U.S.-Iraq War

IV

Aftermath of the Invasion

Under the Bush administration's initial postwar plan, the Office for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA), a newly created Defense Department organization, was to oversee the political and economic reconstruction of Iraq. The organization had anticipated dealing with famine, refugees, and other humanitarian crises in Iraq—none of which emerged. Faced with continued hostilities and unexpected, severe problems in restoring electricity and oil production, it made modest progress toward rebuilding Iraq's infrastructure and political institutions. ORHA was soon replaced by a new organization, the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), which was headed by L. Paul Bremer III, a former counterterrorism official at the State Department. 

Bremer made a number of controversial policy decisions. He dissolved the Iraqi army and organized a program to create a new Iraqi military, which was intended to number only 40,000 people after two years. Bremer also excluded about 30,000 former high-level Baath Party members from employment in the Iraqi public sector. Coalition officials said the move was necessary to break the Baath Party’s hold on power once and for all, but critics said it was too sweeping and deprived the governing authority of experts needed to run the country. Eventually, the CPA made exceptions to the policy. Additionally, Bremer put off the transfer of power to an interim Iraqi governing authority. Bremer argued that a new constitution needed to be drawn up before elections could be organized for a new Iraqi government, which would control its own affairs.

After the dissolution of the army and the firing of former Baath Party members, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi men suddenly found themselves without a livelihood. Many experts later concluded that the unemployed men would fill the ranks of the Sunni insurgency and of Shia militias, both of which soon grew in strength.

Bremer’s plan to appoint a committee to draft the Iraqi constitution met opposition from Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the spiritual leader of Iraq’s Shia Muslims. Sistani insisted that a permanent constitution for the country could only be drafted by delegates elected by the Iraqi people and so reflecting the general will of the country. In the end, Bremer was forced to accept Sistani’s dictum.

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The emergence of Shia mass party politics was one of the big surprises that faced the U.S. administrators of Iraq. Modern Shia political party organizing had begun in the late 1950s with the Da`wa Party, which aimed at establishing an Islamic state with Islamic law as its basis. The Da`wa became popular among many Shia, but had to go underground after it was banned in 1980. Its leadership fled to London, England, and Tehrān, the capital of neighboring Iran, which is made up overwhelmingly of Shia Muslims. Also based in Tehrān was the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), founded with Iranian support among Iraqi expatriates in 1982 during the Iran-Iraq War.

SCIRI developed a paramilitary arm, the Badr Corps, which ultimately grew to be some 15,000 strong. It conducted repeated raids against Baath Party strongholds in Iraq from bases in Iran. Inside Iraq, aside from continued Da`wa organizing, a third major movement grew up in the 1990s. Led by Ayatollah Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr, the Sadrists tended to be poor slum dwellers or rural tribesmen. They favored puritan morality, enforced by informal morals police in the form of neighborhood gangs. Al-Sadr was assassinated by the Baath state in 1999. After the war, his young son, Muqtada al-Sadr, entered the public arena as the leader of the movement, and began organizing regular demonstrations against the U.S. presence in Iraq in Baghdād, Basra, and other cities.

A

A Growing Insurgency

Facing a growing guerrilla war as well as al-Sadr’s street protests, Bremer reconsidered his initial plan to have the CPA rule Iraq alone. He installed a 25-member Iraqi governing council on July 13 with seats distributed among different religious and ethnic groups. However, the interim council had only limited authority, and the Iraqi ministries were supervised by a coalition adviser.

By September coalition forces had achieved considerable success in restoring order in and around the northern city of Mosul and across much of the south. But establishing order over the Sunni Arab-dominated center-north of the country, which included Baghdād and the Diyala, Salahuddin, and Anbar provinces, remained a challenge. Car bombings became the weapon of choice for Iraqis who opposed the coalition occupation. In Baghdād, car bombs ripped apart the Jordanian Embassy on August 7 and blew up the UN compound on August 19, killing Sergio Vieira de Mello, the UN secretary general's special representative in Iraq. A car bomb attack in An Najaf on August 29 killed Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim, the leader of the SCIRI, who had cooperated with the U.S.-led occupation. The following month, gunmen killed a member of the governing council in an attack near her Baghdād home.

