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Iraq After Invasion

A Reckoning

 

Kate Tietzen-Wisdom, PhD

 

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If one were to read a typical American narrative on the 2003 Iraq War, it would likely be divided into three phases: the invasion (March–April 2003), the insurgency (May 2003–2006), and the surge campaign and withdrawal (2007–2011). In the last phase, a combination of factors—the influx of U.S. Army brigades, Sunni fighters forming the Anbar Awakening, and the increasing capabilities of the Iraqi security forces—helped stymie the violence and stabilize the country. According to this telling, Americans departed in December 2011, leaving an independent and self-reliant Iraq. Part of this formulation, however, results from the abundance of print and media that highlight American views and sources. While there has been some recent improvement, less attention has been given to Iraqi stories and memories.¹ Reconsidering the Iraq War from the Iraqi perspective reveals how this standard chronology minimizes the conflict’s reality.

From the Iran-Iraq War through Operation Desert Storm, Operation Iraqi Freedom, and the campaign against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), several generations of Iraqis have only known violence and tumult. The 2003 war was particularly devastating as the overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s Baʿthist regime ruptured Iraqi society. The Baʿth Party had ruled Iraq since 1968, and the regime had permeated almost every aspect of the country. Sunni insurgents and Shi’a militants rushed to fill this vacuum, eager to impose their own agenda on post-Saddam Iraq. In their competition for power, these groups unleashed waves of violence against civilians, Iraqi government officials, and coalition forces. In February 2006, al-Qaida in Iraq (AQI) operatives destroyed the golden dome of the al-Askari Mosque in Samarra, just north of Baghdad, one of the most revered sites of Shi’a Islam.² AQI hoped the provocation would kick-start a full-blown civil war between Iraq’s Sunni and Shi’a populations. The bombing did just that. Thirty thousand Iraqis lost their lives in 2006 alone.³

American narratives point to a major turning point in the war around 2007–2008—when violence levels fell precipitously—and suggest the country was on an upward trend, save for some political uncertainty as the new Shi’a-dominated government navigated various growing pains when the Americans withdrew in late 2011.⁴ And yet, the conclusion of the surge campaign did not bring about immediate and irreversible prosperity in Iraq. Furthermore, the end of American combat operations did not mean the end of the conflict for Iraqis.⁵ Not long after the U.S. departure, ISIS’s rapid takeover of several cities, including Ramadi, Fallujah, and Mosul, risked upending the government in Baghdad, prompting the Americans and coalition partners to intervene.⁶ By the end of the 2010s, for old and young Iraqis, the “Iraq War” came to describe not only eight years of war but rather almost three decades of conflict, with the Americans playing either a pivotal or peripheral role.⁷ For Iraqis, the United States was the “invader, occupier, and state-builder.”⁸

This may be an uncomfortable perspective, and some may take umbrage at these assertions.⁹ Yet, this article neither seeks to assign blame nor find fault. Instead, it delineates significant changes in Iraqi society and highlights the consequences of war on the Iraqi landscape. Warfare is brutal; it traumatizes soldiers, civilians, and nations. The carnage it leaves behind shapes recovery efforts and influences future military operations; any Iraq War history is incomplete without considering these aftereffects. A renewed focus on the Iraqi position not only challenges conventional narratives about the Iraq War but also permits historians, service members, and veterans to delve deeper into this war’s complicated nature and legacy.

The Numbers

Between 2003 and 2011, 4,419 U.S. service members were killed in Iraq, and nearly thirty-two thousand were wounded in action.¹⁰ The death toll from the Iraqi side is tricky to discern. Methodological issues, largely stemming from security concerns and difficulties compiling data, obfuscate the actual calculation. Some groups, like the Iraqi Body Count, relied on media reports and thus risk underreporting or duplicating data.¹¹ The Associated Press, which began tracking deaths in 2005, used information from police, hospitals, morgues, and other eyewitness accounts but did not include insurgent deaths in its calculations.¹² In general terms, however, tallies from journalists, nongovernmental organizations, and epidemiologists are higher than government estimates.

