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Iraq: 1000 days of war
From Shock and Awe to a country torn between insurrection and democracy
It has been the strangest war. A thousand days ago, on 20 March 2003, the US and British armies started a campaign which ended a few weeks later with the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.
It seemed so easy. President George Bush announced that the war was over. The American mission had been accomplished. Months passed before Washington and London realised that the war had not finished. In fact it was only just beginning. Of the 18,000 US servicemen killed or wounded in Iraq, 94 per cent have been killed or wounded since the fall of Baghdad.
There is no sign that the election for the 275-member Iraqi parliament this Thursday will end the fighting. The Sunni Arabs, the core of the insurrection, will vote for the first time, but there is no talk of a ceasefire. A leaflet issued by one resistance group in Baghdad yesterday encouraged its followers to vote but warned: "The fighting will continue with the infidels and their followers."
It was such a strange war because the US began a conflict in 2003 to change radically the Middle East, the most volatile and dangerous region in the world. This was in complete contrast to the first Gulf War in 1991, when the main war aim of President George Bush Snr was to evict Saddam Hussein from Kuwait and restore the status quo.
There was a further sharp difference between the two wars. Mr Bush Snr had expended enormous effort in creating an international coalition under the UN to fight Iraq. His son, by way of contrast, seemed to revel in isolation. He made the Iraq war the supreme test of American military and political strength. The US would fight it alone, aside from Britain tagging along behind, and win it alone. It did not need allies outside or even inside Iraq. The insurgents received vital if covert assistance from abroad, but the rebellion against the US occupation was always essentially home-grown. Disillusionment with their liberators set in among Iraqis almost as soon as the American troops captured the capital in April 2003. The poor poured out of the slums of Baghdad in a frenzy of destruction and theft. Everything was looted, even the stuffed animals in the natural history museum.
Iraqis expected much from the fall of Saddam. They had endured 23 years of war and sanctions. The Iraqi armed forcessimply packed up and went home. Nobody wanted to die for the old regime. Instead they hoped to enjoy the fruits of their oil wealth for the first time and begin to live like Kuwaitis or Saudis.
More
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article332812.ece
It seemed so easy. President George Bush announced that the war was over. The American mission had been accomplished. Months passed before Washington and London realised that the war had not finished. In fact it was only just beginning. Of the 18,000 US servicemen killed or wounded in Iraq, 94 per cent have been killed or wounded since the fall of Baghdad.
There is no sign that the election for the 275-member Iraqi parliament this Thursday will end the fighting. The Sunni Arabs, the core of the insurrection, will vote for the first time, but there is no talk of a ceasefire. A leaflet issued by one resistance group in Baghdad yesterday encouraged its followers to vote but warned: "The fighting will continue with the infidels and their followers."
It was such a strange war because the US began a conflict in 2003 to change radically the Middle East, the most volatile and dangerous region in the world. This was in complete contrast to the first Gulf War in 1991, when the main war aim of President George Bush Snr was to evict Saddam Hussein from Kuwait and restore the status quo.
There was a further sharp difference between the two wars. Mr Bush Snr had expended enormous effort in creating an international coalition under the UN to fight Iraq. His son, by way of contrast, seemed to revel in isolation. He made the Iraq war the supreme test of American military and political strength. The US would fight it alone, aside from Britain tagging along behind, and win it alone. It did not need allies outside or even inside Iraq. The insurgents received vital if covert assistance from abroad, but the rebellion against the US occupation was always essentially home-grown. Disillusionment with their liberators set in among Iraqis almost as soon as the American troops captured the capital in April 2003. The poor poured out of the slums of Baghdad in a frenzy of destruction and theft. Everything was looted, even the stuffed animals in the natural history museum.
Iraqis expected much from the fall of Saddam. They had endured 23 years of war and sanctions. The Iraqi armed forcessimply packed up and went home. Nobody wanted to die for the old regime. Instead they hoped to enjoy the fruits of their oil wealth for the first time and begin to live like Kuwaitis or Saudis.
