Case study: The US Invasion of Iraq

The US Invasion of Iraq: The American Way of War and the Dilemmas of Counterinsurgency

The US invasion of Iraq and its aftermath illustrates both the enormous military strength possessed by the state that was often, in the aftermath of the cold war, called the world’s sole superpower, as well as many of its weaknesses. Also, it provides excellent insight into the difficulties of counterinsurgency, demonstrating how even an overwhelmingly powerful army may find it very difficult to quash insurgents and bring order to a country, particularly if that force is perceived as an unwelcome occupier.

The ‘Slow Rush’ to War

The United States and the dictatorial Ba’ath Party regime of Saddam Hussein, which ruled Iraq for decades, had a long and complex relationship. The earlier period of Saddam’s rule, and his relationship with Washington, is described in a related case study on the Iran-Iraq War. The Iran-Iraq conflict ended inconclusively in 1988, but Saddam—badly in need of additional oil revenue (Iraq was heavily in debt to various creditors, including Kuwait) and still ambitious to be perceived as the leader of the Arab world—launched another military adventure in 1990: the attempted conquest and annexation of Kuwait, which Saddam claimed was historically a province of Iraq. Within the international community, this invasion was broadly regarded as being unacceptable. A US-led international coalition, operating under United Nations auspices, was organized, and it proceeded to expel Iraq from Kuwait in 1991. From 1990 onwards, relations between the United States and the Saddam government would remain very poor.

            In the period before the First Persian Gulf War of 1991, Iraq maintained very active weapon of mass destruction (WMD) programmes, building a stockpile of chemical and biological weapons and attempting to construct nuclear warheads. As a condition of the ceasefire between UN forces and Iraq, and for the eventual lifting of sanctions against that country, Baghdad was required to end its WMD programmes and surrender any ballistic missiles (except for those of very short range). Iraq was required to allow UN inspectors free access to Iraqi facilities, thus permitting the inspectors to document accurately the dismantling of Iraqi WMD capabilities and uncover any covert efforts to maintain WMD stockpiles.

            In the years immediately after 1991, UN inspectors enjoyed relatively free access to Iraq’s WMD documents and facilities. However, even in these early days, Iraqi officials frequently interfered with the inspections and tried to curtail the activities of the inspectors. In response to Iraqi intransigence on weapons inspections, the United States and Britain carried out Operation Desert Fox, a short bombing campaign directed against potential Iraqi WMD sites, in December 1998. Notably, a few months earlier, in October, US President Bill Clinton had signed the Iraq Liberation Act, a bill providing for support for anti-Saddam Iraqi exile groups and, in essence, making the overthrow of the Ba’ath regime a formal US policy objective.

            The United States and Britain (and, for several years, France) enforced ‘no-fly’ zones over the northern (and, later, also the southern) portions of Iraq. Iraqi aircraft were not permitted to operate in these areas because of concerns that they would be used by the Iraqi government to attack Kurds (in the north) and Shi’a (in the south). Both groups had been brutally repressed in the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War because they had rebelled against Saddam’s rule. Iraq contended that the zones infringed on its sovereignty, and periodically challenged them by attacking aircraft with surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) and anti-aircraft guns or flying Iraqi aircraft in the no-fly zones. In retaliation for these Iraqi actions, SAM sites, radar installations, and similar targets were destroyed. These incidents continued regularly throughout the period between the 1991 and 2003 wars.

            After the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, the George W. Bush administration showed a strong desire to overthrow the Saddam regime. Several reasons were stated for this, although particular emphasis was placed on Iraq’s suspected WMD programmes and ties to international terrorist groups. In regard to the latter, it is clear that the Iraqi government did have connections to various terrorist organizations, although it appears unlikely that Baghdad had significant operational ties to Al-Qaeda, the group which perpetrated the 11 September attacks. In any case, however, it is important to note that the Bush administration explicitly placed Iraq in the wider context of the US-led ‘Global War on Terror’ (GWOT) which had begun with the destruction of the Taliban government of Afghanistan.[1] From this perspective, war in Iraq was not a ‘stand-alone’ effort; rather, it was a campaign in a larger struggle which, the Bush administration warned, could continue for decades.

