Photo courtesy of Bryan Jones via Flickr.
Calls for justice continue 20 years after invasion of Iraq by United States and United Kingdom.
By Kiera McLaughlin ’26
Staff Writer
20 years ago on March 20, 2003, the United States invaded Iraq, starting the war on terror with the goal of ending President Saddam Hussein’s rule and removing the alleged weapons of mass destruction from Iraq, Al Jazeera reported. According to Council on Foreign Relations, the U.S., the United Kingdom and other allies swiftly took over the Iraqi Army, and three weeks after the invasion U.S. soldiers and Iraqi civilians pulled down a statue of Saddam.
After the initial war was over, a new temporary government created by the U.S., the Coalition Provisional Authority, was tasked with the “de-Baathification” of the government. This removed anyone associated with Saddam’s Baath Party from the government, which led to a high unemployment rate, Al Jazeera explained. The Provisional Authority’s second act was to disband the Iraqi military, leaving more frustrated and jobless armed men, creating an environment conducive to the mobilization of militias, which developed into terrorist organizations.
According to The New York Times, this provisional government included a split system between the Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds to ensure that the government would be representative. However, many believe that this set the Iraqi government up for automatic failure because of the divides between the various groups. Sajad Jiyad, an Iraqi political analyst, explained to The New York Times that “the government now is a coalition of rivals.” Jiyad went on to say that corruption has slowly become institutionalized, allowing the political parties to freely grab the “spoils of Iraq’s wealth and power.”
Saddam Hussein was eventually captured, tried and hanged for his mistreatment of Iraqi civilians and supposed harboring of weapons of mass destruction. However, the State of Iraq was left in shambles when President George W. Bush announced “mission accomplished” on May 1, 2003, Al Jazeera stated. In 2005, U.S. intelligence found that there was no evidence of weapons of mass destruction, leaving Iraq to handle the consequences of the war.
On the 20-year anniversary, Amnesty International repeated its calls for justice for the “gross human rights violations and serious violations of international humanitarian law perpetrated by the United States-led Coalition.” From 2003 to 2011, Amnesty International found that U.S. forces participated in the killing and hurting of civilians, secret detention, disappearances and many forms of torture. In an article commemorating the 20-year anniversary, Elizabeth Rghebi, Middle East and North Africa advocacy director at Amnesty International U.S.A. stated, “to this day Iraqis are suffering from the devastating impact of war crimes and other atrocities perpetrated by the United States-led coalition in its invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq.”
According to a BBC News article, Saddam Hussein was “well worth overthrowing” due to his treatment of thousands of Iraqis and the use of chemical weapons on “rebellious” Kurds. The article also went on to highlight the violence and blatant neglect of international law by the U.S. and the U.K. throughout the war, leading to many issues still prevalent in Iraq today.
CBS News reported on the daily occurrences Iraqi civilians lived through following the rise of al Qaeda, a terrorist organization that came out of the militias formed by unemployed men. “We’ve been through a lot,” Ahmed al-Jaboury said, who was 13 years old when Iraq was invaded by the U.S. “[I] saw things no one should see. … lived days no one should live,” he continued.
Lisa Miari, the founder of the Springs of Hope Foundation, explained that one minority group targeted by ISIS is the Yazidis. “The situation of the Yazidis in Iraq is of great concern. It is an ongoing humanitarian catastrophe with still close to 400,000 people internally displaced, scattered throughout the provinces of northern Iraq,” she said to ReliefWeb, a humanitarian information service provided by the United Nations. The Springs of Hope Foundation works with war refugees and specifically Yazidis in northern Iraq.
According to Jesse Marks, Refugees International senior advocate for the Middle East, the U.N. is working to address these injustices. For example, on Dec. 27, 2022, the Iraqi Prime Minister and the U.N. made a joint statement announcing the return of Yazidi land to its former owners after 47 years of discriminatory land ownership policies. However, Marks went on to explain that “people seeking to return to areas previously captured by the Islamic State — particularly the Yazidis and other minorities — have been deterred by lack of shelter and infrastructure, lack of safety, impediments from local authorities (including armed militias) and resistance from local communities.”
Although the future of Iraq is unknown, Sarah Sanbar, an Iraq researcher for the Human Rights Watch, stated that the U.S. and the U.K. must investigate the harm their militaries caused civilians during the war. She went on to advocate for the protection of democracy in Iraq, saying that “the Iraqi government … must protect free expression and assembly so Iraqis can voice grievances and debate the future of their country.” She continued, “authorities should prioritize justice sector reforms, overhaul abusive legislation and judicial practices and hold perpetrators of rights abuse accountable.”