The Iraq Crisis - An Overview

From: www.mideastweb.org/iraq.htm

Iraq and other “Persian Gulf” countries were created following World War I as protectorates of Great Britain. They were carved out of Mesopotamia, formerly part of the Turkish Empire. Iraq itself includes three major groups: Sunni Muslims in the center surrounding the capital of Baghdad, Kurds in the north and Shi’a Muslims in the south. About 15% of the population is Kurdish, 80% Arab. Some 60% are Shi’ite Arab Muslims like their neighbors in Iran, but they are Arabs, not Persians. There are also significant Assyrian and Turkomen minorities in the north. None of of these groups were given any national rights in the League of nations settlement. National and tribal disputes, as well as friction with Western powers trying to control Iraqi oil, have played a great part in Iraqi history. British and US interests were fixed on Iraq after early discoveries of petroleum there, and the US succeeded in pressuring Great Britain to share petroleum rights in Iraq. 

In 1931, Iraq became independent with a pro-British regime under King Feisal and Nuri-as-Said. A pro-Axis coup in 1941 was reversed by British intervention. After World War II, the US, worried about Soviet influence, tried to make Iraq the anchor of a NATO-like pro-Western alliance, the Baghdad pact.  In 1958, the pro-West government was overthrown by ‘Abd al-Karim Qasim. Qasim survived a Ba’athist coup that included participation of Saddam Hussein in 1959. Kuwait and other neighboring protectorates became independent of Britain beginning in 1961, and Iraq laid claims on them owing to oil resources and the need for outlets to the sea.  Qasim was overthrown in 1963 by Abd al-Salam ‘Arif, apparenlty with the help of the CIA. Arif’s government was overthrown by a Baathist coup in 1968 with the aid of the US Central Intelligence Agency, which had supposedly been encouraging the Baath and Saddam Hussein for many years.

By 1979, Saddam Hussein had become Prime Minister and began consolidating a dictatorial regime. Saddam appointed most high officials from among members of his family and natives of his home town village of Tikriti.

Iran and Iraq have had a running border dispute that involves the delineation of the border, water rights along the Shatt-El-Arab waterway and navigation rights. The Shat El-Arab constitutes Iraq’s only outlet to the sea. Iran had laid claims to border territories and and taken them by force, and had also supported a Kurdish revolt. A 1975 treaty following the Algiers accord of that year had supposedly settled the dispute. The Shah withdrew support for the Kurdish revolt, which collapsed. However, the agreement was not honored in full and Iran did not return all the land that Iraq considered to be its own.

Saddam decided to capitalize on the disorder of the Iranian revolution, and the antipathy to Iran that had been generated in the West and especially in the US, in order to pursue a war for territory and navigation rights with Iran. He invaded Iran in 1980, initiating an eight year war that cost about a million casualties. During the war, Saddam used chemical warfare against Iran as well as in suppressing internal revolts by the Kurds in the north. The Iranians used gas warfare as well. Saddam’s suppression of Kurds, known as the anfal, began in 1987 and killed an estimated 182,000, destroying thousands of villages and creating about 400,000 refugees. The United States and Western powers supported Iraq with arms and Western companies helped Saddam build chemical, biological and nuclear weapons capabilities. In 1981, Israel attacked and destroyed an Iraqi nuclear reactor supplied by France, where Saddam had hoped to produce enough fissionable material to make a bomb. Subsequently, Iraq concentrated on trying to obtain fissionable materials from abroad apparently. A secret 1988 document revealed a plan to use radioactive Zirconium as the basis of “dirty bombs.” The war with Iran came to an end in 1988 after both sides were exhausted. Saddam was heavily in debt because of the war, and sought financial aid from different countries. When that was not forthcoming, he began charging that Kuwait was illegally pumping oil that actually belonged to Iraq.