            The Bush administration also stressed the Iraqi government’s brutal repression of its citizens and indicated that if Saddam were overthrown a new, democratic Iraqi government would be created. The possibility of democratic political change in Iraq was intimately connected to another reason for the removal of the Ba’ath government: clearly, at least some American officials hoped that the creation of a free Iraq would be a catalyst for broader political change in the Middle East. In the aftermath of the 11 September attacks, many observers had come to see the authoritarianism and related economic underdevelopment prevalent in much of the Middle East as inherently dangerous to the United States. They had concluded that Middle Eastern political and economic conditions created an environment in which terrorist groups were likely to thrive, with angry and disaffected youths turning to Islamist radicalism because of the absence of democratic outlets for political dissent or hope for personal economic and social advancement. These observers hoped that a liberated Iraq could serve as a model for other countries in the Middle East. Thus, the removal of the Saddam regime would advance the GWOT in several respects, removing a government which had publicly supported terrorist actions (for example, the Iraqis provided payments to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers), ensuring that Saddam would never be able to make WMDs available to terrorists, and laying the foundation for political changes in the Middle East that, over the long term, would address the root causes of terrorism.

            In 2002, the United States began to take steps to prepare diplomatically and militarily for an invasion of Iraq. By all appearances, Washington greatly doubted that the UN Security Council (UNSC) would authorize the overthrow of the Saddam regime. This was a realistic perspective, and three veto-holding members of the UNSC (China, France, and Russia) and Hans Blix, the UN chief WMD inspector, consistently worked to avert an invasion of Iraq. In February 2003, US Secretary of State Colin Powell gave a public presentation to the UNSC of evidence indicating that Iraq was constructing WMDs. However, although the Powell presentation likely increased US support for an invasion of Iraq, Washington failed to secure UNSC backing for an invasion. In addition, several key US allies, including Germany, France, and Turkey, refused to support an invasion of Iraq. Importantly, the Turks refused to allow the United States to launch attacks on Iraq from their territory, a decision which greatly complicated US war planning.

            The United States did, however, organize a large group of states—referred to by Washington as a ‘Coalition of the Willing’—which agreed to participate in or otherwise support an invasion. This included some of the United States’ longtime allies, such as Britain, Spain, and Italy, as well as newer ones like Poland.

The Overthrow of the Ba’ath Regime

On 20 March 2003, the US-led coalition launched its war against Iraq with a series of airstrikes throughout Iraq; the air attacks were soon followed by a ground campaign striking from the south. Iraqi resistance was ineffectual; indeed, much of the Iraqi Army disintegrated, with troops surrendering upon encountering US forces or simply throwing off their uniforms and fleeing. However, some Iraqi units did fight, often breaking the laws of war by, for example, pretending to surrender and then firing hidden weapons at approaching coalition forces. The irregular Fedayeen Saddam militia was particularly known for such tactics, and Fedayeen militiamen melted into the Iraqi population, becoming the nucleus of the Iraqi guerrilla movement in the early months after the fall of the Ba’ath government.

            Coalition forces moved rapidly towards Baghdad, and officially conquered the city on 9 April.^[2] Many Iraqis celebrated the end of Saddam’s rule, and in a famous scene broadcast worldwide a huge statue of the dictator was toppled by a US military vehicle. Widespread looting and general chaos—exacerbated by the almost complete breakdown of internal policing and (already minimally functional) Iraqi public utilities—began to occur. Soon, criminality began to worsen and as militias formed and violence occurred among various groups of Iraqis, there were concerns that the country could degenerate into civil war.

            Many observers were surprised that Saddam’s forces never used chemical and/or biological weapons (CBW) against coalition troops. Saddam had used chemical weapons against both Iran and Iraqi Kurds in the 1980s, and before the UN-mandated disarmament process began had maintained a very large arsenal of such weapons. In the months after the Ba’ath regime was overthrown, coalition forces anxiously searched Iraq for CBW, hoping to procure any stockpiles before they fell into the hands of Iraqi insurgents or were removed from the country. However, except for a very modest number of older, degraded munitions left over from the pre-1991 period, no CBW were discovered.

            The mystery of Saddam’s ‘disappearing CBW arsenal’ remains the subject of much controversy. Many critics of the Bush administration claimed that it grossly exaggerated the evidence for an ongoing Iraqi CBW programme and that the absence of a CBW arsenal demonstrates the administration’s deceptiveness in the months before the war. Critics point to evidence such as the ‘Downing Street Memo’, a document, allegedly detailing a meeting of top British officials, which seems to indicate that some key individuals in the UK government believed that Washington was using intelligence inappropriately to bolster the case for war. The Bush administration denied acting in bad faith before the war, although it has admitted that a major intelligence failure occurred. In contrast, Bush administration defenders pointed out that most reasonable outside observers—even including the intelligence agencies of several countries opposed to the invasion of Iraq—believed that Saddam was maintaining active WMD programmes. There is even some question as to whether Saddam himself fully realized before the war how minimal his WMD programmes were. However, after his capture, Saddam asserted to US interrogators that he was essentially ‘bluffing’, attempting to deter regional foes such as Iran from attacking Iraq, whose conventional military forces never recovered from the damage inflicted by the 1991 Gulf War and the restrictions on weapons sales which followed the conflict.^[3]

