After twenty years, the Iraq war still causes instability in the region | Abroad

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Mar 21, 2023 at 7:58 PMUpdate: 8 minutes ago

The invasion of Iraq started on March 20, 2003, led by the United States. Twenty years later, NU.nl looks back. Experts say that the war actually made the region more unstable and that the effects are still being felt.

Twenty years ago on Monday, American and British troops invaded Iraq. From a military point of view, that was not a difficult task. Already on April 9, the capital Baghdad was captured. The statue of dictator Saddam Hussein was symbolically brought down.

Just forty days later, US President George W. Bush declared the fiercest fighting over. On May 23, the Iraqi army was disbanded.

The Iraq War was part of the so-called war on terror after the attacks on the Twin Towers in New York. Regimes from all over the world, which (supposedly) maintained links with terror networks, had to be fought, according to the Americans.

The United States claimed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. That turned out not to be true.

IS terror is a result of the Iraq war

There was also no evidence for links between Hussein and the terrorist organization Al Qaeda – another of Bush’s allegations.

“On the contrary,” says Nikolaos van Dam. “Al Qaeda, IS and other Islamists didn’t stand a chance under Hussein.” Van Dam is a former diplomat and former ambassador of the Netherlands in various countries in the Middle East, including Iraq.

Van Dam: “Thanks to the American-British occupation, terrorist organizations such as Al Qaeda actually got a chance. Iraq became their training ground. The rise of IS is a result of the Iraq war. IS started as ‘Islamic State in Iraq’, then became ‘Islamic State in Iraq and Syria’ and finally simply ‘Islamic State’.

“IS originated partly from the Iraqi army and Al Qaeda. After the occupation, the Americans fired the Iraqi army. From one day to the next, officers ran out of bread, or even got stuck.”

Middle East expert Koert Debeuf shares that analysis. “IS is ultimately the direct result of the invasion of Iraq. The network grew in the US prisons in Iraq. Hussein’s generals and officers were detained there together with extremists in Camp Bucca and Abu Ghraib prison. In this way it is network that would make IS great.”

International law undermined in Iraq

During the war it became clear that torture was being practiced in these prisons – a violation of the laws of war.

According to Debeuf, the main consequence of the Iraq war is a gigantic fall in the credibility of the West, and especially of the US. “The claimed moral authority of the Americans on human rights has fallen in Iraq.”

“From the point of view of a very large part of the world, the Iraq war was exactly the same as the illegal Russian war in Ukraine,” says Debeuf.

Van Dam also believes that the Iraq war set a bad example and undermined the entire system of international law. “The Americans have a huge dose of butter on their heads. Under international law, they didn’t have that authorization to depose Hussein at all.”

“In both cases (Russia and Iraq, ed.) there have been gross mistakes and war crimes. Not to exonerate Russia in any way, on the contrary, but let the West take a look in the mirror itself,” says From dam.

Comparison with Putin’s war

The comparison with the war in Ukraine is often made. Terry Gill, emeritus professor of military law at the University of Amsterdam and the Netherlands Defense Academy, thinks the comparison is a diversion by the Russians.

He sees the Iraq war as a blot on the US’s reputation. “But that does not mean that you no longer have the right to speak.”

“At the moment, the West is being accused of hypocrisy. That is a diversionary tactic. One wrongful act does not justify another. It only makes things more difficult for the US, as the after-effects of the Iraq war are still being felt throughout the Middle East. felt.”

Gill acknowledges that there were violations of the laws of war during the Iraq War, for example in the treatment of prisoners. According to Gill, the Iraq war was fundamentally wrong, both politically and strategically. Legally, the invasion was illegal.

“They invaded Iraq without a mandate from the United Nations Security Council. The US had no right to act on its own. If the US had received a mandate from the UN, as it did in the Gulf War in 1990, it would have been legally correct.”

Last week it became clear that the International Criminal Court wants to prosecute Russian President Vladimir Putin. It is the first arrest warrant for a head of state since World War II. Shouldn’t Bush and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair also be prosecuted for the Iraq War?

Gill does not think this comparison is justified either. “Putin is being prosecuted for the forced deportation of children from occupied territory, not for the war itself.” Moreover, it remains to be seen whether Putin will ever actually appear in court. “Getting Bush to court is not going to work, it’s not that black and white.”

Gill emphasizes that there has already been a public reckoning with those responsible for the Iraq war. “The US had a lot of sympathy until the invasion of Iraq. Their ability to impose their own will has diminished in several places after the Iraq war.”

Are military interventions doomed to fail?

“That you can bend an entire region to your will with a war is an outdated idea,” says Van Dam. That is clear after so many failed wars in, for example, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen and Libya. Starting a war is easier than ending a war.”

According to Van Dam, military interventions lead to disasters. “A country that occupies another country under the guise of democracy should stay there for decades. But nobody wants that.”

Debeuf sees a military intervention as essentially different from a war. In Iraq a war was started by the US. Military action was taken in Libya and Kosovo to stop a war. If there is UN or NATO approval, a military intervention can also prevent casualties, he says.

“After twenty years of great misery, there is still no security or stability in the Middle East,” says Van Dam. “The interventions have caused enormous damage, no one needs to be convinced of that anymore. We could never bring stability.”

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