War in Iraq 2003-2011

After the Iraqi military defeat in the Persian Gulf War 1990-91, there was a explicit expectation that the Baathist leadership, and specifically Saddam Hussein, would be overthrown by a popular uprising. Indeed, some Shiites in the south and Kurds in the north did rebel against the government but they were ultimately crushed by airstrikes with chemical weapons. To prevent a refugee crisis as well as further attacks, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) imposed “no-fly” zones in northern and southern Iraq, enforced by American and British air forces. Economic sanctions were put in place to weaken Iraq and United Nations inspections sought to enforce Iraqi compliance with restrictions on weapons. Iraq resisted these efforts to limit its sovereignty. In 1998, in response to frequent Iraqi anti-aircraft fire on aircraft enforcing the no-fly zones, American and British air forces launched a sustained attack on Iraqi air defense installations resulting in an Iraqi refusal to allow international inspectors into the country. Throughout the decade, the status of Iraq remained that of neither a fully sovereign state nor an occupied country.

After the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, American determination to do something about Iraq increased substantially. Congressional approval for the use of force against Iraq was obtained in September 2002 by which time the US administration was already planning for an invasion. In response to Iraqi intransigence, on November 8, 2002, the UNSC passed Resolution 1441 demanding Iraq readmit inspectors and comply with all existing resolutions; the wording of this document did not explicitly authorize the use of force. Afterward, the British and American governments claimed, not only was Iraq not complying with Resolution 1441, there was evidence it continued to possess chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction. These claims were contested by numerous countries including Anglo-American allies France and Germany. Although the American administration argued UNSC authorization for an invasion existed in the text of Resolution 1441, an effort was made in early 2003 to secure a more explicit resolution but several UNSC members, including China, France, Germany and Russia refused to support it and the effort was abandoned.

On March 17, 2003, the American president issued an ultimatum demanding Saddam Hussein flee the country within forty-eight hours. The invasion was scheduled to begin on March 20th, but information on the suspected location of the Iraqi leader prompted the US to attempt a decapitation airstrike on the evening of March 19, 2003, and the ground invasion was pushed up accordingly because of concerns about Iraqi intentions to implement a scorched earth policy – destroying bridges, dams and setting fire to oil wells (as had been done in 1991). Operation Iraqi Freedom was conducted with a minimum of ground forces, advancing out of Kuwait, supported by substantial air power. Most of the Iraqi armed forces did not offer significant resistance to the coalition advances. Irregular Iraqi forces, the Fedayeen (organized by the Baathist Party led by Saddam Hussein), deployed in urban areas and were likely intended to cause large coalition casualties in street fighting, but the coalition forces bypassed such centers of resistance. By April American forces were engaged on the outskirts of Baghdad. Some Iraqi units offered determined opposition to the invasion but they lacked the coordination necessary to be effective. On April 9th, resistance collapsed and American troops took control of the city; Saddam Hussein went into hiding. Basra was secured by British forces on the same day. Looting and reprisal killings followed the government collapse and coalition forces were not prepared. In the north, American paratroopers and Special Forces supported Kurdish fighters in securing cities in northern Iraq (and deterred them from reprisals against Sunni Iraqis). By May 1, 2003, organized military resistance had ceased and the American president declared the war ended.

Some observers hailed this war as evidence of a revolution in military affairs. In fact, the claimed victory was hollow and fighting not only continued but escalated in ways unforeseen by the planning and preparations leading up to the invasion. American authorities lacked a sound understanding of the ethnic, religious, and tribal divisions within Iraq and compounded the challenges of occupation, resulting from the lack of troops on the ground, through two fateful decisions made by the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA). On May 16th, an order banning Baath Party members from holding government offices effectively fired 30,000 to 50,000 Iraqis including senior civil servants, military leaders, and university professors. This order, more-or-less, destroyed governance capacity in Iraq without any substitution. Then, on May 23rd, a second order disbanded the Iraqi armed forces, paramilitary and security services, leaving a very large number of trained soldiers unemployed and the protection of the state the responsibility of the small coalition forces in the country.