Coalition officials often disputed these numbers, contending that any conclusions were flawed and incomplete given the precarious conditions in Iraq. U.S. authorities, for their part, had also long denied tracking casualties.¹³ However, WikiLeaks’s publication of the “Iraqi War Logs” online in October 2010 contradicted these claims, showing that Multi-National Force-Iraq (MNF-I, the coalition headquarters) indeed monitored the death toll. According to these figures, over sixty-six thousand Iraqi civilians and twenty-four thousand insurgents died between January 2004 and December 2009.¹⁴ MNF-I data compiled in 2009 showed over fifty-four thousand deaths between 2006 and 2008 alone.¹⁵

Studies from reputable teams of investigators have reached conclusions that differ from MNF-I. Nevertheless, it is still challenging to reach a consensus as these reviews have focused on varying spans of time and thus range widely both in the years included and deductions. A seminal analysis published by a team of researchers from Johns Hopkins University and Baghdad’s Al-Mustansiriya University—often referred to as the Lancet study—concluded over six hundred thousand Iraqis died in the first forty months of the war.¹⁶ A British polling firm argued that the total was closer to one million Iraqis by June 2007.¹⁷ A World Health Organization-affiliated report published in the New England Journal of Medicine estimated over 150,000 Iraqis died between March 2003 and June 2006.¹⁸ Moreover, additional publications have pointed out that countless Iraqis died of issues not directly tied to combat but rather because of wartime conditions—displacement, poor access to potable water and food, limited healthcare, and rising rates of child and infant mortality.¹⁹ A 2013 study published in the journal of Public Library Science of Medicine tabulated well over four hundred thousand Iraqi deaths between March 2003 and June 2011, attributing 60 percent of the deaths directly due to violence and the remaining 40 percent to the combat environment.²⁰

Political and methodological issues also raise questions about Iraqi government totals. Baghdad only began providing data publicly a year after the surge campaign concluded. According to this accounting, between 2004 and 2008, there were only eighty-six thousand civilian deaths. These figures were split into two categories: fifty-two thousand “martyred victims,” by which they meant identified bodies, compared to thirty-four thousand “bodies found,” or unidentified bodies. However, these figures only recorded those killed by “direct bombings, assassinations, kidnappings, or forced displacement” and set aside any deaths from coalition operations or intramilitia fighting. Finally, the picture is further complicated because different Iraqi agencies—including the Defense, Interior, and Health ministries—released their own datasets.²¹ Not all government figures are questionable because of political influence or other dubious reasons. Researchers, for example, found death certificates in Erbil, northern Iraq, improperly recorded the cause of death only as a means to settle burial and legal issues for surviving family members quickly.²²

By the summer of 2008, the insurgency, by and large, was over. Yet, it had far-reaching ramifications for the surviving Iraqis. Nearly 2.7 million Iraqis were internally displaced, having fled the violence and still feared returning home.²³ Food costs had skyrocketed, and a prolonged drought, which worsened water sanitation and agricultural conditions, further compounded those prices.²⁴ While the World Health Organization reported increasing success in combating diseases like cholera, measles, and malaria, Iraq still urgently required better water treatment, primary care, and outbreak management.²⁵ Despite improvements to Iraq’s electrical grid, delivery to Iraqi houses lagged nationwide.²⁶ Recovery efforts stalled and languished as the price of oil fell in late 2008/early 2009.²⁷

While the violence had been curtailed considerably, the recovery process had only just begun. Despite Iraq’s improving gross domestic product, which had endured two decades of war and sanctions, other aspects of Iraq’s economy remained unhealthy. Oil dominated Iraq’s economic planning and output; this resulted, in the words of Eckart Woertz, in “resource capture by elites, neglect of productive sectors of the economy, shortcomings in the educational realm, and other phenomena that have been associated with the ‘resource curse’ that afflicts economies reliant on the export of raw materials.”²⁸ After the surge, unemployment rates remained exceptionally high, with almost 60 percent of men between the ages of fifteen and twenty-nine without work.²⁹ Although official Iraqi government figures claimed the overall unemployment rate was 15 percent by the time of the U.S. withdrawal in 2011, other estimates suggested the actual rate was likely closer to 30 percent.³⁰

The Iraqi Landscape

The invasion and insurgency had not only transformed the makeup and character of Iraqi cities and society, but the war had also inflicted considerable and irreparable harm on Iraqi history. Some effects were easy to see physically. Barring some exceptions at Ur near Tallil Air Base in southern Iraq and Aqar Quf near Forward Operating Base Warrior near Kirkuk in northern Iraq, coalition forces, insurgents, and raiders had severely damaged archaeological sites.³¹ Looters had ransacked libraries, museums, archives, and other government institutions, siphoning off valuable Iraqi artifacts and historical pieces.³²

