Iraq has had a turbulent history, with historic periods dominated by violence and oppression. Unfortunately, Iraqis have a great deal of experience of war and human rights violations, injustice and repression.
The Baath party assumed power in Iraq after a coup d'etat in 1968. Its strategy in the early years was to concentrate power in the hands of the party, and among the measures it took were the nationalisation of its oil production, which accounted for around 90% of the State's income. When describing that period, Martín Muñoz says:
"Violence as a system for political control was increasingly used systematically, and the tendency towards centralisation and domination destroyed any possibility of institutionalising a social model that represented the pluralism of Iraqi society". (Gemma Martín Muñoz)
Saddam Hussein became the country's president in July 1979. At that time, the country had one of the most advanced economies in the region. Almost immediately after gaining power, Saddam began a series of military offensives against the neighbouring countries, none of which ended successfully, and which placed Iraq in a very precarious economic situation. The 1980s saw the conflict with Iran, known as the first Gulf war. At the outset, it seemed that Saddam's regime would achieve a relatively simple military victory. Iraq also received financial support from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, as these countries thought Iraq would be a useful buffer zone for protection against the expansionist unpredictability of the Iranian Islamic revolution. The reality proved to be very different, as the war lasted for eight years. The weapons were provided by the major powers, and especially by the USA, which became the leading supplier to both countries. Iraq used chemical weapons (mustard gas and sarin). Saddam's regime was unable to consolidate its initial gains and signed a UN-brokered peace agreement with its neighbour in 1988. The war ended with approximately a million dead and over 4 million displaced people. Iraq's promising economic situation in the early 1980s had also been completely destroyed.
Saddam Hussein's second military adventure was into Kuwait. Iraq had historically claimed the territory of Kuwait as its own, asserting that it been part of the country during the Ottoman empire. Furthermore, the end of the war with Iran had undermined Saddam's prestige as the leader of the Arab world. Finally, Kuwait's overproduction of oil substantially affected the price of the commodity, and led to sharp drops in Iraqi earnings. All these factors led Saddam to take the decision to invade the country on 15 August 1990. The initial Iraqi military victory was met with a forceful response from the international community, particularly encouraged by the USA.
On 17 January 1991, a coalition of countries led by the USA began a military offensive that lasted until 24 February. In those six weeks of bombardments, more Iraqi infrastructures were destroyed than during the eight years of war with Iran. The report on humanitarian needs in Iraq written by the UN undersecretary general Martti Ahtisaari set out the catastrophe in the clearest terms:
"[...] nothing that we had seen or read had quite prepared us for the particular form of devastation which has now befallen the country. The recent conflict has wrought near-apocalyptic results upon the economic infrastructure of what had been, until January 1991, a rather highly urbanized and mechanized society. Now, most means of modern life support have been destroyed or rendered tenuous. Iraq has, for some time to come, been relegated to a pre-industrial age, but with all the disabilities of post-industrial dependency on an intensive use of energy and technology."
The civilian population paid a very high price for the sanctions regime imposed on the country after the conflict. In five years, Iraq became a world leader in terms of declines in basic development indices: literacy fell by 30%; school attendance fell from 56% to 26%; life expectancy fell by 10 years and infant mortality increased sixfold. In short, the country fell from 61st to 126th place in the UNDP Human Development Index.
On 15 February 2003, the largest demonstration in history took place as a result of the threat of war against Iraq. Around 30 million people in 800 cities all over the world protested against the imminent invasion. The USA and the United Kingdom began their military offensive on 20 March. Using the pretext of weapons of mass destruction that were never found, and with unprecedented support from some countries, including Spain, the attack anticipated strong resistance by the Iraqi army which finally failed to materialise. However, the difficulties were yet to come. The military intervention was the final phase in a process eroding the authority of the United Nations and specifically the application of the use of force and its international legitimacy, i.e. the cornerstones of the international system since the end of the Second World War. Advocates of the invasion based their arguments on "legitimate defence" and "pre-emptive action" and even humanitarian considerations arising from the massive violations of human rights by Saddam's regime. The proven existence of these violations, rather than that of the weapons of mass destruction, did not justify an invasion which from the point of view of international law can only be described as illegal.
