On March 20, 2003, the United States launched an attack on the nation
of Iraq. U.S. president George W. Bush (1946–; served 2001–) and
members of his administration claimed that Iraqi president Saddam
Hussein (1937–2006) had been stockpiling weapons of mass destruction—massive nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons that can kill or incapacitate large numbers of people—in violation of the terms of the
international agreements formed after the Persian Gulf War of 1991.
The administration also claimed a link between Iraq and al-Qaeda, the
organization responsible for the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Shock and awe
The United States was unable to win approval for an invasion of Iraq
from the United Nations. Nonetheless, the Bush administration claimed
that an invasion was justified by United Nations Resolution 1441,
adopted in 2002, which requires complete disclosure of a country’s programs to develop weapons of mass destruction.
Without the support of the United Nations, the United States put
together a coalition of forces dominated by U.S. and British troops, with limited support from Australia, Denmark, Poland, and other nations,
and drew up plans to invade. Some of the United States’s traditional allies, including Canada, France, and Germany, refused to participate, arguing that the United Nations had determined that there was no
evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Worldwide opposition to the invasion was demonstrated in many popular protests between
January and April 2003, the largest of which took place on February 15,
2003, when protests in more than eight hundred cities around the world
drew between six and ten million people. In spite of these demonstrations of disapproval, the U.S. military assembled 125,000 troops in
Kuwait; Britain assembled another 45,000.
On March 17, 2003, the coalition gave Hussein and his sons Uday
and Qusay forty-eight hours to leave Iraq. On March 20, 2003, coalition
forces proceeded to attack, bombing hundreds of targets in Iraq’s capital,
Baghdad, in Mosul, the second-largest city, and in the southern city of
Kirkuk. Their plan was for a “shock and awe” attack—an intense bombing raid accompanied by a ground invasion, intended to overwhelm the
Iraqi resistance and bring about the collapse of Hussein’s government
with a minimum number of casualties. Within three weeks, Iraq’s military had collapsed and Hussein and his Ba’ath Party leaders had fled, and
U.S. troops took over Baghdad.
Once ground troops entered Iraq, repeated efforts failed to uncover
any signs of weapons of mass destruction. Intelligence reports demonstrated there was never a link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda.
Occupation
After overthrowing Hussein, the U.S.-led coalition began an occupation
of Iraq (control of the country by military forces) in an attempt to stabilize the country while it put together a democratic government. Two
months after the invasion, President Bush gave a dramatic “mission accomplished” speech to cheering troops on an aircraft carrier that had just
returned from duty in Iraq. The speech declared a U.S. victory in the
war, but fighting in Iraq had escalated after the overthrow of Hussein,
and there were not enough coalition troops in the nation to stop the violence.
Insurgency
Muslims in Iraq, as elsewhere in the Muslim world, are divided into two
major branches, Sunnis and Shi’a, which differ in their beliefs about the
legitimacy of particular religious leaders. Over the years, they also have
developed some different religious practices; hostilities between the two
branches have at times been intense. Only 10 to 15 percent of the
Muslim world is Shi’a, but Iraq has a majority (60 percent) Shi’a population. Hussein and his Ba’ath Party officials were members of the Sunni
minority, and they led a secular (nonreligious) government in which the
Sunni minority ruled over the Shi’a majority.
When Hussein was overthrown, conflict between the Sunnis and
Shi’a broke out, and some members of both groups wanted a religious
government rather than the secular democracy the United States had envisioned for them. Iraq is further divided by a third group, the Kurds, an
ethnic group with origins in Kurdistan, the mountainous area around
the borders of Iraq, Turkey, Iran, and Syria. They inhabit a large territory
in northern Iraq and make up about one-fifth of Iraq’s population. Most
Kurds are Sunni, but some are Shi’a, and there are also Christian and
Jewish Kurds. Kurds in Iraq have remained isolated from other Iraqis and
were brutally repressed by successive Iraqi governments; they hope to form their own independent nation.
Although there was little indication of an al-Qaeda presence in Iraq
before the invasion, by 2004 terrorist groups from outside Iraq had
moved into the country. A Sunni militant group led by Jordanian Abu
Musa al-Zarqawi (1966–2006) pledged its allegiance to al-Qaeda in
October 2004. This group, which came to be known as Al-Qaeda in
Iraq, claimed responsibility for bombings, suicide attacks, kidnappings,
and televised beheadings of Iraqis and foreigners. One of their missions
was to encourage the fighting between the Sunnis and Shi’a. They believed the chaos resulting from the civil war would prevent the formation
of a western-style secular democracy and allow Sunni Muslims to take
power.