Because it was the center of gravity for both insurgents and coalition forces, the war dramatically altered the city of Baghdad. Blast walls, which were made of steel-reinforced concrete, littered the capital. First erected in 2005, U.S. Army units used these structures—called by soldiers T-Walls, or Alaska, Texas, or Jersey barriers depending on the size and slope—to protect the civilian population and coalition forces because they could withstand the blast of improvised explosive devices and other fires. As the insurgency worsened, American and Iraqi units used the concrete walls to control traffic and establish checkpoints alongside them. By 2008, these structures were a ubiquitous sight for anyone driving throughout the capital.³³

It is fair to conclude that the surge campaign, which encompassed increasing the number of U.S. troops on the ground and better cooperation among the U.S. Army, Iraqi security forces, and Iraqi tribal forces, successfully repressed the violence.³⁴ However, this assessment does not capture the entire picture. During the insurgency, Sunni and Shi’a militants carried out waves of killings, assassinations, and forced removals of Baghdadis as part of their respective campaigns to ethnically cleanse and segregate the city.³⁵ By 2007 and 2008, after several years of concerted activity, sectarian killings, and coalition operations, violence in Baghdad waned as groups solidified their gains and established “islands” of sectarian affiliation.³⁶ As the United Nations Assistance Mission-Iraq head, Stefan de Mistura, explained, “We saw that the city of Baghdad changed its color, there was a cleansing.”³⁷

This pattern of violence indicates the complicated nature of the insurgency—this was not merely coalition forces pitted against insurgents or what the United States considered to be “former regime elements” but rather multiple conflicts between varying factions and militias occurring simultaneously.³⁸ It is important to note that sectarian affiliation alone did not drive the fighting between Iraq’s Sunni and Shi’a. Countless individuals joined the insurgency to expel the Americans. AQI and other jihadist groups aimed to thrust the country into a civil war as part of their grand ambitions for postoccupation Iraq.³⁹ For some, political marginalization, ideology, and nationalism proved to be powerful motivators. For others, the violence had become a local issue as individuals sought to protect their neighborhood, tribe, and family in the increasingly lawless and bloody environment.⁴⁰ Data collected shortly after the American withdrawal further highlights the communal nature of the bloodshed. Whereas the insurgency witnessed several high-profile attacks and high-casualty events due to massive car bombs, suicide bombers, and devastating improvised explosive devices, more Iraqis died of gunshots than they did from bombings or other indirect fire between 2003 and December 2008.⁴¹

Whatever the deciding factor was for participating in the violence, the result, in the end, was a change in the makeup of Baghdad. Despite their intent to protect Iraqis and Americans, blast walls inadvertently contributed to the “new ethno-religious boundaries” of Baghdad. In the postsurge environment, neighborhoods such as Ameriya, Dora, Hurriya, and Adhamiya became enclaves surrounded by walls with heavily controlled access. These walls were not always foolproof—various communities still suffered rocket attacks; others inadvertently became safe havens for insurgents. The violence in Adhamiya, a Sunni district on the eastern side of the Tigris River in northern Baghdad, for example, was so destructive that the local cemetery ran out of space to bury the dead. Christians in Dora fled to the Ghadeer area of New Baghdad/9 Nissan district. The Shi’a presence in Ghazaliya, Khadra, and Ameriya essentially vanished, while other Sunni areas turned into “virtual ghost towns.”⁴² Reflecting on the events of 2003–2008, a resident from Adhamiya told researchers in 2023 that “there was chaos … There was no law, and there was no state.” Another from Kadhimiyya, a Shi’a dominated district on the western side of the Tigris opposite of Adhamiya, said, “In this period of destruction, everyone had to rely on themselves. This was the worst time by far.”⁴³

The chaos ultimately created opportunities for those looking for power and influence. Insurgent commanders, who may have had a multitude of reasons for fighting, exploited the situation by consolidating gains, territory, and resources for their own profit. Within the enclaves, militants, both Sunni and Shi’a, imposed their rules over the remaining residents; they also outmaneuvered or undercut U.S.-led efforts to establish and stand up new local governing councils.⁴⁴ In some instances, shops or business owners required the permission of local commanders to operate. Insurgents also commandeered local mosques, appointing preachers and religious leaders of their choosing.⁴⁵ In the words of one Iraqi journalist, “These men who had killed, maimed, and destroyed for what they believed in had after years of fighting have become nothing more than criminals.”⁴⁶