The Early Counterinsurgency War

In a now-infamous May 2003 speech on the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, President Bush—standing in front of a banner reading ‘mission accomplished’—declared that major combat operations in Iraq had ended. While the exact meaning of the word ‘major’ in this context is debatable, Bush certainly was correct that combat with significant-sized units of Saddam’s army was no longer ongoing; the initial invasion had been concluded rapidly and at an extraordinarily small price in coalition lives. However, what would turn out to be by far the more difficult and bloody part of the Iraq conflict had started—Saddam supporters, Islamist jihadis (many of them foreign), and other insurgents waged a war of terrorism and guerrilla tactics against the coalition and the new Iraqi government. Moreover, this period included not only fighting against small groups of insurgents, but also large-scale operations, the most notable being the Second Battle of Fallujah in November and December 2004. In many respects, the situation in Iraq worsened for the United States over time. Restoration of basic services took longer than generally had been anticipated, and the security environment throughout the country, rather than improving consistently, deteriorated.

            The United States only formally occupied Iraq for a short period, with the Coalition Provisional Authority (Iraq’s occupation government) dissolving itself on 28 June 2004 and full legal sovereignty being transferred to an entity known as the Iraqi Interim Government. However, this new government was extremely weak and unstable, and clearly relied heavily on the United States for its survival. In 2005, free elections and a referendum approving a new constitution established the basis for a democratic Iraqi government. A new Iraqi Transitional Government was formed in May 2005, and finally, in May 2006, Iraq’s first ‘normal’ government took office. This process had, however, been an extremely difficult one, with a great deal of political infighting among parties and factions within parties. Perhaps more ominously, it was also clear that Iraq was not transitioning smoothly into a unified country. The ethnic and religious divisions which had profoundly shaped Iraqi history continued to exert a powerful influence on Iraqi politics.

The three largest groups within Iraq are the Kurds (an ethnic, not religious, category—most Kurds are Sunni Muslims) and Sunni and Shi’a Muslims. Well over half of Iraqis are Shi’a, about 15–20 per cent of them are Kurdish, and most of the rest are Sunni Arabs (except for about 5 per cent of the population, which is made up of a variety of other groups).^[4] Speaking very generally, Kurds are concentrated in the northern part of Iraq, Sunnis in the centre, particularly along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, and Shi’a in the southeast; the western part of the country has only a small population. However, these groups are intermingled, with some areas, such as the cities of Baghdad and Mosul, being particularly tense ‘flashpoints’.

            Saddam Hussein was a Sunni Arab, as were the great majority of his lieutenants, and his government harshly repressed Shi’as and Kurds in order to cement his rule. In the early period of the occupation and post-occupation, the ‘Sunni Triangle’ tended to be the least stable part of Iraq. The Kurdish-dominated portions of Iraq, in contrast, were perhaps the most stable parts of the country. Under the protection afforded by their militias and the northern ‘no-fly zone’ created after the 1991 Gulf War, Kurds had established a de facto independent territory for more than a decade before Saddam was overthrown; thus, this region had relatively well-established governmental and security structures.

            The United States faced a daunting task as its occupation of Iraq began. Most important was the small size of the coalition force in a country that, at the time, had roughly 25 million residents. Further complicating the situation, the United States essentially decided to dismantle and rebuild Iraq’s military and various internal security and police organizations because US leaders wanted to remove any individuals who had committed crimes against the Iraqi population. US occupation troops were stretched thin as they attempted to fight insurgents, police cities and towns, rebuild infrastructure, and undertake the many other tasks necessary to make Iraq a functioning state.

            Further complicating matters was the fact that very few US personnel spoke Arabic or had much knowledge of Iraq’s history and society. It is difficult enough for troops to occupy a state peopled by individuals speaking the same language and having a very similar culture, but when the occupier and the occupied are very alien to each other, the difficulties of controlling an area increase mightily. The United States had to rely heavily on Iraqi translators and other locals to assist them in the occupation, but this had its own difficulties—some Iraqi employees were spies for the insurgents, and others were murdered by insurgents for ‘collaborating’ with the United States.

