The Iraq War (2003–2011) or Second Gulf War which was fought between 2003 and 2011, primarily between the United States and various Iraqi powers, though the United Kingdom and a number of other American allies also played a role. The war started in 2003 as the US invaded the country to overthrow the Ba’ath regime of Saddam Hussein as part of the US War on Terror that followed the 9/11 attacks of 2001. While Hussein and his regime were quickly defeated, the Anglo-American occupation of the country aroused immense opposition in Iraq and the conflict against religious insurgents in the country proved far bloodier in the years that followed. Troop surges were needed to bring some stability and once that was achieved the Americans and British disentangled themselves from Iraq, leaving in 2011. The unrest created by the war further added to an Iraqi refugee crisis and diaspora that had begun back in the early 1990s at the time of the First Gulf War.[1]
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Iraq War chronology of eventsIraq War chronology of events
The Iraq War was not the first time that the United States went to war with Iraq. Back in 1990 Saddam Hussein had invaded neighboring Kuwait, an oil-rich nation on the Persian Gulf that Iraq owed extensive sums of money to after the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s. Iraqi invasion and annexation of Kuwait in August 1990 led to a diplomatic standoff and then the inception of Operation Desert Storm in January 1991. However, the US did not initiate a large scale invasion of Iraq itself and did not engage in regime change. Hussein’s Iraq was placed under heavy sanctions instead through the 1990s and into the early 2000s. What changed matters was the 9/11 attacks on the US in September 2001 and the inception of the US War on Terror. Once the administration of President George W. Bush had completed its initial operations in Afghanistan in 2001 and 2002 it moved on to considering the removal of Hussein from power in 2003. The invasion of Iraq was viewed as a war of adventure and an act of American neo-imperialism in the Middle East by many of America’s traditional allies such as France and the invasion was controversial from the very beginning.[2]
The Iraq War or Second Gulf War commenced in March 2003 when US, British and other allied forces invaded Iraq. The Iraqi security forces crumbled in the face of the invasion and by mid-April the alliance’s forces were largely in control of the country. The leaders of the Ba’ath Party had fled into hiding and were only gradually killed or captured. Hussein was apprehended hiding in a hole in the ground in December 2003. After a long incarceration and trial he was executed in December 2006.[3]
While the initial invasion was a striking success, the occupation of Iraq opened up a series of much graver problems as nationalist and religious tensions that had been held at bay by the Ba’ath regime for years exploded into action. By 2004 the US and British were fighting a very violent and difficult counterinsurgency and asymmetrical war across Iraq. With large parts of the country effectively coming under the rule of local militias and religious leaders, a US troop surge was initiated to bring in tens of thousands of more US marines. This did serve to stabilize the country to some extent over the next year and a half.[4]
The inauguration of Barack Obama as president of the United States then led to a process of disentanglement as the US sought to leave the country. By 2011 it was believed that the security situation and the political system were stable enough that US soldiers could be pulled out of the country. Iraq descended into renewed violence in the years that followed. The death toll of the war is widely debated. Some estimates suggest the direct number of deaths was around 300,000, but others argue that the death toll was as high as one million people when indirect deaths are taken into account.[5]
Extent of migration during and after the Iraq WarExtent of migration during and after the Iraq War
The US-led intervention in Iraq and the occupation and asymmetrical war which followed led to massive displacement in Iraq. By some estimates, over nine million people were temporarily or permanently displaced internally and externally. A great many of these were able to return to where they lived after a time or settled elsewhere in Iraq, but many had their lives uprooted by the conflict and hundreds of thousands left the country altogether during the period of US occupation.[6] There are still hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who began migrating twenty years ago displaced today. Thus, in years to come many millions of people will trace an ancestor who migrated because of the Second Gulf War.[7]
Yet the migratory impact of the war was greater still. It was part of a wider destabilization of parts of the Middle East that included events like the Arab Spring and the outbreak of the Syrian Civil War in the early 2010s, just as the US withdrawal was underway. These in turn led to the rise of ISIS, the ultra-radical Islamic religious movement that acquired control over an extensive amount of territory in Syria and northern Iraq in the mid-2010s. As they did so it created a very large refugee crisis that led to millions of people fleeing from Syria and Iraq. Therefore, long after the US intervention in Iraq officially came to an end in 2011, the Second Gulf War was still impacting on migration trends in the Middle East and further afield. An estimated 3 million Iraqis were displaced alone between 2014 and 2019.[8]
Demographic impact of the Iraq WarDemographic impact of the Iraq War
The demographic impact of the Iraq War has been mixed. On the one hand, it has not stymied demographic growth in Iraq itself. The population of the country was around 26 million people in 2003 when the invasion began.[9] By 2015 the population had increased to an estimated 33 million, although censuses were not being carried out in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, so these figures are somewhat conjectural. Today the population of the country is believed to be 46 million people, a vast increase which demographers have suggested is owing to a sharp decline in infant mortality following the US intervention in 2003.[10]
Further afield the Iraqi diaspora has expanded considerably owing to the migration which was already occurring from Iraq since the 1980s and which expanded again from the mid-2000s onwards. Many Iraqis ended up migrating to other Muslim countries in the Near East such as Iran, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates and Turkey, in which hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who have migrated since the mid-2000s live today.[11] In Europe hundreds of thousands of Iraqis arrived as part of the European Union migration crisis of the mid-2010s. A particularly large number of Iraqis live as a result in Germany, United Kingdom and Sweden, though there is a surprisingly small diaspora community in some European countries like France.
See alsoSee also
Explore more about the Iraq WarExplore more about the Iraq War
- The Iraq War at Council on Foreign Relations
- A Look Back at How Fear and False Beliefs Bolstered U.S. Public Support for War in Iraq at Pew Research Center
- Iraq War: The Counter-Insurgency at National Army Museum
References
- ↑ https://www.cfr.org/timeline/iraq-war
- ↑ https://tnsr.org/2023/06/why-did-the-united-states-invade-iraq-the-debate-at-20-years/
- ↑ https://www.cfr.org/timeline/iraq-war
- ↑ https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0030438718300826
- ↑ https://theintercept.com/2023/03/18/iraq-war-death-toll/
- ↑ https://www.csis.org/analysis/iraq-20-years-after-invasion-humanitarian-displacement-and-climate-change-challenges
- ↑ https://www.unrefugees.org/emergencies/iraq/
- ↑ https://www.unrefugees.org/news/iraq-refugee-crisis-explained/
- ↑ https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/iraq-population/
- ↑ https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25849945
- ↑ https://www.mrciraq.iq/en/migration-network/iraqi-diaspora