In August 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait despite warnings from the US and Egypt, and it conquered and annexed Kuwait. Iraq did not respond to US, Arab country and UN warnings to withdraw from Kuwait. Accordingly, UN allies led by the USA launched operation Desert Storm in February 1991, successfully reversing the invasion of Kuwait. However, the US did not try to remove Saddam Hussein from power and allowed him to suppress Kurdish and Shi’a revolts. Under terms of the UN resolutions terminating the war, Iraq was to have destroyed all stockpiles and development facilities for nonconventional weapons. A UN inspection mechanism was created to verify the destruction. A mechanism of economic sanctions against Iraq was put in place in an attempt to get Saddam to comply with the disarmament provisions of previous resolutions. A long series of UN resolutions cited Iraqi violations and attempted to obtain Iraqi compliance with previous resolutions.  Iraq did not disclose much of its chemical  biological and nuclear weapons capabilities voluntarily, but the UN inspections by UNSCOM and reports by defectors did disclose stockpiles of VX and other agents. In 1998, after the discovery that Iraq was weaponizing VX, Iraq halted cooperation with inspectors. Despite sporadic allied bombing raids, no concerted effort was made to return the inspectors to Iraq (in 1999 UNSCOM was dissolved and replaced by UNMOVIC).

According to critics, the UN-imposed economic sanctions caused extreme hardship and poverty in Iraq. An oil for food program established in 1995 by UN Security Council Resolution 986 allowed Iraq to export limited quantities of oil to pay for food and medicines. However, Iraq diverted part of the income from this program to weapons development by charging a clandestine surcharge. Credits for cheap oil were also distributed to foreign politicians and others who could be helpful to Saddam’s regime. Jordan was an active trading partner with Iraq.  According to the dossier released by the British government in 2002, Iraq earned an estimated $3 billion in illicit revenues in 2001 (CIA estimates are much higher), used for developing weapons capabilities and other aggressive activities. According to the U.S. State department, Iraq has been exporting food received under the oil for food program, and has earned revenues from this program that should have been more than adequate to provide food, clothing and medical supplies for the Iraqi populace.

Iraq was linked to an attempted assassination of former US President George Bush, and supported Palestinian suicide bombings and other violence openly, in return for Palestinian support of Iraq.  Saddam Hussein  paid  rewards of $25,000 to families of Palestinian suicide bombers.   Iraq under Saddam was known to sponsor Palestinian terrorist groups, including (until recently at least) the Fatah Revolutionary Council, known as the  “Abu Nidal group.” The Ansar Al-Islam group, affiliated with Al-Qaeda, was based in northern Iraq, but its relation to the Saddam regime was unclear. 

Following the September 11, 2001  terror attacks on the World Trade Center, the United States began making it successively more clear that it intended to remove the regime of Saddam Hussein, and toward the end of 2002, it became increasingly apparent that the US intended to launch a renewed invasion of Iraq.

US government officials, including Condoleeza Rice,  charged that Iraq is linked to the Al-Qaeda network of Osama Bin Laden, and may have been implicated in the World Trade Center attacks. Specific charges include evidence from defectors that hijackers trained on a mock-up Boeing 707 at Salman Pak base, and evidence that hijacker Mohamed Atta met with an Iraqi diplomat in Czechoslovakia. The US believed that Saddam had substantial quantities of chemical and biological weapons, and was actively pursuing a nuclear weapons program. However, the US government has yet (January 2004) to release any official document providing evidence that links Saddam to Al-Qaeda or the World Trade Center attack, and in fact, the US government has all but admitted that these charges were unfounded.

Iraq attempted to mend relations with key Muslim states including Iran and Syria, in order to prevent formation of a second coalition to support a war against it.   In September 2002, the question of Iraq was returned to the UN as rumors and signs of US war preparations increased. President Bush addressed the UN September 12, 2002 and asked for multilateral action against Iraq based on a new resolution to be proposed by the United States and others. Iraq responded by promptly agreeing to unconditional renewal of inspections provided that no resolution was passed.  The US effort to gather support for an attack on Iraq faced opposition on the following grounds:

Arab countries and supporters who claimed that any action against Iraq is an action aimed at all Arabs, and serves Israeli interests.

Those who believed that the inspections should be renewed and continued.

Those who believed that the US should not act without UN backing. Many people of this opinion also opposed a UN resolution.