More than 270,000 families ultimately fled their homes—including over 90,700 families (estimated to be about 550,000 individuals, based on the average family size of six) from Baghdad—in the wake of the violence.⁴⁷ But even with security largely reestablished by mid-2008, many could not easily return to their homes and communities. In August, the Iraqi government announced plans to aid the return of those displaced and indicated it would seek to evict illegal squatters and offer financial restitution.⁴⁸ Still, the families and residents who chose to return faced threats and intimidation. For others, it was impossible because militants and neighbors had vandalized their property beyond repair or simply confiscated them. In some areas, militants supporting Shi’a militant leader Muqtada al-Sadr left ominous taunting graffiti for the returnees, “we will be right back after a break … [signed] the Mahdi army.”⁴⁹ Evidently, many displaced people never came back. According to some estimates, for example, less than 20 percent of Sunni residents returned to their homes in Hurriya.⁵⁰

Shi’a Ascendency and Sunni Defeat

During Saddam’s tenure, Sunni Arabs, who constituted only around 20 percent of Iraq’s overall population, benefited greatly under the Sunni-dominated Baʿth Party rule. Yet, while the Baʿthists undoubtedly discriminated against Iraq’s non-Sunni Arab citizens, they did not attempt to segregate Iraq entirely by religious sect or ethnicity. In fact, the regime expended great efforts to create a sense of national identity—an “Iraqi” identity—that would supplant any other affiliation.⁵¹ As Amatzia Baram, a noted scholar of Iraq, argued, “Iraq’s Sunni-Shi’i-Kurdish cleavage was not absolute nor was it always the most important fault line in Iraqi society.”⁵²

The same could not be said in post-Saddam Iraq. Under the Baʿth regime, sectarian and ethnic tensions existed but simmered underground. However, they exploded into the open with the invasion and occupation. These fault lines were further crystallized with the formation of the new Iraqi government, which, thanks in part to American fixation on a “representative” Iraq, emphasized distributing power based on the country’s religious and ethnic demographics. As a result, the power pendulum swung: Sunnis lost their majority rule, replaced by the Shi’a, who constituted around 60 percent of the population. The Kurds, who live in northern Iraq, also secured several political concessions in the new Iraqi constitution.⁵³

Combat operations further cemented this sense of partition. While engaging both Sunni insurgents and Shi’a militias during the surge, coalition forces deemed the former the greatest threat to Iraq’s stability and thus devoted significantly more resources and energy to quell those groups. By 2008, the Iraqi Shi’a emerged as victors in this era. Shi’a militants had secured supremacy in Baghdad. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and his Shi’a political coalition (many of whom had ties to Shi’a militants and Iranian-backed groups) had struggled to govern during the insurgency but now emerged emboldened.⁵⁴ With the violence tempered, Maliki moved to consolidate his own position and turned his attention to perceived adversaries such as the Kurds and other would-be challengers. Shi’a control over several Iraqi security branches and other government posts also expanded.⁵⁵

Maliki and his associates also seized on prior American-led efforts to root out the Baʿthists. In the aftermath of the invasion, the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) set out to de-Baʿthify Iraqi society. Issued in May 2003, CPA Orders Number 1 and 2 banned and disbanded the Baʿth Party and the Iraqi military, respectively. CPA Order Number 5 created the De-Baʿthification Council (DBC) and charged it with reclaiming Baʿth property, identifying and classifying Baʿth members, and eliminating the structure and means of the Baʿth Party. Nevertheless, as Iraqi leaders and CPA officials worked on creating the new Iraqi constitution, they were mindful of the fact that not every Iraqi was a diehard Baʿthist. Affiliation or interaction with the party was almost always obligatory for social and economic advancement during Saddam’s rule.⁵⁶

