Fattah H., Caso F. A Brief History Of Iraq
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A BRIEF HISTORY OF IRAQ
242
(as well as a failed attempt in which an airliner crashed in a fi eld in
Pennsylvania). The U.S. government publicly identifi ed al-Qaeda as
the group behind the attacks, a terrorist group that had close ties with
Afghanistan’s Taliban leadership. On October 7, 2001, U.S. and British
bombers targeted Taliban forces and al-Qaeda strongholds within
Afghanistan in support of insurrectionary ground forces from the so-
called Northern Alliance (various Afghani warlords who made common
cause against the Taliban). Kabul, the capital, was one of the targets.
The purpose of the invasion was to capture al-Qaeda leader Osama
bin Laden and to overthrow the Taliban. In 2002, U.S. ground forces
joined in the invasion. The Taliban was quickly overthrown, although
most of the leadership escaped to the mountainous frontier region that
bordered Pakistan, while bin Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders were
never captured, having escaped initially to the mountains of Tora Bora,
near the Khyber Pass in eastern Afghanistan. It is believed that the brief
truce in fi ghting, ostensibly to allow al-Qaeda fi ghters to surrender their
weapons, in reality allowed bin Laden and other high-ranking members
of the organization to escape. Nevertheless, by early 2002, the United
States and its allies were fi rmly in control of Afghanistan, although by
2006, Taliban infl uence and insurrection would rise again.
With the comparatively easy “success” of the Afghanistan phase
of the “war on terror” under their belts, the neocons, the advisory
group toward which President Bush leaned, were in the ascendant. In
the annual State of the Union speech, delivered on January 29, 2002,
President Bush linked Iraq, Iran, and North Korea “and their terror-
ist allies” in what he called an “axis of evil” (White House 2002),
thus playing on two 20th-century historical ideas: the Axis powers of
World War II (Germany, Italy, and Japan) and the more recent vintage
“evil empire” as President Ronald Reagan had characterized the Soviet
Union in the 1980s. The press picked up on the phrase, and the notion
was planted that all three countries were direct threats to U.S. security,
though, of course, the three countries were not allied (in the case of
Iraq and Iran far from it). Referring to Saddam Hussein in the same
State of the Union speech, Bush declared, “This is a regime that has
something to hide from the civilized world” (White House 2002).
What Hussein was hiding, the Bush administration claimed, was
WMD. This (mis)information was allegedly given to the Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA) by the INC. Hussein denied such claims,
but the warlike rhetoric coming from the United States, not to men-
tion the October 2002 joint congressional resolution that authorized
U.S. military force in Iraq, prompted him to agree to allow weapons
243
inspectors back into Iraq. Thus, as per the unanimously passed
UN Security Council Resolution 1441, the UNMOVIC, headed by
Swedish diplomat Hans Blix, began inspecting sites in November
2002. Although the inspectors found no WMD, the United States
remained adamant. An anxious Hussein, according to the account by
journalist Michael R. Gordon and General Bernard E. Trainor, after
consultations with the RCC, military advisers, and members of the
Baath Party, announced that Iraq had no WMD and “called on sev-
eral select offi cials to confi rm his disclosure. Iraq’s defense minister,
Sultan Hashim Ahmad al-Tai, told U.S. interrogators after the fall of
Baghdad that many of the generals were stunned by the news. . . .”
According to Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz, morale “plummeted”
(Gordon and Trainor 2006, 118). However, the Bush administration
was not about to publicly take its sworn enemy at his word, no matter
who confi rmed that word.
In February 2003, U.S. secretary of state Colin Powell (who had
been chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Persian Gulf
War) addressed the United Nations General Assembly, with “evidence.”
Though Powell failed in his attempt to gain UN sanction for the inva-
sion, the United States and Great Britain decided to push on with it.
Powell’s so-called evidence was later proven false, but by then the war
was on. Whether faulty intelligence was at the heart of the claims or
administration pressure on the CIA to produce intelligence that would
justify the claims has yet to be completely decided.