The US and Britain obtained an initial resolution (1441) authorizing inspections, and Iraq complied. Inspectors reported slow progress since the resolution was passed in October 2002. Both Hans Blix, head of the UNMOVIC inspection team and Mohamed El-Baradei of the International Atomic Energy Agency insisted that they needed more time to continue inspections. Blix noted that Iraqis were not cooperating fully and did not allow any examination of scientists outside Iraq. He also noted that the initial report issued by Iraq did not account for WMD and weapons that were found in previous inspections and supposedly destroyed. Mohamed El-Baradei, head of the IAEA, claimed there was no evidence that Iraq possessed any nuclear capability. At least one intelligence report that had formed the basis of the case made by the US that Iraq was trying to acquire nuclear capabilities turned out to be based on forged documents. The US and Britain were not able to get agreement on a second UN resolution that would authorize force. France and Russia threatened to veto any such resolution, while Germany, which does not have a seat on the Security council, also opposed it. Nonetheless, US President Bush made a speech giving Iraq 48 hours to prove that it was disarming, and when they failed to comply. The US claimed it had assembled a “coalition” of over countries that supported the attack, but most countries opposed it, including almost every country in Europe and all countries in the Middle East except Israel.  US and British forces that had massed around Iraq, attacked. The attack opened on the evening of March 18 with a failed attempt to kill Saddam Hussein and other top officials who were meeting in Baghdad. For several days, the US continued to claim that Saddam was dead, and that Iraqi forces were disorganized, though Saddam appeared and spoke on Iraqi television. The initial cruise missile attack was followed several hours later by bombing of Baghdad and advances of US and British troops from Kuwait northward, taking the port city of Umm Qasr and the Fao peninsula, and besieging Basra.

The allied attack was hampered by the fact that Turkey did not allow US forces to enter Iraq from its territory, virtually eliminating a northern front in the first days. However, it is now believed that this was a ruse to keep Iraqi attention away from the main attack, which came from the south. By March 27, the  US had landed about 1,000 paratroops near Irbil in the north, and promised that more were on their way. Kurdish forces crossed out of the “safe zone” established for Kurds in 1991 and into Iraq-held territory near Chamchamal. However, the long columns of willing deserters that the Americans expected did not immediately materialize. The advance was held up by sand storms that prevented air support and plagued by casualties from friendly fire. Americans were dismayed when US helicopter pilots were taken prisoner and shown on Iraqi television. Coalition forces were also massacred after they had surrendered, Americans charged. Meanwhile, the humanitarian situation in besieged Basra became very difficult. Allies could not get relief ships into Umm El Qasr because the harbor had to be cleared first. Oil fires were set by Iraqis in several locations. US forces reported that Iraqis had shot prisoners of war who had surrendered, while Iraqis claimed that the US had bombed a market in Baghdad, kill 15 and wounding many more. The war ignited opposition in the Arab world. Large crowds clashed with police and attacked US embassies. 

The Iraqi Information Minister Mohamed as Sayyaf, later known as “Baghdad Bob,” appeared daily on Iraqi television, even as US forces had entered Baghdad, ensuring correspondents that all was well, and that the Iraqi forces loyal to Saddam would repel the “homosexuals and cowards” and save Saddam’s regime. NBC (formerly CNN) correspondent Peter Arnett insisted that the US was losing the war and broadcast for the Iraqi government, a move that got him fired from NBC. Arnett was hired by the Daily Mirror, where he continued to insist on “the truth” - that the war was lost for the allies.

In reality however, the US and Britain were advancing steadily, exploiting opportunities as they opened up.Despite the early setbacks, the speed of the victory astounded the Arab world. Conspiracy theories were promptly advanced to account for it. Al Jazeera television claimed that the US had used nuclear weapons in Baghdad to wipe out the Republican Guard divisions, and later claimed that the victory was made possibly by a deal concluded between a Republican Guard commander and coalition forces. There is no evidence for any of these claims.

The victory was marred by widespread looting as well as destruction wrought by coalition bombings. The Baghdad museum and other institutions were looted of priceless archeological finds, and Mosul university was trashed by looters as well, while US forces looked on without intervening. As it turned out, looting of museum artifacts was not as widespread as had been assumed. However, it subsequently became evident that the US had allowed large quantities of explosives and nuclear materials to disappear from sites sealed by the IAEA and had left those sites unguarded, despite repeated warnings from the IAEA and other sources. Several thousand tons of explosives disappeared from the Al-Qaaqa base and presumably fell into the hands of Iraqi resistance..

Meanwhile, resistance to the US occupation grew. After Friday prayers, angry crowds gathered and chanted “No to Saddam, No to Bush” and other such slogans. The crowds were incited by Sunni and Shi’a imams who told them that the war was waged to protect Israel.