Certainly some of the early resistance in Iraq was attributable to the Baathist Fedayeen, fighting for the former regime. But other forces were rapidly coalescing. With Syrian complicity, foreign fighters identifying with al-Qaida filtered into Iraq and developed into al-Qaida in Iraq (led by Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqaw) with growing Sunni Iraqi backing. Often with Iranian support, Shiite Iraqis formed their own militias (such as the Mahdi Army led by Muqtada al-Sadr), intent on revenge and fighting amongst each other for dominance in Iraq. And the Kurds wanted vengeance and independence from Iraq (something bitterly opposed by Turkey). Not only were all these forces well-armed, because of the weapons and ammunition caches the former regime spread throughout the country as part of its preparations for the war, they fought amongst themselves as well as fighting coalition forces. When Saddam Hussein was captured on December 13, 2003, coalition authorities, believing the insurgents aimed at his restoration, concluded that the growing insurgency would now disintegrate and permit coalition troop withdrawals; such hopes were starkly dispelled in April 2004 when Sunni and Shiite militants temporarily allied to fight the coalition. American authorities came to believe the presence of coalition forces in Iraq was doing more harm than good.

The rush to return control to Iraqis had led to CPA recognition of a 25-member Iraqi Governing Council (IGC) on July 13, 2003. Although intended to be representative ICG lacked legitimacy among Sunni Iraqis, in part because of the prohibitions on Baathist Party affiliation (which many prominent Sunni Iraqis happened to have). Among Shiites, the IGC failed to include powerful representatives like Sadr (leading the Mahdi Army). The unelected IGC created the foundations of a new Iraqi government. On June 28, 2004, the CPA was dissolved and the IGC took control. Almost immediately, tens of thousands additional Iraqis were fired for having former ties to the Baathist Party. Elections were held in January 2005, a new constitution was written during the year and new elections under the new constitution were held in December 2005. In April 2006, a new Iraqi national government took office, under the leadership of Nouri al-Maliki. Meanwhile, American forces killed Zarqawi, leader of al-Qaida in Iraq (AQI). Throughout this period, the fighting was escalating, with mounting military and civilian casualties, leading the American government to question the belief that political progress would reduce violence.

In January 2007 the American administration decided to deploy about 30,000 additional troops to Iraq, in the so-called surge, combined with a new strategy of conducting a counter-insurgency war against the various Iraqi groups fighting the coalition forces. Political and public opinion was deeply divided about the surge and the expansion of military operations. Whether these decisions contributed to stabilizing Iraq remains contentious. During this time, some Sunni Iraqi leaders began to oppose the brutality of AQI, the so-called Awakening; the new American strategy encouraged alliance with and support for this change. Likewise, the Shiite opposition, particularly the Iranian backed Mahdi Army, was cowed into a truce by a combination of the new and aggressive American effort to reduce the violence in Iraq and internal political pressure. While coalition casualties peaked in 2007, with almost 1,000 killed, the following year witnessed a dramatic decline in military and civilian casualties and violence in general.

The downward trend in violence and indications of increasing stabilization in Iraq continued in 2008; such indicators increased political pressure to withdraw troops. British combat troops withdrew in 2009. A new American administration took over in 2009 and explicitly intended to withdraw all US forces from Iraq as quickly as possible. By then, an agreement had been reached with the Iraqi government which committed the US to remove all combat troops from Iraqi cities by June 30, 2009 and to withdraw all forces from Iraq by December 31, 2011. The new administration also committed to ending American engagement in combat by August 31, 2010. Meanwhile, the Maliki government moved to consolidate power in Iraq for its Shiite Iraqi base, disaffecting Sunni Iraqis and Kurds. A political crisis ensued after the March 2010 elections when a coalition of Shiite and Sunni Iraqis won more seats in the parliament than the ruling party but Maliki refused to step down. With Iranian and eventual American support, Maliki remained in power. The existing government was viewed as providing the stability and continuity required to complete the American withdrawal. Indeed the level of violence remained consistently low throughout 2010 and 2011. The last American troops withdrew on December 16, 2011, leaving behind a reasonably stable regime, even though it was somewhat overtly sectarian with authoritarian tendencies. That stability likely depended at least in part on the civil war in Syria drawing Sunni Iraqi fighters into it.

Notes

[1] Correlates of War (CoW) distinguishes between an inter-state war (March 19, 2003 to May 2, 2003) and an extra-state war beginning on May 3, 2003.