Both Great Britain and the United States took care to involve Iraqi
opposition leaders in exile. Conferences were held in London and
Washington, D.C., in late 2002 and early 2003. On February 25, 2003,
less than a month before the outbreak of hostilities, there was an oppo-
sition meeting held in Salahuddin in Iraqi Kurdistan. On the meeting’s
agenda was whether to form a government in exile and the possibility
of a provisional government after the fall of Hussein, which the United
States opposed. Nonetheless, the Salahuddin conference did create
the Leadership Council composed of Ayad Allawi, Massoud Barzani,
Ahmad Chalabi, Abd el-Aziz al-Hakim, Adnan al-Pachachi, and Jalal
Talabani.
The coalition President Bush put together to fi ght in Iraq included
Great Britain, Spain, Italy, and Poland, among others, although nota-
bly France, Germany, Russia, and China opted not to join and even
criticized U.S. policy. By far, the brunt of the fi ght, both with troops on
the ground and weaponry, was borne by the United States, with heavy
British assistance. A month before the invasion a worldwide antiwar
THE RULE OF SADDAM HUSSEIN AND THE DIFFICULT LEGACY OF THE MUKHABARAT STATE
A BRIEF HISTORY OF IRAQ
244
rally in more than 800 cities and involving between 6 million to 10 mil-
lion people took place. Yet, just prior to the war, nearly three-quarters
of U.S. citizens favored invasion, an even higher percentage believing
that Iraq was linked with al-Qaeda. All last-minute attempts at diplo-
macy were bound to fail.
The administration’s policy was also motivated by another develop-
ment: Much to Western chagrin, the international air embargo on Iraq
had all but collapsed in 2002, with Russian, Arab, and other fl ights
regularly touching down at Baghdad airport after an absence of 12
years. Diplomats and traders began arriving in Baghdad, with ambitious
business deals in their pockets; their appearance was usually preceded
by a cargo of humanitarian supplies, which were presented to the “Iraqi
people.” A Baghdad trade fair in that same year drew large crowds of
international businessmen. Meanwhile, the Arab League invited Iraqi
diplomats to attend the fi rst meeting in a decade; however, a rapproche-
ment between Iraq and Kuwait, highly touted in the Arab press, never
fully materialized.
At a highly publicized forum that year Secretary General Kofi Annan
warned that “the UN was in danger of losing the debate in the court of
international public opinion regarding its responsibility for the humani-
tarian crisis, ‘if we haven’t already lost it’ ” (Ismael and Ismael 2004, 26).
To defl ect the growing clamor for an end to the embargo, the United
States and United Kingdom introduced “smart,” or targeted, sanctions
to the United Nations as replacement for the previous comprehensive
sanctions (Ismael and Ismael 2004, 34). But, as antisanctions activists
pointed out, the changes were largely procedural in nature. Besides
changing the system by which Iraq imported goods, Security Council
Resolution 1409 tried to abolish the smuggling of commodities into
Iraq in return for cheap oil, which was going on quite openly outside
the oil-for-food program (Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq 2003,
n.p.). However, this failed because too many Western allies in the
Middle East region were profi ting handsomely by the deal.
Conclusion
For 20 years, even as he enjoyed near absolute power, Saddam Hussein’s
regime was in a constant state of decay. Like many an autocrat before
him, Hussein sought to bolster his authority by defl ecting attention
away from Iraq’s numerous problems, fi rst with the Iran-Iraq War of
the 1980s and then with the invasion of Kuwait. However, these merely
accelerated the centrifugal forces that were pulling on Baghdad. While
245
Iraq’s military disasters led to insurrections that were brutally put down,
the corruption of the Baathist regime played a large role in spurring on
inevitable social and political forces that would destroy Hussein’s Iraq.
The Kurds proved resilient in resisting Baathist brutality, and the
Arab tribes were equally resilient in adapting to the times. Indeed, their
paramount shaykhs seemed to all but outmaneuver Hussein at the
bargaining table. Hussein’s ambiguous attitude toward Islam was pri-
marily an attempt to prevent his being outmaneuvered by the Iranian
ayatollahs, but in doing so, he gave legitimacy to the Iraqi ayatollahs,
who were no longer willing to acquiesce to the regime. However, it
was the exiled opposition, whose infl uence in the West was far greater
than its infl uence within Iraq (where many of the exiled leaders were
distrusted), which kept up the anti-Hussein drumbeat throughout the
1990s and into the 21st century. Their propaganda played well enough
in London, Washington, D.C., and elsewhere to bolster the sanctions
against Iraq that would, themselves, play a role in the paranoia that
would lead to yet another war.
