014 offensive brought a new international military campaign. The decision to invade in 2003, the conduct of the occupation and later decisions about a limited U.S. presence are distinct questions, each with different security and political consequences.

Background

Iraq entered the twenty-first century after decades of war and authoritarian rule. The Iran–Iraq War of 1980–1988 had exhausted both states, and the Gulf War of 1990–1991 left Saddam’s government under international restrictions. The Ba’athist state had also carried out the Anfal campaign against Kurds. From the end of the 1991 war, central Iraqi authority was weak in northern Iraq. That condition allowed Kurdish institutions to develop before 2003, although Saddam remained in power in Baghdad. Planning for a postwar government included de-Ba’athification intended to assess officials’ complicity in human-rights and weapons abuses; its implementation would have far-reaching effects on the state’s ability to govern.^[1][2]

Turkey was crucial to American planning for a northern approach to Iraq. During the 1990s, Turkish and U.S. forces had cooperated over northern Iraq, and U.S. aircraft used Turkey’s Incirlik air base to strike Saddam’s air defenses before the invasion. Turkey’s Justice and Development Party took office in November 2002. Turkish officials sought assurances that a war would leave Iraq intact and would not produce an independent Kurdish state. They also faced a continuing security threat from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, whose main base was in northern Iraq near Turkey’s border. An estimated 4,000 to 5,000 PKK members were there around the time of the war.^[3][4][5]

Public opposition to the approaching war grew in Turkey, while disagreement between its government and military complicated preparations. Neither institution wanted sole responsibility for entering the conflict. On March 1, 2003, Turkey’s parliament rejected a resolution that would have allowed U.S. forces to stage from Turkish territory. The vote prevented the planned deployment but did not end Turkey’s importance to U.S. regional policy. Turkey’s alignment with European Union policy also made UN authorization a condition for sending Turkish peacekeepers after the invasion. The PKK, which had declared a ceasefire in 1999 after the capture of its leader Abdullah Öcalan, renounced that ceasefire in September 2003.^[3][4][5]

Course of the war

The coalition’s March 2003 campaign advanced quickly into Iraq. Kurdish forces and the area governed by the Kurdistan Regional Government formed the invasion’s northern front. Baghdad fell in April, and Saddam’s Ba’athist government collapsed. Kurdish forces gained control of Kirkuk, where Kurds became the dominant force. The end of the government responsible for Anfal allowed Kurdish political and economic power to grow. Iraqi Turkmens, however, remained marginalized under successive governments after 2003. The Coalition Provisional Authority established an Iraqi Property Claims Commission to address property losses caused by Saddam’s rule.

Occupation authorities dissolved Iraqi security institutions. Former Ba’ath security officers and soldiers went underground, and unemployed former servicemen were among those in Mosul as it became an insurgent center. Armed organizations proliferated in the resulting security vacuum. In and around Baghdad, coalition and Iraqi forces faced attacks from insurgents and jihadi networks for years. Syria served as a logistics base for jihadist networks operating in Iraq. The conflict came to involve distinct adversaries: former regime personnel, locally rooted armed groups, Shia militias and Al-Qaeda in Iraq. Their aims and relationships differed, even when they fought the same coalition forces.

Fallujah became one of the war’s most destructive urban battlegrounds. U.S. Marines retook the city at the end of 2004 through block-by-block fighting that caused extensive damage. Fallujah had not been fully rebuilt when another siege damaged it in 2016. In 2004, the Mahdi Army, loyal to Muqtada al-Sadr, also fought coalition and Iraqi forces. Its fighters attacked British troops in central Basra and struck government and coalition facilities with rocket-propelled grenades. The militia gained partial control of Najaf, leading to a prolonged confrontation around the Shrine of Imam Ali.