During combat operations and in the subsequent months, U.S. and coalition forces succeeded in capturing or killing many of the leading members of Saddam Hussein’s government. Saddam’s sons, Uday and Qusay Hussein, were both killed in a July 22 firefight in Mosul. However, Saddam Hussein himself remained at large for months.

By the end of the summer of 2003, the Bush administration was faced with continued instability in Iraq and the prospect of a prolonged deployment of substantial U.S. forces. In September Bush requested from the U.S. Congress and subsequently received an additional $87 billion for combat and reconstruction, almost all of the money earmarked for Iraq.

By October 2003, it was clear that the CPA simply lacked the legitimacy to rule Iraq, and that the Sunni Arab guerrilla movement and Shia dissidence were growing. Bremer flew to Washington for consultations and a new approach was devised. On November 15, the interim governing council concluded a pact with Bremer that called for caucus-based elections of an Iraqi parliament in May 2004, after which the United States would devolve sovereignty on the new Iraqi government. The caucuses would consist of members of provincial governing assemblies, bodies that had been installed by the United States and Britain. This plan met heavy resistance from Grand Ayatollah Sistani, since it did not involve one-person, one-vote elections. Sistani insisted on open elections and demanded UN involvement in determining their feasibility.

The Bush administration initially resisted Sistani’s demands. But in mid-January 2004, Sistani called large crowds into the streets. Some 40,000 Shia in Basra demonstrated for democratic elections, and then 100,000 came out in Baghdād. The Bush administration then acquiesced, cooperating with a fact-finding mission by UN special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi and agreeing to the principle of open, democratic elections. The interim governing council was tasked with drafting a Temporary Administrative Law to serve as an interim constitution until the elected parliament could draft a permanent charter.

B

Failure to Find Weapons of Mass Destruction

Critics of the Bush and Blair administrations grew more vocal as months went by without coalition forces unearthing evidence of Iraq’s alleged chemical or biological weapons stockpiles or its suspected program to develop nuclear weapons. A U.S. team called the Iraq Survey Group, which was charged with surveying Iraq’s weapons programs, released an interim report in October 2003 stating that it had so far failed to find any chemical or biological weapons in Iraq, or any evidence that Iraq was actively developing nuclear weapons. The team’s leader, David Kay, resigned in January 2004, telling a congressional committee that Iraq probably had no weapons of mass destruction.

The final report of the Iraq Survey Group undermined virtually every claim the Bush administration had made about Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction. For example, it found that the aluminum tubes Iraq had supposedly ordered for use in a nuclear weapons program were, in fact, for use in Iraqi artillery rockets. The report found that Iraq had discontinued its chemical and biological weapons programs and had not reconstituted a nuclear weapons program.

Bush’s assertion in his January 2003 State of the Union address that Hussein had attempted to buy uranium from Africa also came under fire as a result of disclosures by Joseph Wilson. Wilson was a former U.S. diplomat who had gone to Niger, the African nation that was the alleged source, to investigate the claim for the CIA. Wilson said his investigation showed that it was virtually impossible for Iraq to obtain uranium from a French-run consortium in Niger. In July 2003 the Bush administration admitted that the statement was inaccurate and based on forged documents. On September 17, 2003, Bush also conceded there was no evidence that the Iraqi regime had ties to al-Qaeda, the terrorist group responsible for the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. Bush had previously linked al-Qaeda to the Hussein regime. Despite this admission, other members of the Bush administration, particularly
Vice President Cheney, continued to link Hussein and al-Qaeda, and at times, Bush himself resurrected the alleged link. See also Valerie Plame Wilson Affair.