            The United States would encounter numerous unforeseen difficulties during the occupation, including allegations of mistreatment, and even murder, of Iraqis by US troops. Perhaps the most important incident occurred at the Abu Ghraib prison, a large facility near Baghdad which was notorious during the Saddam era; it was used by the US military to house suspected insurgents and their supporters. In late April 2004, US media outlets began to report on allegations that Iraqi prisoners had been abused by US guards at Abu Ghraib,^[5] and the events that occurred at the prison soon became a major international scandal that damaged the reputation of the United States and embarrassed the Bush administration.

            During the early months of the insurgency, simply hunting down Saddam Hussein, his sons Qusay and Uday, and other high-priority targets was a key task. Qusay and Uday were killed in a gunfight with US forces in July 2003. Saddam was captured alive by US troops in December 2003; three years later, he was executed by the new Iraqi government. Many observers hoped that the capture of the top officials of the Ba’athist government would so demoralize supporters that the insurgency would quickly lose momentum and begin to disintegrate. However, this did not occur; indeed, the insurgency actually worsened during 2004 and 2005.^[6]

            One of the notable aspects of the Iraq conflict was the evolution of insurgent tactics. At first, the insurgents tended to utilize relatively simple measures such as sniping and creating very basic improvised explosive devices (IEDs). The latter, which proved to be one of the greatest threats to coalition troops, are created from modified devices such as artillery or mortar shells, or made from quantities of a highly explosive material. They are remotely detonated, and Iraqi insurgents created increasingly sophisticated IEDs, including very effective ‘shaped’ charges with complex triggers. As a result, IEDs became an increasingly lethal threat to coalition and Iraqi government personnel.

            The security situation in Iraq was complicated by the fact that the country was awash with war materiel. Saddam’s government had maintained thousands of stockpiles of weapons and explosives throughout the country, ranging in size from vast depots to small, hidden caches, and during the early months of the occupation a very great quantity of this materiel disappeared, falling directly into insurgent hands or being funnelled through the black market economy. Moreover, it is clear that weapons—as well as jihadi insurgents—continued to filter into the country. 

            It appears that, at first, most insurgents were Iraqis associated with the Saddam government—Ba’ath party members, military officers, Feydayeen militia, and so forth. As time passed, however, religious fighters unaffiliated with the secular Ba’ath Party, many of them foreign, became increasingly prominent. One of the most important jihadi leaders to emerge was Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian who headed a group called Al Queda in Mesopotamia. (As the name indicates, Zarqawi’s group was at least loosely associated with Al-Qaeda, but Osama bin Laden did not have any real control over the organization.) Zarqawi was killed by US troops in June 2006, but both foreign and Iraqi jihadis—who formed a variety of interconnected groups—continued to undermine Iraqi domestic security.

            Over time, the insurgency became yet more complex as various ethnic, political, and sectarian militias became increasingly active, creating a situation in which insurgent activities, revenge killings, and simple crime increasingly intermingled. Iraqi civilians suffered greatly, both from indiscriminate insurgent attacks, such as car bombs detonated outside police stations, and from assaults on explicitly civilian targets. These included the bombing of Shi’a religious sites by Sunni jihadis and Shi’a reprisals against Sunni mosques. Throughout Iraq, many individuals who were in a minority group in their home area fled to towns and neighbourhoods where their group was in the majority.

The Later Counterinsurgency War and ‘The Surge’

By late 2006, there was a clear perception within the US government and the US public that counterinsurgency operations in Iraq were not achieving their objectives and that the war effort was bogging down. This fed the acrimonious debate in Washington over whether US troops should withdraw from Iraq, maintain current force levels, or actually increase their military effort. The Bush administration chose the latter option, despite considerable opposition by many Democrats in Congress, as well as a small number of Republicans.

            ‘The surge’, as it commonly became known, was formally announced in January 2007. Its most controversial characteristic was that it would increase the number of US combat troops in Iraq, with a particular emphasis on bringing security to Baghdad. Beginning in February 2007, General David Petraeus commanded US forces in Iraq, and many observers credit his leadership as playing a major role in the apparent success of the surge strategy.^[7]

            Understanding the impact of the surge, however, requires an understanding that it represented a military-political adaption to the changing circumstances in Iraq. Capable insurgents build on previous successes, extract ‘lessons learned’ from failures, and frequently adjust their operational strategy—and wise counterinsurgents do the same. Thus, an insurgency constitutes a long-term ‘dialogue’ of sorts between insurgent and counterinsurgent forces, with each attempting to position the other for ultimate defeat. The surge did not entirely overthrow the previous US strategy in Iraq; rather, it represented a carefully considered—but militarily and politically risky—effort to strike a crippling blow to the Iraqi insurgency.