By April 22-23, the situation had calmed sufficiently to allow a huge traditional pilgrimage of Shi’ite Muslims to their shrine in Karbala. This was the first such pilgrimage on foot allowed in many years. The pilgrims were grateful for their freedom and cursed Saddam, but not many connected their new found freedom with gratitude for the US.

Wanted Iraqi government figures continued to turn themselves in or  were caught by US/British forces and Iraqi allies. Former foreign minister Tariq Aziz turned himself in on April 24. However, reports continued to indicate that despite several allied attempts on his life, Saddam Hussein was alive and was in fact in Iraq.

Critics of the war continued to point out that no definitive evidence of Weapons of Mass Destruction, the reason for the war, had been found at all. US teams continued to search for evidence of WMD, finding only suggestive clues and some “promising leads.” Ultimately, several reports determined that there were no WMD in Iraq, and probably had been no WMD before the war. Intelligence suggesting that Iraq had been purchasing aluminum tubes and other materials for a nuclear weapons program and was intent on creating an atomic bomb turned out to have been based on forgeries and inventions of defectors, and may have been “improved” by US government officials anxious to find a rational for invading Iraq.

US and British forces did uncover evidence of the brutality and corruption of Saddam Hussein’s regime, including mass graves for thousands of political prisoners and huge stashes of cash, amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars. Embarrassing intelligence documents implicated Russian and German intelligence in aiding and abetting Saddam, and reportedly showed that  British MP Galloway, a prominent war opponent had taken hundreds of thousands of dollars from Saddam’s regime. Subsequently, these charges proved to be apparently unfounded, but many other politicians and businessmen were shown to have received bribes from the Saddam regime in the form of oil coupons.

France and  Germany, formerly outspoken and bitter critics of the war, initially hurried to align themselves with the United States in the hope of participating in lucrative post-war reconstruction contracts, but were disappointed when the US and the Provisional Iraqi Ruling Council announced that no bids for reconstruction would be given to France or Germany. Europe again distanced itself from the war when it became apparent that the US would not succeed in restoring order quickly in Iraq, and French President Chirac continued to insist that the war and US occupation were illegal.

Some of Iraq’s Muslim neighbors, in particular Syria, were quite bitter at the US victory. Syrian President Bashar El-Assad told a Lebanese daily that the Arab people would resist the Iraqi occupation. The Pentagon reported that Syria sent busloads of Arab fighters, including Palestinians, returning Iraqis, Egyptians and others into Iraq, that Syria was hiding escaped Iraqi government figures, and that Syria might be storing Iraqi WMD. Syria denied these allegations, but the US captured many non-Iraqi fighters in Iraq, and intercepted busloads of such fighters coming from Syria. Opponents of the war insisted that US complaints against Syria were part of an Israeli inspired conspiracy to get the US to attack Syria, a view that was also voiced by the Syrian government.

On May 1, 2003, President Bush declared the war over. The US had still not succeeded in installing an interim government, despite two meetings held for this purpose. Some services were restored in the destroyed cities of Iraq, but numerous people remained destitute and hungry. In Faluja, anti-US riots broke out and marines were forced to fire on crowds on different occasions resulting in about 20 civilian deaths in total.

In June, the US announced that it was giving up on the plan to have Iraqis from a provisional government because of internal rivalries, and would instead appoint a government. This interim government took office in July, but bombings and sabotage continued, and reconstruction work lagged behind forecasts. US morale was bouyed when Saddam’s sons Uday and Qusay were killed in a shootout with US troops, but Saddam remained at large throughout the summer. despite a huge monetary reward offered for information leading his capture.  A number of videotapes supposedly made by Saddam were aired. An explosion in the Shi’a holy city of Najaf killed an important Shi’a religious leader and over 90 other worshippers, after another explosion at a UN compound  had killed over 20. Not a day passed without some act of violence against US troops or Iraqis who supported them or were opposed to the regime of Saddam. The coalition failed to find any evidence of weapons of mass destruction and in August 2003, evidence emerged that both US and British officials  had distorted intelligence estimates to help make a case that there were WMD still in Iraq.

UN Security Resolution 1511 on Iraq recognized the legitimacy of the coalition appointed interim government, while calling for a timetable for Iraqi self-governance. The coalition announced that Iraq self-governance would be achieved in June of 2004, though the coalition forces would remain in Iraq.