C

Hussein Captured but Fighting Continues

The coalition’s morale lifted in December 2003 when U.S. forces captured Saddam Hussein in a nighttime raid on a farmhouse near Tikrīt. Hiding in a small, underground chamber, the deposed leader was apprehended without a fight. Members of the Iraqi Governing Council pledged to try Hussein for crimes against humanity in a public trial. President Bush welcomed the end of “a dark and painful era” but cautioned that Hussein’s capture did not mean an end to the violent insurgency against U.S. forces in Iraq.

The Sunni Arab regions increasingly went into the hands of the guerrillas, a mixed assortment of ex-Baathists, nationalists, Sunni religious revivalists, and tribal groupings. In the western city of Fallūjah on March 31, 2004, four private security guards—three Americans and one South African—were killed and their bodies desecrated. The Bush administration ordered an assault on the city, but as word of heavy civilian casualties leaked out, public opinion in Iraq turned against the operation and members of the interim governing council threatened to resign. The Bush administration then backed off, attempting to reach a political settlement with the city’s elites.

Also in early April, U.S. authorities decided to attempt to “kill or capture” Muqtada al-Sadr, whose Shia militia, the Mahdi Army, was viewed as an impediment to law and order, though it had not come into conflict with U.S. troops. Al-Sadr eluded the Americans and ordered a general uprising. Mahdi Army militiamen took over most police stations in East Baghdād and in cities throughout the south, such as An Najaf and An Nāsirīya. They expelled the Ukrainian troops from their base at Al Kūt and took it over. The U.S. military lost control of much of Baghdād and lost its supply and communications lines to the south, as large-scale fighting broke out. This conflict led to the deadliest month of the war to date for both sides. About 1,361 Iraqi civilians and 1,000 insurgents were killed, while 136 U.S. troops died in April.

Public opinion polls showed that a majority of Iraqis opposed the U.S. occupation and wanted U.S. troops to leave. Support declined further following the disclosure that U.S. military and civilian personnel had abused some Iraqi prisoners by subjecting them to sexual humiliation and other acts of degradation (see Abu Ghraib Scandal). Public opinion polls in the United States also showed waning support for the war among Americans. In 2005 President Bush began to receive low approval ratings for his conduct of the war in Iraq.

U.S. military commanders kept about 140,000 U.S. troops in Iraq through 2005. Facing growing public discontent with the war, the Bush administration said it planned to reduce U.S. forces in 2006, but in the fall of 2006 U.S. military commanders said a force of 140,000 would be required until 2010. Spain’s decision to withdraw its 1,300 troops after April 2004 was a harbinger of the departure of large numbers of small coalition units in 2005, as Norway, Thailand, and other countries concluded that their original peacekeeping mission threatened to become more of a military mission. In December 2005 Bulgaria and Ukraine withdrew the last of their troops—about 1,500 soldiers—and in June 2006 Japan began withdrawing its force of about 600 soldiers, who were engaged in humanitarian and noncombat duties. In June 2008 Australia ended its combat role in Iraq and withdrew its troops. Australia’s participation had become controversial in that country and was a significant factor in parliamentary elections that led to a change in government. Poland ended its involvement in October 2008, withdrawing its force of 900 troops. The same month the Czech Republic announced that it would be withdrawing its contingent of 100 troops who were being used mainly in coordination with British troops.

Because U.S. and British forces played the principal combat role in Iraq, the departure of smaller forces was believed to have more of a political than a military impact. In addition to the U.S. force, Britain maintained about 7,000 troops in Iraq in 2006, mainly around the city of al Başrah. However, in October 2006 British participation came into question when Britain’s new army chief, General Sir Richard Dannatt, called for a withdrawal of British troops “sometime soon” because, he said, the presence of foreign troops was worsening the situation. In what was regarded as an unusual critique of a foreign policy position by a military commander, Dannatt also said he believed the presence of British troops in Iraq affected domestic security within the United Kingdom. In July 2007 Britain announced plans to begin withdrawing its remaining 5,500 troops from the center of al Başrah to an airport headquarters outside the city. Britain also shifted some of its forces from Iraq to Afghanistan. In December 2007 Britain handed over control of al Başrah to Iraqi forces and withdrew its remaining 4,500 troops to its airport headquarters.