            It is also important to consider how political events within Iraq had unfolded in the years leading up to the surge. Particularly notable in regard to the insurgency is the movement known as the ‘Sunni Awakening’. Well before the surge, in 2005, some Sunni tribal leaders began to turn against the insurgency, largely for reasons related to intratribal politics and, relatedly, anger regarding mistreatment by insurgents (particularly foreign fighters associated with Al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia). The increasingly strong Awakening movement, combined with the surge, gave a powerful momentum to the counterinsurgency. At the same time, although the Iraqi national political scene remained volatile, the institutions of the central government grew stronger, with apparent improvement both in civilian branches and in the police, military, and other security services.

            Given all these factors, sectarian violence decreased enormously following the surge. For example, one estimate put the number of Iraqi civilian deaths from conflict at 3,300 in August 2005 and 300 in August 2009. Comparing those same two months, the number of combat deaths of US troops was, respectively, 85 and seven.^[8] This of course did not mean that the conflict in Iraq was nearing its end. In particular, it was widely feared that intercommunal violence would eventually reignite, with the collapse of the diverse central government and a full-scale ethnic/religious civil war. With the completion of the US withdrawal in December 2011, no US military forces remained in the country, although thousands of diplomatic staff and contractors were left in place. A low-level insurgency remained in the country, but its objectives had changed. Instead of targeting US and other foreign soldiers and staff, the violence became entirely internecine as terrorists strove to influence domestic politics. Iraqi domestic politics, meanwhile, became increasingly gridlocked as those who held power attempted to consolidate it rather than allow for a true democratic process.[9]

Post-US Withdrawal and the Islamic State

The relative calm was short-lived. By 2013, the insurgency had strengthened again, and civilian deaths more than doubled over the previous year, to 7,157.[10] In 2014, an effective successor to Al-Qaeda in Iraq appeared from the chaos of the Syrian civil war to invade Iraq. This was the Islamic State (IS). IS subsequently campaigned effectively against the US-trained Iraqi army, frequently putting it to flight despite inferior numbers and equipment and seizing, at least temporarily, cities such as Fallujah, Tikrit, and Mosul.

IS’s successful offensive ultimately caused the fall of the Shi’a Nouri al-Maliki government. With the Iraqi army not making effective headway against IS forces, US attention and resources were drawn back to and into Iraq. In August 2014, the United States began bombing IS targets in Iraq. Over the next few years, a coalition led by the United States provided air support as Iraqi government forces fought to retake territory. In December 2017, Iraq’s government declared victory over IS. Meanwhile, the government also overcame efforts by Iraqi Kurds to gain formal independence. By 2021, the United States had drawn down its troops to 2,500. That July, US President Joe Biden and Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi agreed that the United States would conclude its combat mission by the end of 2021, although the United States would continue to deploy troops as military advisors and trainers.[11]

Conclusion: Frustration and Hope in Counterinsurgency, and After

It is impossible at this point to predict reliably how enduring Iraq’s democratic constitution and institutions will prove to be. The entirety of the Iraq War cost the United States nearly 4,500 personnel and several times that number were wounded. Hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent to secure the country. The US setbacks in Iraq clearly illustrate how difficult counterinsurgency can be even for the greatest of powers. The demands for success on the ‘traditional’ battlefield are quite different from those placed on the counterinsurgent, and the contrast between the spectacularly successful initial invasion of Iraq and the hard slog of the counterinsurgency war are stark.