THE RULE OF SADDAM HUSSEIN AND THE DIFFICULT LEGACY OF THE MUKHABARAT STATE
246
10
THE WAR IN IRAQ
(2003–2008)
B
y the end of February 2003, it was obvious to the world that a
U.S.-led coalition was intent on invading Iraq. The stated goal was
twofold: remove Saddam Hussein from power and recover his supposed
cache of weapons of mass destruction. While a good deal of the world
opposed the idea of regime change by military intervention, many
Iraqis supported it. Leaders who had been living in exile in London and
Washington, D.C., had actively sought such an outcome, and some had
even assisted the United States in making its case.
Within Iraq, the mood was more cautious. Certainly, the removal of
Hussein would be welcomed by Shii Arabs as well as Kurds since both
groups had suffered greatly during his rule, especially in the wake of
the Persian Gulf War. Moreover, there were some Sunni groups and
tribes whose opposition to Hussein had made their positions tenu-
ous. Many tribal shaykhs had benefi ted greatly under Hussein, who
practiced a kind of government subsidy that in effect purchased tribal
loyalty. How ought they react to the upcoming invasion? As it turned
out, in many cases, they expected business to resume to normal, even
without Hussein in power. Furthermore, there had already been assas-
sination and coup attempts against Hussein. These had all failed. Who
was to say this latest threat would succeed?
Another reason for the caution was that no one was sure what to
expect after the fall of the Baathist regime. Would the Sunnis retain
their position as mandarins of Iraqi society? Would the Shiis fi nally
have a say in the government, respective of their majority status? And
what of the Kurds? Was their longtime dream of Kurdistan about to
come true? Or, would they enjoy an autonomy on par with Arab Iraq?
No one stopped to ponder these questions in the rush toward war early
in 2003. And as civil society broke down in the weeks and months
247
THE WAR IN IRAQ
after the coalition invasion of Iraq, the answers became muddled in
insurgent and sectarian violence. Old hatreds fl amed anew, even as the
infrastructure of Iraq burned. Within a year those who may have looked
upon the coalition forces as liberators, no longer did so. Yet, despite the
ongoing disaster, and to its credit, Iraq managed to forge a new govern-
ment, federal in nature, parliamentary in practice. The country had
taken its fi rst step toward recovery.
The First Phase of the War
With an overwhelming majority of the American public and the U.S.
Congress behind armed intervention in Iraq, not to mention a sizable
percentage of the American people falsely believing there had been a
connection between Hussein and the September 11, 2001, terrorist
attacks (thus linking the upcoming invasion with the U.S.-declared
“war on terror”), the Bush administration and the Labour government
of Prime Minister Tony Blair in Great Britain were confi dent of a quick
and successful invasion of Iraq. On March 18, 2003, Bush issued an
ultimatum to Hussein ordering the Iraqi dictator and his two sons, Udai
and Qusai, to leave Iraq, giving them a 48-hour deadline to honor the
ultimatum. Though he was offered sanctuary in Bahrain (as reported by
China’s Xinhua News Agency), Hussein appeared on Iraqi television in
military uniform and announced his refusal to leave Iraq. The next day,
the United States jumped the gun on the president’s deadline when it
bombed the compound of Hussein’s sons in a Baghdad suburb, where it
was mistakenly thought they were meeting with their father and other
Iraqi leaders. Instead, civilians, including a child, were killed, thus
becoming the fi rst “collateral damage” of a war that had yet to begin.
The invasion of Iraq, dubbed Operation Iraqi Freedom by forces of
the “Coalition of the Willing,” as the mostly U.S. and British multina-
tional force was called, took place on March 20, 2003, from staging
areas primarily in Kuwait. The original invasion plan had called for
simultaneous attacks from the north as well as the south, but Turkey
refused permission for coalition troops to amass in its territory. The
attack, with simultaneous aerial bombing and ground force assault (as
opposed to the Persian Gulf War where weeks of bombing preceded
the ground war), was termed shock and awe. With history in mind,
the British were charged with securing and occupying Basra and the
surrounding area, while U.S. forces swept northward for the assault
on Baghdad. This northward push was called Operation Cobra II, after
General George S. Patton’s Third Army breakout from Normandy in
A BRIEF HISTORY OF IRAQ
248
1944 during the liberation of France, the original Operation Cobra.