On the first of May 2003, President Bush triumphantly declared that major combat operations were over and that the war had ended. His forecast could not have been more misguided. Once again, winning the war was proven to be a much more achievable objective than winning the peace. 99% of the deaths by violent means since the beginning of military operations have taken place since Bush's announcement.
Seven years after the USA-led invasion, it is difficult to consider the events in a positive light. The American strategy has often changed, its ability to control the situation constantly exceeded, and ethnic-religious divisions among the population have been seriously exacerbated. During the first year of the provisional government, headed by Paul Bremer, the focus was on a sudden dismantling of Iraqi power structures, substantially reducing their ability to provide public services, such as healthcare, education and above all, security. The dismantling of the army had an immediate consequence, as thousands of Iraqi soldiers, who were unemployed and had good reasons to resent the occupation, became the seedbed of the so-called insurgency.
In 2005, the Iraqi people were summoned to the ballot boxes for elections three times (general elections in January; a constitutional referendum in October and general elections once again in December). The Iraqi people responded with a rate of participation greater than anticipated. However, ethnic divisions, and especially Sunni disenchantment with the new institutions were made clear by a boycott. Indeed, the tensions between Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis, which had been forcibly repressed by Saddam Hussein, were exploding. The fall of the dictator was undoubtedly seen by the first two groups as a deliverance. However, the Sunnis, who had traditionally held power, felt completely isolated after the military intervention. Insecurity and violence became part of Iraqis' everyday lives, as clearly shown in the excellent film "Battle for Haditha".
The hasty approval of the constitution did not lead to national reconciliation. Quite the opposite - Iraqi society fragmented into ethnic subgroups, making Baghdad a paradigm for communal violence. In 2006, the high levels of insecurity reached 10 deaths every day, a level of violence from which only the North, with a Kurdish majority, and the south-east, with a Shiite majority, were partially exempt.
In January 2007, the Bush administration decided to change its strategy. Communal violence, originating from extremists in both the Sunni and Shiite communities (30% and 55% of the Iraqi population respectively), foreign terrorism and ordinary crime required more troops. The 2007 campaign focused against extremists - the Sunni Al-Maida organisation on one side and the Shiite Al-Mahdi army on the other, and succeeded in achieving much lower levels in communal violence. However, the price paid was very high: practically all of Baghdad was divided by walls dividing neighbourhoods, which made undertaking any economic activity extremely difficult.
The level of violence has now fallen, but national reconciliation is still a long way off. The lack of trust between Sunni and Shiite leaders prevents normal political life. The lack of public services such as electricity, health, education, and to a lesser extent security, is still a constant feature of life. Iraqi democracy will be subject to a further acid test at the coming elections: whether to continue with communal rivalry with political representation based on Islamic parties focusing strongly on religious identity, or to move towards a more unified society which fosters real reconciliation and enables the development that the rich Iraqi subsoil could provide.
- Political biography of Saddam Hussein (Cidob)
- Iraq Index. 2010. Brookings Institution.
- Segura, A. 2003. Irak en la encrucijada [Iraq at the Crossroads]. Barcelona. RBA.
- Isaac, J., Iskandar, M., Ayeb, H., Khalid, K.M., Abdelmoumni, F., Partow, H. 2009. Consecuencias económicas y ecológicas de los conflictos en el mundo árabe [Economic and ecological consequences of conflicts in the Arab world]. Madrid. Casa Árabe-IEAM.
- Martin Muñoz, G. 2003. Iraq. Un fracaso de occidente [A failure of the West]. Barcelona. Tusquets.
Material elaborated by Pablo Aguiar, ICIP