Whether the United States ultimately will succeed in its initial war aim of creating a stable, democratic Iraq is to a very great degree beyond the control of Washington itself. The complex swirl of Iraqi domestic politics, with its old grievances and shifting alliances, has its own logic. The outside superpower cannot fully control these internal factors, but they will be vital in determining the future of Iraq. The persisting insurgency in and of itself was to be expected—die-hard irreconcilables always resist long after the main insurgency has dwindled away—but other factors seem to bode ill for Iraq’s democratic credentials. Domestic political gridlock as politicians currently in power scramble to attain and consolidate power may prevent genuine mechanics of power transition from taking root. The violent suppression of anti-government protests in 2019 ultimately led to the resignation of Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi (although he remained in office for several months as the ‘caretaker’ prime minister). Internationally, Iraq seemed to have fallen into Iran’s foreign policy orbit, rather than staying with that of the United States, as Iran enthusiastically supported Iraq in the fight against IS and Iranian-backed groups came to play an increasingly important role in Iraqi domestic politics. In July 2020, a US drone attack assassinated Iranian military commander Qassim Suleimani and several Iran-backed Iraqi militia members near Baghdad airport. Yet, the victory of Moqtada al-Sadr’s political bloc in the May 2018 and October 2021 parliamentary elections, on a platform that insists on Iraqi independence from both the United States and Iran, calls into question whether this ironic but galling second-order effect of the war will be sustained.

Questions

1. If the Saddam regime actually had possessed a substantial chemical and biological arsenal, would the US invasion of Iraq have been justified strategically? Explain why or why not Iraqi possession of such weapons would have threatened US vital security interests.
2. How might the small number of US troops in Iraq during the early months of the occupation of that country have impacted US counterinsurgency efforts?
3. Why is it that the US military overwhelmed Iraq’s regular forces so quickly, yet had much greater difficulties coping with guerrilla insurgents?
4. How did the ethnic and religious divisions in Iraq contribute to the country’s instability and fuel the insurgency?
5. How did the surge impact the security environment in Iraq, and did it have a political effect?
6. What were the geopolitical results of the Iraq War, are these results likely to endure, and whose national interests do they benefit most?

Websites

https://www.usip.org/regions/middle-east/iraq

https://www.brookings.edu/topic/iraq/

http://www.iraqfoundation.org/

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB198/index.htm

https://web.archive.org/web/20200718092509/https://www.bbc.com/news/10091030

[1] George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum, ‘Global War on Terror’, https://www.georgewbushlibrary.gov/research/topic-guides/global-war-terror, accessed 27 November 2021.

[2] For accounts of this campaign, see Michael R. Gordon and Bernard E. Trainor, Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq (New York: Pantheon, 2006); John Keegan, The Iraq War: The Military Offensive, from Victory in 21 Days to the Insurgent Aftermath (New York: Vintage, 2005; originally published 2003); Williamson Murray and Robert H. Scales, Jr, The Iraq War: A Military History (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2003); and Bing West, The March Up: Taking Baghdad with the United States Marines (New York: Bantam, 2003).

[3] See Scott Shane, ‘Documents Show Iraqi Dictator’s Fears’, New York Times, 2 July 2009, https://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/03/world/middleeast/03saddam.html, accessed 27 November 2021; Joyce Battle, ed., assisted by Brandon McQuade, Saddam Hussein Talks to the FBI: Twenty-Five Conversations with ‘High Value Detainee #1’ in 2004, National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book #279, posted online 1 July 2009, http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB279/index.htm, accessed 27 November 2021.

[4] See the CIA World Factbook, ‘Iraq’, updated on 16 November 2021, https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/iraq/, accessed 27 November 2021.

[5] See James Risen, ‘The Struggle for Iraq: Treatment of Prisoners’, New York Times, 29 April 2004, https://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/29/world/struggle-for-iraq-treatment-prisoners-gi-s-are-accused-abusing-iraqi-captives.html, accessed 27 November 2021.

[6] A highly respected critique of counterinsurgency operations during this period is Thomas E. Ricks, Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq (New York: Penguin, 2006).

[7] See, for example, Thomas Ricks, The Gamble: General David Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006–2008 (New York: Penguin, 2009) and Linda Robinson, Tell Me How This Ends: General David Petraeus and the Search for a Way Out of Iraq (New York: PublicAffairs, 2008).

[8] Jason Campbell, Michael O’Hanlon, Jeremy Shapiro, and Amy Unikewicz, ‘The State of Iraq: An Update’, New York Times, 6 October 2009, https://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/09/opinion/09ohanlon.html, accessed 27 November 2021.

[9] Raad Alkadiri. ‘Iraq: Back to the Future’, Survival, 53(1) (February–March 2011), pp. 5–12.

[10] ‘Iraq Profile—Timeline’, BBC News, 21 May 2018, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-14546763, accessed 27 November 2021.

[11] Steve Holland and Trevor Hunnicutt, ‘Biden, Kadhimi Seal Agreement to End U.S. Combat Mission in Iraq’, Reuters, 27 July 2021, https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/biden-kadhimi-seal-agreement-ending-us-combat-mission-iraq-2021-07-26/, accessed 27 November 2021.