Within two days, forces were halfway to Baghdad, but it was not until
April 9, that the capital was formally under U.S. control. By then,
fi ghting in northern Iraq (with Kurds aiding the coalition forces) had
begun. This was the second prong in the original attack plan; part of
its mission was securing the Kirkuk oil fi elds, which was fairly easily
accomplished. With the British in the south securing the Rumaila fi elds
and the U.S. forces securing Kirkuk, there were far fewer oil well fi res
than had occurred in the Persian Gulf War.
The fall of Baghdad brought home the realization that Hussein was
no longer in power, yet he had managed to escape capture, as had his
sons. Others in the Iraqi leadership, however, had not. Deputy Prime
Minister Tariq Aziz surrendered to U.S. forces on April 24, after for-
mally handing over the reins of government to the coalition forces.
In search of Saddam Hussein, coalition forces had pushed toward his
hometown of Tikrit, which had become the fi nal major city to fall to
coalition forces on April 14. While the Battle of Tikrit yielded Hussein’s
political and clan stronghold, it failed to uncover the deposed leader.
Nevertheless, the Pentagon declared an end to major military opera-
tions. At that point, the (subsequently) estimated number of Iraqi
The fall of Saddam Hussein. American troops help topple a statue of the former dictator
in Palestine Square on April 9, 2003, the day coalition forces formally took control of
Baghdad.
(AP Photo/James Nachtwey)
249
THE WAR IN IRAQ
WERE THE WEAPONS
INSPECTIONS MERELY
A RUSE?
I
n his account of his role in the search for weapons of mass
destruction in Iraq, Hans Blix pointed out how the U.S.
government in the weeks before the onset of hostilities, tried to
portray him as an obstructionist—not to the inspection, but to the
invasion.
My refusal . . . to assume that items “unaccounted for” might
exist displeased some people in Washington. On March 2 the
New York Times reported “a senior administration offi cial” as
saying that “the inspections have turned out to be a trap. . . .
We’re not counting on Blix to do much of anything for us.” And
further: Blix had issued defi antly ambiguous pronouncements and
was now “more interested in pleasing all sides than stating the
facts” that Iraq had prohibited weapons, and that I did “not want
to go back to Sweden and be the cause of a war.” The criticism
was evidently based on the conviction that U.S./UK evidence was
conclusive and that my only reason for not swallowing it hook,
line and sinker was that I would not want to be seen as easing a
Security Council vote authorizing war.
The same article further reported that there was every hope
in the Washington administration that the votes for the [UN]
resolution [authorizing the invasion] could be obtained, “but
decreasing hope that Mr. Blix will be a help in rounding them
up.” Getting the UN votes authorizing the war was the main
U.S. preoccupation. That the professional inspectors, who had by
then visited many hundred sites based on intelligence tips, and
analyzed many thousands of documents, had not come to confi rm
U.S./UK assertions was apparently not an overwhelming concern
of the administrations.
. . . Arguing against the French proposal to intensify inspections
by tripling the number of inspectors, [U.S. secretary of defense]
Donald Rumsfeld was quoted in the International Herald
Tribune as saying that if you need inspectors to determine if
Iraq is complying, then one or two would do. In other words what
was needed was judgment, not inspection. The war was seen as
certain and the adoption of the resolution endorsing it desirable
but not indispensable (Blix 2004, 215–216).
A BRIEF HISTORY OF IRAQ
250
casualties was between 4,900 and 6,375, according to CBS News. Those
fi gures were subsequently revised upward.
On May 1, 2003, President Bush, in a staged television event, landed
in a jet fi ghter aboard the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, which
was in the process of returning to its home port of San Diego from the
Persian Gulf. The president, who emerged from the jet in a fl ight suit
and helmet with a banner declaring “Mission Accomplished” in large
letters as a backdrop, said, “The battle of Iraq is one victory in a war
on terror that began on September 11, 2001, and still goes on.” He
also stated in reference to al-Qaeda that “no terrorist network will gain
weapons of mass destruction from the Iraqi regime, because that regime
is no more.” Thus, in declaring victory, the president had reiterated two
falsehoods: that Iraq possessed WMD and that Hussein was in alliance
with bin Laden.