By mid-August 2004, U.S. forces had killed up to 400 militia fighters in Najaf, while two U.S. Marines had died there. Military action and efforts by Iraq’s interim authorities had not settled the standoff. Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani intervened and brokered an agreement between American-led coalition forces and al-Sadr’s forces on August 27. Al-Sadr ordered his fighters to cease hostilities. Armed men left the mosque they had used as a base, and its keys were handed to al-Sistani. The Mahdi Army withdrew from the city’s streets, while coalition forces continued fighting other armed groups and preparing for Iraqi government control.

In 2007, the United States increased its troop strength in a surge intended to improve security. At the same time, Sunni tribal forces organized a campaign against Al-Qaeda in Iraq, weakening its position in areas where it had operated. These efforts reduced violence but did not resolve every dispute over state authority or militia power. British forces transferred responsibility for Basra’s security to Iraqi forces in December 2007. In 2008, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki traveled to Basra to command an offensive involving senior ministers and about 30,000 Iraqi army and police personnel. The operation sought to restore government control over the port and oil facilities and suppress militias and criminal gangs. Its difficulty reflected the depth of militia penetration: an estimated 2,000 militia members had infiltrated Basra’s 16,000-member police force.

Israel's conduct and the protection of civilians

Israel prepared for possible involvement before the U.S. campaign began. Its government developed a coordinated public information policy to keep citizens informed, explain Israel’s position internationally if it entered the war and ensure consistent official communication. The plan called for a National Commentator to coordinate government messaging. These preparations reflected concern that the conflict could spread beyond Iraq or prompt attacks on Israeli and Jewish targets; they did not make Israel a belligerent in the invasion.^[6][7]

Across major Arab cities, the opening of the war prompted demonstrations that sometimes approached violence. Public reactions became more muted during the campaign’s second and third weeks. Arab governments negotiated their wartime roles separately with the United States rather than acting as a unified bloc. Other regional states ignored Iraq’s appeal to close their airspace and ground facilities to coalition forces. Syria was the state identified as coming to Iraq’s aid during the campaign. The regional response combined public anger, calculations about Saddam’s fall and differing governments’ security interests.^[6]

Civilian deaths were a grave consequence of the invasion and subsequent fighting. Estimates varied sharply because investigators used different methods, periods and definitions. A household mortality study led by Les Roberts and conducted by researchers from Johns Hopkins, Al-Mustansirya University in Baghdad and Columbia University appeared in The Lancet in late October 2004, one week before the U.S. presidential election. It surveyed 988 households in 33 clusters. Surveyed households reported 142 deaths after the invasion, including 72 violent deaths. The researchers estimated that Iraqis’ risk of dying from any cause had risen to 2.5 times its level in the preceding fourteen and a half months; excluding Fallujah reduced the estimated increase to 1.5 times.^[8]

The study gave a range of 69,000 to 155,000 deaths and a central estimate of about 100,000 nationwide excluding Fallujah. Its authors attributed most violent deaths in their sample to coalition forces and identified many victims as women and children. The small number of survey clusters and Fallujah’s influence on the violent-death sample drew criticism of the estimate’s representativeness. At the time, Iraq Body Count placed recorded Iraqi civilian deaths between 14,000 and 16,000; the Brookings Institution’s estimates ranged from 10,000 to 27,000; and British foreign secretary Jack Straw referred to approximately 15,000. None of those figures should be read as an uncontested final toll: they measured the war in different ways at a particular date.^[8]

Terrorist tactics and propaganda

Al-Qaeda in Iraq and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi used bombings and attacks on civilians and security forces to destabilize the new order and inflame sectarian conflict. The group became one of the most consequential jihadi organizations of the war. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi later served as a battlefield commander and tactician in the Iraqi insurgency before leading the Islamic State. Jihadi networks also drew on routes through Syria, which had served as a logistics base for operations in Iraq. Their use of terrorism as a tactic made civilians direct targets and complicated attempts to rebuild public institutions.