In December 2008 British Defense Ministry officials outlined a plan to begin withdrawing the remaining British troops in March 2009. The withdrawal was completed at the end of April 2009, marking the conclusion of the British combat role in Iraq. Ending the British military role in Iraq was a goal of Prime Minister Gordon Brown, whose Labour Party faces parliamentary elections in June 2010.

V

Reassessing the U.S. Invasion and Occupation

Britain was not alone in having leading military figures question the ongoing occupation. October 2006 also saw a number of recently retired U.S. generals make public statements against U.S. strategy and policy in Iraq. The wartime dissents by such figures as Major General Charles Swannack, Jr., and Major General John Batiste, both of whom had commanded combat troops in Iraq, were regarded as unprecedented in U.S. history. Much of the criticism was directed at Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and his decision to ignore the original recommendation of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for an initial invasion force of about 400,000 troops. But some of the criticism expressed opposition to the decision to invade. Retired Lieutenant General William Odom called the Iraq war “the worst strategic mistake in the history of the United States.” Marine Lieutenant General Gregory Newbold revealed that he had purposely retired prior to the war, which he called “unnecessary,” because of his opposition to “those who used 9/11’s tragedy to hijack our security policy.”

Going into the November 2006 midterm elections to the U.S. Congress, polls showed that a substantial majority of voters opposed the Bush administration’s handling of the war. The polls revealed that the war figured prominently in how voters decided to cast their ballots. The elections resulted in what President Bush called a “thumping” for the Republican Party, which lost control of both the House and Senate for the first time in 12 years. Immediately after the elections, Rumsfeld announced his retirement. He was replaced by Robert M. Gates, a former CIA director and a member of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group. Gates was known as a protégé of former national security adviser Brent Scrowcroft, who had opposed the U.S. invasion.

In December 2006 the Iraq Study Group, which was created and funded by the U.S. Congress in 2005 to provide an assessment of the war, released its much-awaited report. The report said that the situation in Iraq was “grave and deteriorating.” Headed by former Secretary of State James Baker and former Congressman Lee Hamilton, the Iraq Study Group found that the principal cause of instability was sectarian conflict and that the collapse of Iraq’s government and a humanitarian catastrophe could result if stability was not restored. The report made 79 recommendations envisioning ways in which a national reconciliation could occur among Iraq’s Kurds, Shia, and Sunni Muslims, paving the way for U.S. combat forces to leave by early 2008 while retaining a smaller U.S. force that would become embedded in the Iraqi Army. The report also called for a comprehensive peace settlement throughout the Middle East involving Israel and its conflict with the Palestinians, Lebanon, and Syria. The Study Group recommended that the United States negotiate with Syria and Iran without preconditions with the goal of enlisting their aid to bring stability to Iraq. Finally, the report warned that a failure to bring peace and stability to Iraq would result in a diminished international and regional standing for the United States and a propaganda victory for al-Qaeda, which it said was trying to instigate a wider sectarian war in Iraq.

The report initially received a mixed reaction, with neither the Bush administration nor the Democratic opposition embracing all of its recommendations, as the study group had urged. Contradicting earlier positions that the United States was winning the war in Iraq and only needed to “stay the course,” President Bush in late December 2006 began to characterize the war as being neither won nor lost while saying he recognized that new policies were needed and staying the course was no longer sufficient. Bush said that he was studying the Iraq Study Group report along with other assessments of the continuing occupation, including a paper written by Frederick Kagan of the conservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a so-called think tank funded by many of America’s leading corporations, such as Exxon Mobil.

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