More
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article332812.ece
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IMC Network
$204.4billion The cost to the US of the war so far. The UK's bill up until March 2005 was £3.1 billion
2,339 Allied troops killed
98 UK troops killed
30,000 Estimated Iraqi civilian deaths
0 Number of WMDs found
8 per cent of Iraqi children suffering acute malnutrition
$35,819m World Bank estimated cost of reconstruction
53,470 Iraqi insurgents killed
67 per cent Iraqis who feel less secure because of occupation
$343 Average monthly salary for an Iraqi soldier. Average monthly salary for an American soldier in Iraq: $4,160.75
66 journalists killed in Iraq. Journalists killed during Vietnam war: 63
5 foreign civilians kidnapped per month
47 per cent Iraqis who never have enough electricity
20 casualties per month from unexploded mines
20 per cent Inflation rate 2005
25-40 per cent Estimated unemployment rate, Nov 2005
251 Foreigners kidnapped
70 per cent of Iraqi's whose sewage system rarely works
183,000 British and American troops are still in action in Iraq. There are 162,000 US troops and 8,000 British with 13,000 from other nations
90 Daily attacks by insurgents in Nov '05. In Jun '03: 8
82 per centIraqis who are "strongly opposed" to presence of coalition troops
15,955 US troops wounded in action
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article332814.ece
Iran
The Iraqi elections provided a classic illustration of the law of unintended consequences: the Americans overthrew the hated dictator, Saddam Hussein, only to see the rise of religious Shia leaders loyal to Iran, which is now ruled by a fanatical hardline president Mahmoud Ahmedinejad. Iraq's Sunni-dominated neighbours are alarmed. Iran has been accused by Britain of stirring up trouble across the border in Iraq, where soldiers in the southhave fallen victim to bomb attacks. After President Bush encouraged Iranians to vote for reform, it was the hardline mayor of Tehran who was voted in as president. President Bush's public dismissal of the Iranian election, the day before the first round of voting, as "an electoral process that ignores the basic requirements of democracy", may have been responsible for a large turnout.
Torture/Rendition
America's attitude to security changed after the events of 11 September 2001. But the Bush administration's tolerance of methods explicitly banned by the UN convention on torture has raised a chorus of protests from human rights organisations as the US continues its "war on terror" by flying suspects around the world to a network of secret prisons. It found its most revolting expression in the abuse at Abu Ghraib. The US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, says that the US does not condone torture, although she recognises abuse will happen. One of the unintended consequences of President Bush's stance is that it has brought alliances with unusual bedfellows, such as the dictatorship of Uzbekistan, whose President has opponents boiled to death, in the interests of the "war on terror".
Egypt
Must be President Bush's greatest disappointment, after his call for greater democracy backfired. After publicly urging President Hosni Mubarak, Egypt's veteran leader, to loosen the grip of the ruling party on power, the big winners in the parliamentary election were the Islamic fundamentalists of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Egyptian government made no secret of its fear that the alternative to the ruling National Democratic Party was chaos. The NDP was the victor in the parliamentary elections, but voting brought the death of at least one opposition supporter and mass arrests. In the event, the NDP remained the dominant party as expected but the Muslim Brotherhood, forced to run its MPs as independent candidates, increased its power in parliament nearly sixfold.
Terrorism
Tony Blair was fond of saying before the Iraq war that he feared the nexus of weapons of mass destruction and terrorists coming together to threaten global security. Yet there was never any proof of the alleged link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qa'ida. Terror has surged in Iraq since the war, with Islamic groups beheading hostages and seizing foreigners and Iraqis at will to hold them to ransom. The Sunni and foreign-led insurgency has been able to swell its ranks in large swaths of Iraq where the US-led coalition does not venture, and cross the border at will. A majority of Iraqis questioned by a BBC poll said that the situation in their country was "bad" and 75 per cent said that they wanted restoring public security to be the priority of the new government, due to be formed after this week's elections.
Read More
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/article332841.ece