Yet, the DBC surpassed what the CPA had initially anticipated and began what many Iraqis and Americans saw as a purge of Sunnis to solidify Shi’a domination by excluding thousands of Sunnis from the new state.⁵⁷ While some had connections to the prior regime, the DBC also targeted those who sided with various Sunni political parties and factions. Because of its close ties with the Shi’a government, the DBC also used its prerogative to target perceived wayward trade guilds, unions, and private sector companies. In other words, the DBC attempted to curtail Sunni advancement and thwart would-be challengers under the guise of rooting out Baʿthism from Iraqi society. While the Americans pressured the DBC (which became the Accountability and Justice Commission in January 2008) to tamp down its activities, the efforts to de-Baʿthify Iraqi society had already created devastating consequences for Iraq’s future.⁵⁸ By some estimates, the DBC/Accountability and Justice Commission removed some fifty thousand to one hundred thousand individuals from government and civil jobs, with education, health, and manufacturing sectors being the hardest hit industries. These dismissals and forced retirements severely limited the Iraqi state’s capacity to provide essential services for its citizens.⁵⁹ De-Baʿthification significantly contributed to the Sunnis’ growing sense of alienation and vulnerability. These feelings only intensified, as did the harassment, before they exploded in the open just after the departure of U.S. forces at the end of 2011.

History and Memory

The legacy of the 2003 Iraq war is complicated. The invasion removed Saddam Hussein and the Baʿthists from power, but it also created a vacuum in which the insurgency thrived. The Americans departed when Iraqi governance and stability had remarkably improved but remained fragile still. And yet, the devastation in Iraq cannot be solely pinned on the United States. Militants and insurgents of all walks had their own agendas and agency and inflicted atrocities and horrors on Iraqi civilians. Iraqi politicians and their factions, exploiting American preoccupation on a Baʿthist-free, democratic Iraq, were eager to rectify historical wrongs (real or perceived) and enshrine their status in this new era at the risk of disaffecting parts of Iraqi society. Without this Iraqi perspective, any picture of the Iraq War is incomplete. A conflation of actors, motivations, and means drove the violence and political tumult. To overlook the carnage and devastation is tantamount to ignoring a vital part of the war’s history.

The fall of Kabul in 2021 prompted several commentators to invoke Iraq.⁶⁰ However, just as they were long before the beginning of the “Global War on Terrorism,” Iraq and Afghanistan today are not one and the same. Iraq, with all of its faults and weaknesses, such as rampant corruption and militia activity, is a parliamentary republic with three branches of government codified by a federal constitution. Nevertheless, it remains to be seen how Iraqi history will look back at the 2003 war and Saddam’s regime. Laws banning membership or support (which is broadly defined) for the Baʿth Party have stymied academic work on the pre-2003 era, leaving Iraqi researchers and scholars in fear of ostracization, potential loss of employment, and imprisonment.⁶¹

There are also signs that the successive rounds of violence, combined with the current Iraqi government’s ineptitude and ruthlessness, have contributed to a sort of historical amnesia.⁶² Longing for stability and peace, many Iraqis look fondly back at the Baʿthist era. In 2018, one Iraqi general stated that “many people, when they compare between the situation under Saddam Hussein and now, find maybe their life under Saddam Hussein was better.”⁶³ Given that Iraq still suffers from sewage and electrical problems, Baghdadis interviewed by researchers in 2023 remarked that preinvasion Iraq was the “best” in terms of reliable public services.⁶⁴ But beyond this wistfulness, the war has become a clear demarcation line for Iraqis, especially as they consider the present and envision the future. Over one million Iraqis remain internally displaced as of 2024.⁶⁵ As one Iraqi journalist and filmmaker, whose family fled in 2014 amid ISIS’s conquest, noted, “We lost our home … And I keep linking it to the 2003 war. Everything that is happening in our lives—displacement, not having the life we deserve ... we are asking to have normal ordinary family lives.”⁶⁶

 

The opinions and assertions expressed herein are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Army, the Department of War, or the U.S. government.

 

