Twenty years ago, the United States invaded Iraq under the pretext of “liberating” the country from Saddam Hussein. In a few days, the dictator’s regime fell, but in the face of the emergence of resistant armed groups, the fighting continued for years. The photos of the Abu Graihb prison, showing tortured and humiliated prisoners, the massacres of civilians and the deceased, gave another tone to this war. What was supposed to be a liberation for the Iraqis left them with indelible wounds and locked the country in a political chaos from which it has not been able to get out.
On March 20, 2003, US troops invaded Iraq and shelled its capital, Baghdad. A few days later, on April 9, Saddam Hussein’s dictatorial regime fell, along with his statue in Firdos Square.
The then President of the United States, George W. Bush, declared the victory of his country and that of his allies in Iraq, but at the same time, his troops began to confront various militias and resistant armed groups that emerged. A complex and long conflict began, which left hundreds of thousands dead and whose objectives were never achieved.
The invasion was illegal, according to United Nations principles, and violated international law. To justify his intervention, Bush argued that Saddam Hussein, a dictator in power for more than 20 years, had weapons of mass destruction and possibly had links to Al-Qaeda, the fundamentalist terrorist organization responsible for the attacks on the Twin Towers in New York in 2001.
However, a few months later, it was confirmed that Saddam Hussein did not possess such weapons and had no ties to Al-Qaeda. And the magnifying glass would be placed on the interests of the United States —which also used the pretext of “liberating” Iraq and “democratizing” the country— such as exerting influence in a territory with large oil reserves.
Massacres of civilians and war crimes
In addition to illegally invading a country and violating its sovereignty, the United States committed numerous war crimes and human rights violations. Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison was one of the symbols of the unprecedented violence of the war. There, there were practices of torture: prolonged sleep deprivation, coercion to maintain sometimes extremely painful positions, exposure to loud music and very bright light.
In April 2004, the US media published photos of US soldiers torturing detainees. The most famous showed a hooded man standing on a box, holding electrical cables in his hands. Others showed naked prisoners, piled one on top of the other, forming a human pyramid, forced to simulate sexual acts and adopt humiliating positions.
Massacres were also committed against the civilian population, such as in the Sunni town of Haditha in 2005. US marines killed entire families in their homes, in total 24 civilians were killed, under the pretext that they had been killed in an explosion. Another story that came to light in the American media.
A catastrophic war in human terms
The war was devastating for the civilian population. The part of the Iraqis that received the intervention with the hope of a change after the regime of Saddam Hussein, quickly realized that the bombardments did not stop and that the deaths were piling up. It is estimated that more than 200,000 Iraqi civilians were killed in the fighting, while around 400,000 died as a result of the war.
Not only Saddam Hussein’s regime fell, but also the country’s institutions, so people no longer had access to medical care, drinking water, basic services, essential products, among many others. Effects that continue to this day.
“If we talk about indirect consequences, we also have to think of tens of thousands of people who are injured, who cannot work or who cannot carry out their regular activities,” explains Agustin Berea, an academic at the Universidad Iberoamericana de México and a specialist in the Middle East region, for France 24.
Berea adds that when a government falls “it leaves a political vacuum and that allows the infrastructure of health, public services, electricity, and water to collapse.” All these are impacts, which he, she assures, will continue to be seen “in the very long term.”
The Iraqi population also lost an immense cultural heritage. After the capture of Baghdad, looters entered the capital’s museums, libraries, and archaeological sites, destroying and looting valuable cultural assets left unprotected by the US Army. In addition, with the years of occupation by the troops, there were also multiple irregularities in the inventories of antiquities and many goods disappeared.
“Since the first days of the invasion and to date, the number of invaluable artifacts, many of them dating back to the history of ancient Mesopotamia, have disappeared. In some cases we know they were destroyed, in other cases they were there and after they were no longer there,” explains Berea.
The open door to fundamentalist terrorism
Although the United States was in the midst of its war against terrorism and against what Bush called “the axis of evil”, the war in Iraq led directly to the strengthening of several fundamentalist terrorist groups and particularly to the creation of the self-styled Islamic State.
Under Saddam Hussein’s regime, the Sunni community ruled the country. When the United States overthrew Hussein’s Ba’ath Party and formed a Shiite government, the Sunnis found themselves humiliated and disempowered. Fundamentalist Sunni currents appeared, different from the traditional Sunni movements, which are secular in tendency. These currents considered the Iraqi regime illegitimate and made it their mission to return power to their community.
The project of the self-styled Islamic State was born in Iraq, and its initial objective was to return control of the Iraqi state to the Sunnis.
Furthermore, by putting the Shiite community in power and ousting a secular political party, the United States created divisions between the different communities in Iraq. After 2003, tensions between Sunnis and Shiites escalated, reaching a state of civil war.
“Saddam Hussein’s government was a dictatorship, but it was a secular dictatorship, (…) when Saddam Hussein’s regime fell, (…) it created an opportunity for many movements of political Islam that began to spread throughout the region. And That happens in Iraq, but also in Syria, when it seems that the government is going to fall, all these groups that had been there for a long time begin to leave,” says Berea.
A political instability that lasts
Iraqis continue to live in an unstable country, with a weak state, a corrupt political system and no political representation.
The political vacuum and the rise to power of the Shi’ites allowed Iran—a Shi’ite Islamic Republic—to interfere in Iraq’s political affairs for many years. Until recently, Tehran decided who became prime minister in the country.
Furthermore, although the war is officially over, the country is often subject to attacks by various armed groups. Twenty years later, some 2,500 US troops are still on the ground to assist the Iraqi Army in its fight against the groups that continue to try to seize power.
“Technically, the war is over in terms of international involvement. But in terms of internal conflict, it is still very active and no more than one or two weeks go by without attacks between different factions continuing,” the specialist concludes.
The US invasion of Iraq altered and transformed the Iraqi horizon in the long term. The population still suffers from the lack of institutions and the lasting economic effects of the war. The stability that they had been promised at the beginning never came.
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