The Coalition Provisional Authority
With the notion of regime change fi rmly in their minds, the war plan-
ners, as had many others, posited a golden Iraqi future once Hussein
was deposed. But they gave little thought as to how to go about build-
ing such a golden future. Many felt that with the downfall of the Baath
Party would come a U.S.-assisted democracy that would refl ect the
pluralism of Iraqi society. Outwardly, this appeared so. Approximately
a month and a half before the invasion, President Bush decided to
leave the reconstruction of Iraq in the hands of the Pentagon, thus
making Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld a major player in the
postwar scenario. To handle this, the Offi ce for Reconstruction and
Humanitarian Affairs (ORHA) was established and headed by retired
general Jay Garner. Despite Garner’s military credentials, ORHA had
little acknowledgment or support from the military after the fall of
Baghdad. And though it seemed to be the working arm of the neo-
cons back in Washington, it never got its programs off the ground.
On May 22, 2003, the U.S. and British-sponsored United Nations
Resolution 1483 authorized the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA)
to ease Iraq’s transition to democracy and, while doing so, carry on the
reconstruction of the country. The United States reserved the right to
name the head of the CPA, and Rumsfeld chose L. Paul Bremer whom
President Bush earlier in the month had named U.S. envoy to Iraq.
The establishment of the CPA, with its power “to exercise executive,
legislative, and judicial powers” (Hashim 2006, 18), lent credence to
charges that the United States and United Kingdom were now occupy-
251
THE WAR IN IRAQ
ing powers. It also superseded ORHA, which became a department of
the CPA. Yet either way, ORHA or the CPA, Iraqi reconstruction and
postwar governance was done through the neocon prism within the
U.S. Department of Defense.
While the CPA was the real power in post-Hussein Iraq, it was
cloaked by the 25-member Governing Council. The council was com-
posed to refl ect Iraq’s ethnic and sectarian populations: “The Shi’a as
a group would hold a slim majority . . . Kurds and Sunni Arabs would
each have a roughly equal share of 20 percent of the seats,” and “minor-
ities such as the Turkomen and Christian communities would need
to be represented.” There were also political affi liations to consider:
Islamists, Kurdish parties, secularists, and liberal democrats, among
others (Allawi 2007, 164). Among the members of the Governing
Council were those who had made up the Leadership Council, but at
least one member of the Governing Council had been associated with
the Baath regime: Aquila al-Hashemi had been connected with Deputy
Prime Minister Aziz. She was shot on September 20, 2003, and died
three days later, never having made it to the UN General Assembly with
a delegation of her colleagues, who were hoping to convince the United
Nations to grant international recognition to the Governing Council
(and thereby undercut the power of the CPA). Her assassination was
dismaying evidence of how the insurgency was expanding.
The insurgency took many people by surprise, but it was only one
aspect that showed how poorly prepared the CPA was. The CPA under-
estimated the amount of damage that was done to Iraq’s infrastructure
by the invasion, which combined with, in the words of former postwar
fi nance minister Ali A. Allawi, the “advance state of decay” (Allawi 2007,
114) that Iraq had fallen into in the years after the Persian Gulf War
revealed that immediate postwar plans by the neocons in Washington,
D.C., as well as exiled Iraqis in London (of which Allawi was one)
were woefully shortsighted. Another error was made early as the coali-
tion forces, unable to prevent the breakdown of order in Baghdad (and
elsewhere), failed to properly protect the fi les of the Baath regime, the
exception to this being the Ministry of Oil. According to Allawi, these
government fi les not only contained incriminating evidence against
various Baath leaders but would have made future governance of Iraq
easier (Allawi 2007, 115).
In many cities and towns, but especially Baghdad, looting and arson
were for a time endemic to the overthrow of the regime. Food and other
goods became scarce; public facilities were damaged if not destroyed.
Securing proper health care became a problem as did procuring potable