Shia militias presented another challenge to Iraqi sovereignty. The Iranian regime armed and trained Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq for operations against U.S. and coalition forces. On January 20, 2007, fighters associated with Khazali’s militia and Ali Mussa Daqduq participated in an attack on the Karbala Joint Provincial Coordination Center in which five American soldiers were abducted and executed. Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis commanded Kata’ib Hezbollah during its campaign against American-led coalition forces. These organizations had their own leadership and networks; their activities also advanced the Islamic Republic of Iran’s influence in Iraq.

The war was fought in media as well as on battlefields. Coverage of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars expanded Al Jazeera’s international audience. During the rule of Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani in Qatar, its Iraq War coverage included exclusive interviews with senior Iraqi officials. Osama bin Laden used the channel to exhort followers to attack U.S. and coalition interests. Antiwar campaigns also developed in the United States and Britain, including Iraq Veterans Against the War and Code Pink. Their opposition to the invasion and occupation belonged to the public political debate and should be distinguished from armed attacks on civilians or soldiers.^{[6][9][10][11]}

Arguments about the causes of the war sometimes extended beyond criticism of American decisions into collective blame of Jews or supporters of Israel. Such claims do not establish who made U.S. policy or why. Israel had its own security concerns and planned for possible regional consequences, but support for Israel alone does not explain the American decision to invade. Debate over the war requires evidence about American decision-making, its stated objectives and the results of its policies.^[12]

Outcome

The invasion achieved the rapid overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s government. It did not find the active weapons stockpiles cited among its principal stated aims, nor did the fall of Baghdad bring a quick end to violence. Coalition forces and successive Iraqi governments fought years of insurgency and militia warfare. The surge, the Sunni tribal campaign against Al-Qaeda in Iraq and Iraqi security operations improved control in important areas, but political divisions and armed networks endured. The United States withdrew its forces from Iraq in 2011 after nearly nine years of war.

The conflict imposed heavy costs on Iraqis, coalition personnel and public finances. Civilian mortality figures remained dependent on method and period, while destruction in Fallujah and other cities outlasted major battles. Bill Warner estimated roughly $700 billion in Iraq War costs and $250 billion for the Afghanistan War. He included both figures in a claimed total of at least $1 trillion that he called the “Islam tax,” a term he applied to security spending, foreign aid and losses of freedom he associated with conflict involving political Islam. That figure and label express Warner’s argument about economic and constitutional costs, rather than an agreed accounting of the Iraq War.

Aftermath and legacy

Saddam’s removal altered the regional balance. Kurdish participation in the 2003 invasion raised the standing of the Kurdistan Regional Government after the devastation of Anfal. Turkey remained concerned about Iraq’s unity and PKK bases near its border. Washington later permitted Turkish strikes against PKK camps in northern Iraq, while the Islamic Republic of Iran bombed such camps as a favor to Turkey. The March 1 parliamentary refusal had strained U.S.–Turkish relations, yet geography and shared security concerns continued to require cooperation.^[3][4][5]

The Islamic Republic of Iran gained opportunities to expand influence through Iraqi political and armed networks after Saddam’s fall. Iranian-backed Shia militias that had fought U.S. forces for more than a decade were later incorporated into the Popular Mobilization Forces. Their position made control of arms and allegiance to the Iraqi state enduring questions. Iranian involvement also complicated later U.S. decisions about military assistance and troop levels. The history of the 2003 invasion does not, by itself, answer whether a later limited U.S. force could help prevent an Islamic State return or counter the Iranian regime’s influence.^[13][14][15]

Al-Qaeda in Iraq’s organizational legacy was another major consequence. The Islamic State emerged from that lineage and seized large areas of Iraq in 2014, including Mosul. Baghdad and surrounding districts again became battlegrounds against the organization and its forerunners. Iraqi forces and an international coalition subsequently fought to defeat it, while the battle for Mosul and renewed destruction in Fallujah showed how earlier wars continued to shape later campaigns. The Iraq War thus ended as a U.S. military deployment in 2011, but its effects on Iraqi institutions, civilian life and regional security persisted well beyond that date.