The capture of Saddam did not immediately stop the resistance to the coalition, though resistance attacks began to abate soon after. In January, it was announced that the Kurds would be allowed at least initially to maintain their semi-autonomous status, achieved in 1991 after desert storm, even after June 1994.

After it became clear that the US could not bring about a stable government in Iraq, the US asked for the help of the UN. On January 1, 2004, Lakhdar Brahimi was appointed as a special envoy. He recommended a government that would be based on technocrats rather than reflecting the political power structure.

By March, 2004, factions had agreed on an interim constitution, which was approved by the coalition partners despite clauses that specify Islam as a source of legislation. However, on March 2, explosions in Karbala and Baghdad during the Shi’a Ashura holy day killed as many as 271 Shi’a worshippers. US authorities remained powerless to stop or control terror attacks in Iraq. For the most part, the perpetrators of the attacks remained unknown, and the attacks were variously attributed to foreign fighters including Al-Qaeda and to dissident Iraqis, including elements loyal to Saddam Hussein.

Terror attacks mounted in the spring of 2004, as the date for handing over sovereignty to the interim government approached. In Falluja, gangs attacked and killed US security employees, prompting a bloody reprisal by the US. Eventually, the US withdrew and handed over official control to the Iraqi army and police, but reports claimed that Falluja was ruled by armed gangs of religious fanatics who terrorize those who commit infractions against religious rules. In Najaf, Shi’ite extremist Moqtada Sadr and his Mehdi army took refuge in holy places, and the US besieged the city, but eventually the Mehdi army left the holy places under a truce agreement. Groups apparently affiliated with Al-Qaeda kidnapped foreigners including an American and a South Korean, whom they beheaded. Most alarming, the newly recruited and trained Iraqi troops and police proved to be largely ineffective against insurgents, often running away or deserting to enemy forces where there was fighting, or keeping to their bases and doing nothing, as in Falluja.

By June, terror attacks were occurring almost every day in numerous cities in Iraq. Oil exports were crippled by sabotage of the pipelines and storage facilities. On a single day, over 100 people, mostly Iraqis, were killed in a series of coordinated attacks. The attacks caused revulsion even among Jihadist leaders, who denounced those who killed civilians.

On June 7, the UN Security council unanimously passed resolution 1546, which legitimized the authority of the interim government that was about to take over power in Iraq. The resolution endorses the new interim government of Iraq, allows the multinational force to provide security in partnership with the new government, sets out a leading role for the U.N. in helping the political process over the next year, and calls upon the international community to aid Iraq in its transition. This resolution represented a compromise that was supposed to end the bitter controversy between France and Russia, on the one hand, who opposed the US war in Iraq, and the US, Britain and coalition partners on the other. It supposedly opened the way for greater international cooperation in solving the Iraq crisis. On June 28, Nato announced that it would accede to the request of the Iraqi government and help provide training for security forces, but there was little real NATO involvement in Iraq. 

Possibly to preserve its political power against the technocratic government that Lakhdar Brahimi wished to install, the interim governing council, which was previously unable to agree about very much, united to chose Iyad Allawi as Iraqi Prime Minister. Allawi is a Shi’ite and was at one time a member of Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath party. Al-Qaeda threatened to kill Allawi. In a surprise move to forestall terror attacks, the handover of power to the new government was moved up by two days. On June 28, in an informal ceremony, US administrator Paul Bremer handed over authority to Iyad Allawi and left the country.

The installation of the new government did not cause an abatement in terror attacks. On the contrary, blasts killed Iraqi police and police trainees as well as US military personnel almost every day. Foreign personnel were frequently kidnapped and held for ransom or in order to force their governments to leave the coalition forces or to induce their employers to leave Iraq. Several such hostages were beheaded and their beheadings shown on videotape.

It became increasingly doubtful that it would be possible to hold elections in January as stipulated in the interim constitution.  A second truce was negotiated with the Mehdi army of Moqhtada Sadr in Najaf and in Baghdad. However, in Falluja, the situation was deemed intolerable. The town, as noted above, had been taken over by insurgents, and the US insisted that it was the hiding place of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, supposedly an Al-Qaeda leader responsible for extensive terror operations. The US gathered troops for an offensive in Falluja, while the Iraqi government tried to negotiate a peaceful takeover of the city.