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Journalism of Courage
March 19 marks 20 years of the invasion of Iraq by the United States and its allies, in an attempt to overthrow the country’s dictator Saddam Hussein on the premise that his regime possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMDs).
By December 2003, the so-called “liberation” of the people of Iraq was complete. However, even after months of searching, the US and its allies could find no trace of Saddam’s WMDs.
Instead of the promised peace and prosperity, the war pushed Iraq into a cycle of brutal violence, heightened sectarianism and political instability that contributed to the rise of the Islamic State (IS) terrorist group.
Speaking to Reuters, former US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, who served under President George W Bush when the US invaded Iraq, recently said the war “might be as big a strategic error” as Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, which helped bring about Germany’s World War II defeat.
The roots of the Iraq invasion go back to 1990, when Saddam — a longtime ally of the Americans, especially after the Iranian revolution of the late 1970s — attacked Kuwait under the suspicion that the country was using slant drilling to steal oil out of Iraqi fields.
The US government quickly intervened in the war as it feared that a successful invasion of Kuwait might embolden Iraq to further consolidate its power over other nations in West Asia, helping it become the world’s foremost oil power.
Saddam suffered a crushing defeat, but managed to continue ruling Iraq — and he was no longer an ally of the western world.
In subsequent years, several kinds of sanctions were imposed on Iraq for violence against both its minority Kurdish and majority Shia population — the ruling dispensation at the time was Sunni. The country was also accused of developing nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons by the United Nations, which placed its own sanctions on Iraq after an investigation.
Soon after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the US, President Bush’s administration announced a “comprehensive plan to seek out and stop terrorists around the world”. The invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq was part of America’s “Global War on Terror”.
While the US invaded Afghanistan to punish the Taliban and hunt down the leadership of al-Qaeda including Osama bin Laden, Iraq was accused of possessing weapons of mass destruction and of supporting terrorism.
On March 17, 2003, President Bush released an ultimatum, saying that if Saddam didn’t leave Iraq within 48 hours, the US would take military action against him. Two days later, bombs began to be dropped on the country. On March 20, the ground invasion commenced.
After five weeks of war, President Bush gave his infamous “Mission Accomplished” speech on May 1, 2003, in which he declared, despite failing to find any weapons of mass destruction, that the US and other allies “have prevailed” and “now our coalition is engaged in securing and reconstructing that country”.
But it soon became clear that America’s plan for reconstructing and securing Iraq wasn’t good enough. The temporary government, known as the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), carried out a ‘de-Baathification’ of Iraq’s state institutions — removing all those working there who had a connection to Saddam’s Baath Party.
This resulted in thousands of state employees losing their jobs, as it was mandatory in Saddam’s regime to have a Baath Party membership in order to get most state jobs. Moreover, the decision brought the normal government function to a standstill.
Then, the CPA announced a disbanding of the country’s military, a decision considered by experts to be one of the biggest mistakes, leading to the formation of several militias and armed groups. Many of these groups became part of al-Qaeda and eventually banded together to form the IS.
Another problem that emerged was the failure of Iraq’s new political system, which was designed and introduced mainly by the Americans and exiled Iraqis who had been living outside the country for decades.
The system was built on sectarian lines, ensuring that the elected Prime Minister, who would run the country, would be always Shia, the President would be Kurdish, and the Speaker of Parliament would be Sunni. This compounded sectarianism in Iraq, giving rise to hostilities among different communities which had largely remained together under Saddam’s authoritarian regime.
In the post-Saddam vacuum, corruption became rampant. In 2005, Transparency International said Iraq was in danger of becoming “the biggest corruption scandal in history”. It was also “critical of the United States’ handling of the reconstruction process, arguing that its process for awarding public contracts was secretive and favoured a small number of large firms,” the BBC reported.
In a recent analysis, The Guardian said, “Iraq currently appears relatively calm. But US troops are still present due to the ongoing battle against IS. Though there is now a government, following a year of deadlock after elections and an outburst of violence in Baghdad, the state remains unable to keep the lights on or provide clean water. Politicians and officials have pocketed billions.”
The invasion had far-reaching consequences for not just Iraq but also the world. Most significantly, it gave rise to the circumstances in which the terrorist Islamic State was born, which proclaimed its “caliphate” in 2014, and gave rise to the brutal and prolonged sectarian civil war in the country.
The conflict also undermined the influence of the US in West Asia. Before the invasion, Iraq and Afghanistan acted as buffers that curtailed Iranian influence in West Asia. In the post-invasion chaos in Iraq, Iran gained a foothold, and utilised the changed balance of regional power to step up its military operations outside its borders, including supplying troops to the Syrian regime of President Bashar al-Assad, and arming and financing the Shia Houthi rebels in Yemen.
The invasion inaugurated the era of drone strikes as an offensive strategy. Over the years, drones have killed thousands of innocent civilians over a vast area across the Middle East.
Twenty years after the war, people in multiple countries continue to suffer its consequences. A recent report titled ‘Costs of War’, published by Brown University, said, “An estimated 300,000 people have died from direct war violence in Iraq, while the reverberating effects of war continue to kill and sicken hundreds of thousands more.”