[2] Iraq is inclusive of Baathist Iraq up to the disbanding of the CPA and democratic Iraq afterward.

[3] Iraqi resistance is inclusive of Sunni, Shiite and Kurd Iraqis opposing coalition forces.

[4] A large number of countries contributed small contingents to the so-called "coalition of the willing" supporting the war in Iraq, including: Slovakia, Lithuania, Italy, Norway, Japan, Hungary, Netherlands, Portugal, New Zealand, Thailand, Philippines, Honduras, Dominican Republic, Spain, Nicaragua, Iceland, United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Romania, El Salvador, Estonia, Bulgaria, Moldova, Albania, Ukraine, Denmark, Czech Republic, South Korea, Tonga, Azerbaijan, Singapore, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Latvia, Poland, Kazakhstan, Armenia, Mongolia, Georgia.

[5] Not all sources agree about war termination which is understandable considering Iraq was fighting for its survival only a few years later. However, the complete withdrawal of foreign forces on December 16, 2011, was carried out without any expectation of such a turn of events. While it was far from a peaceful country in 2011, observers generally agreed that it was not at risk from invasion, insurgency or civil war.

[6] The provisional estimate of military/civilian battle deaths provided here is 170,000 and this may be too high or too low depending on the source consulted. It is generally agreed that more than 100,000 Iraqi civilians died from 2003 to 2011. One statistical survey, published in The Lancet, estimated "excess deaths" at between 426,369 - 793,663 up to July 2006. There is a lack of attention to Iraqi military battle deaths after the collapse of the Baathist regime.

[7] Iraqi military battle deaths include about 6,000 killed under Baathist Iraq and 14,000 Iraqi security forces and police killed under democratic Iraq. Civilian battle deaths include 8,000 estimate to be killed by coalition forces at war with Baathist Iraq, 19,000 killed by Iraqi resistance and 85,000 killed during the insurgency and civil war under democratic Iraq.

[8] A recurrent estimate of Iraqi resistance fighter battle deaths is about 24,000. Resistance civilian battle deaths are those attributable to coalition and democratic Iraqi forces from 2004 to 2011.

References

Boot, 41-58; Brennan et al, 21-64, 123-56, 297-309; COW227, 482; Crawford, 1-18; EB - Iraq War; Fischer, 1-10; icasualties.org; iraqbodycount.org; OREAH - US War in Iraq since 2003; Ploughshares - Iraq; Rayburn and Sobchak, 1&2.

Max Boot. The New American Way of War. Foreign Affairs, 82(4). 2003.

Richard R Brennan Jr, Charles P Ries, Larry Hanauer, Ben Connable, Terrence K Kelly, Michael J McNerney, Stephanie Young, Jason Campbell, K Scott McMahon. Ending the US War in Iraq: The Final Transition, Operational Maneuver, and Disestablishment of United States Forces - Iraq. RAND. 2013.

Neta C Crawford. Civilian Death and Injury in the Iraq War, 2003-2013. Costs of War. Watson Institute for International Studies. 2013.

Hannah Fischer. Iraq Casualties: U.S. Military Forces and Iraqi Civilians, Police, and Security Forces. Congressional Research Service. 2011.

Joel D Rayburn, Frank K Sobchak (Editors) with Jeanne F Godfroy, Matthew D Morton, James S Powell, Matthew M Zais. The US Army in the Iraq War: Volume 1: Invasion, Insurgency, Civil War, 2003-2006, Volume 2: Surge and Withdrawal, 2007-2011. USAWC Press. 2019.

Category

Inter-State War^[1]

Region

West Asia
(Middle East)

Belligerents

Iraq^[2], Iraqi Resistance^[3], USA, UK, Australia, Poland and others^[4]

Dispute

Governance

Initiation Date

March 19, 2003

Termination Date

December 16, 2011^[5]

Duration

8 years, 8 months, 28 days
(3195 days)

Outcome

Negotiated Settlement
(Coalition victory)

Fatalities

Total: 49,000/121,000^[6]
Iraq: 20,000/112,000^[7]
Resistance: 24,000/9,000^[8]
USA: 4,490
UK: 179
Poland: 23
Australia: 2
Others: 114

Magnitude

5.2