The Abu Ghraib Scandal
In April 2004, photographs depicting U.S. soldiers’ humiliation and
abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib prison were published
in the international media. Prisoners alleged that they had been tortured
and assaulted by their guards and by members of the Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA). In the scandal that followed, the U.S. commander of the prison was demoted, and seventeen soldiers were removed
from duty; two of them were convicted and imprisoned for their roles in
the assaults. Abu Ghraib prison was handed over to the Iraqi government
in September 2006.
Building a government
Iraq’s economy had been severely damaged by international sanctions
imposed on Iraq after 1991’s Persian Gulf War. Once the Hussein government was gone, the little economic production that still existed
ceased. The conflicts between Shi’a and Sunnis and between religious
fundamentalists and secularists grew worse as the economy of Iraq collapsed. With no jobs and few basic services such as electricity, some
Iraqis turned to the insurgent (rebel) groups that fought against the temporary Iraqi government and the U.S. troops in Iraq. The insurgents carried out frequent bombings and suicide attacks, many of which targeted
the U.S. military or Iraqis who were working with the Americans.
Putting together an Iraqi government that represented the Shi’a, the
Sunnis, and the Kurds was extremely difficult. The interests of the three
groups were at odds; resentments lingered from Hussein’s reign. During
a two-year period of squabbling among political leaders, the suicide bombings escalated. Finally, in 2005 the Iraqis held a democratic election, approved a constitution, and elected a government. The United
Iraqi Alliance, a Shi’a-dominated coalition of groups backed by a highly
influential religious and political leader, the Iranian Grand Ayatollah Ali
al-Sistani (1930–), won about half of the votes.
The new government was stationed in the Green Zone of Iraq, the
heavily gated and guarded headquarters of the coalition troops in
Baghdad. Movement outside the Green Zone became increasingly dangerous. Many Iraqi and American observers noted that the new Iraqi
government had little influence in Iraq outside the boundaries of the
Green Zone.
In February 2006, the Askariya shrine in Samarra, considered to be
the holiest Shi’a temple in Iraq, was bombed. The Shi’a assumed that
Sunnis had done the bombing and angrily took to the streets seeking revenge. Within weeks, the U.S. media began to call the war in Iraq a civil
war, but the Bush administration resisted that terminology.
A controversial war
Opponents of the Iraq war argued that the Bush administration had long
wanted to invade Iraq, and thus had forced intelligence agencies to support their war with false reports of weapons of mass destruction and terrorist connections. Because the United States had begun the war without
a clear mandate from the United Nations, some opponents claimed from
the start that the war was illegitimate and perhaps illegal under international law.
After it was clear that there was little or no threat from weapons of
mass destruction or al-Qaeda links in pre-invasion Iraq, supporters of the
war argued that Saddam Hussein’s regime had to be overthrown in order
to protect the people of Iraq from their own leader. In addition, the Bush
administration argued that the war was a central part of the war on terrorism, and that it was better to fight the terrorists in Iraq than in the
United States. Despite some strong antiwar sentiments, support for the
war among U.S. citizens remained relatively high for the first two years
of fighting—long enough to see Bush win reelection in 2004. However,
by 2006, the majority of Americans felt the administration had made a
mistake in going to war and had handled the war badly. This public
opinion led to the election of Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress.
By mid-October 2007, according to a Cable News Network (CNN)
report, coalition deaths in the Iraqi war were as follows: 3,834
Americans, two Australians, 171 Britons, 13 Bulgarians, 1 Czech, 7
Danes, 2 Dutch, 2 Estonians, 1 Fijian, 1 Hungarian, 33 Italians, 1
Kazakh, 1 Korean, 3 Latvians, 21 Poles, 2 Romanians, 5 Salvadorans, 4
Slovaks, 11 Spaniards, 2 Thais, and 18 Ukrainians. About 28,276 U.S.
soldiers have been wounded; many of them have lost limbs or received
serious brain injuries. Cases of post-traumatic stress, a severe emotional
disorder that results from having been in terrifying situations, are very
high among the troops.
Figures on Iraqi deaths are less certain. According to the Iraq Body
Count project team, there had been between 66,807 and 73,120 Iraqi
civilian deaths by the end of June 2007. However, the Lancet medical
journal estimated that by October 2006, 654,965 Iraqi civilians had
been killed in the war, a figure disputed by the Iraq and U.S. governments and by the United Nations.
The surge
With most Americans hoping for a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq,
in January 2007 President Bush announced a new military strategy—a
troop surge sending another twenty thousand U.S. troops to Iraq to fight
the sectarian violence and promote security, particularly in Baghdad,
starting in February 2007. With more troops in some areas, there were
some small areas of peace in the war-torn country. Although protest
against the war remained high, at the end of 2007 there were no plans for a U.S. withdrawal.