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Notes

1. Some examples include Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, A Stranger in Your Own City: Travels in the Middle East’s Long War (Knopf, 2023); and Rasha Al Aqeedi, “Living—and Reliving—the US Invasion of Iraq,” New Lines Magazine, 20 March 2023, https://newlinesmag.com/first-person/living-and-reliving-the-us-invasion-of-iraq/.
2. The mosque complex houses the tombs of the tenth and eleventh imams and sits in the shrine of the twelfth, or hidden, imam.
3. Sam Gollob and Michael E. O’Hanlon, “Iraq Index: Tracking Variables of Reconstruction and Security in Post-Saddam Hussein Iraq” (Brookings Institution, 25 August 2020), 12, https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/FP_20200825_iraq_index.pdf.
4. U.S. Department of Defense (DOD), Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq (DOD, September 2008), 22, https://www.health.mil/Reference-Center/Reports/2008/09/26/Measuring-Stability-and-Security-in-Iraq. DOD data shows a peak of over 3,500 Iraqi civilian deaths per month near the end of 2006 and then a rapid descent starting in summer 2007 and continuing throughout 2008. By August 2008, these figures had fallen to less than five hundred monthly deaths. Comparing the summers of 2007 and 2008, civilian deaths declined by at least 77 percent. U.S. military personnel and Iraqi security forces deaths, with one stand-alone bump in the summer of 2007, also mirrored this trend.
5. Operation Iraqi Freedom ended 31 August 2010; Operation New Dawn began 1 September 2010 and concluded in December 2011.
6. Mason W. Watson, The Conflict with ISIS: Operation Inherent Resolve, June 2014-January 2020, Publication No. 78-0 (U.S. Army Center of Military History [CMH], 2021).
7. For the First Gulf War (Operation Desert Storm) through 2003, see Sam Helfont, “The Gulf War’s Afterlife: Dilemmas, Missed Opportunities, and the Post-Cold War Order Undone,” Texas National Security Review 4, no. 2 (Spring 2021): 25–47, http://dx.doi.org/10.26153/tsw/13200. Saddam Hussein and several high-ranking Baʿth believed the United States betrayed Iraq in its war with Iran in the 1980s. For some examples, see Kevin Woods et al., Saddam’s Generals: Perspectives of the Iran-Iraq War (Institute for Defense Analyses, 2011), 107–8; and “Saddam Hussein and His Advisers Discussing Reagan’s Speech to the Nation on ‘Irangate’ (Iran-Contra) Revelations (Part 2),” 15 November 1986, SH-SHTP-A-000-555, Conflict Records Research Center, National Defense University, https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/saddam-hussein-and-his-advisers-discussing-reagans-speech-nation-irangate-iran-contra. During the rise and expansion of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), several Iraqis (including prominent government officials) and other Arab neighbors believed conspiracy theories about ISIS being an American creation and tool. David D. Kirkpatrick, “Suspicions Run Deep in Iraq that C.I.A. and the Islamic State Are United,” New York Times, 20 September 2014; Suzanne Kianpour, “The US, IS, and Conspiracy Theory Sweeping Lebanon,” BBC, 12 August 2014, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-28745990.
8. Roger D. Petersen, Death, Dominance, and State-Building: The U.S. in Iraq and the Future of American Military Intervention (Oxford University Press, 2024), 24. Petersen is referring specifically to the 2003 war.
9. Gregory A. Daddis, “Iraq: Twenty Years On, Two Narrative Emerge,” War on the Rocks, 14 April 2023, https://warontherocks.com/2023/04/iraq-twenty-years-on-two-narratives-emerge/.
10. “U.S. Military Casualties – Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) Casualty, Summary by Casualty (As of 3 January 2025),” Defense Casualty Analysis System, accessed 29 August 2025, https://dcas.dmdc.osd.mil/dcas/app/conflictCasualties/oif/byCategory.
11. Anne Siegler et al., “Media Coverage of Violent Deaths in Iraq: An Opportunistic Capture-Recapture Assessment,” Prehospital and Disaster Medicine 23, no. 4 (2008): 369–71, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1049023X00006026. 
12. Hannah Fischer, Iraq Casualties: U.S. Military Forces and Iraqi Civilians, Police, and Security Forces (Congressional Research Service, 7 October 2010). The Associated Press estimated forty-one thousand Iraqi civilian deaths and eight thousand Iraqi police and security forces deaths between April 2005 and September 2010.
13. Owen Dyer, “UK and US Governments Must Monitor Iraq Casualties,” BMJ 330, no. 7491 (2005): 557, https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.330.7491.557.
14. Dustin Carpenter et al., “WikiLeaks and Iraq Body Count: The Sum of Parts May Not Add Up to the Whole-A Comparison of Two Tallies of Iraqi Civilian Deaths,” Prehospital and Disaster Medicine 28, no. 3 (2013): 223–29, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1049023X13000113.
15. Multi-National Force-Iraq (MNF-I), “Civilian Deaths and Casualties as of 17 September 2009,” PowerPoint brief, circa September 2009.
16. Gilbert Burnham et al., “Mortality After the 2003 Invasion of Iraq: A Cross-Sectional Cluster Sample Survey,” The Lancet 368, no. 9545 (21 October 2006): 1421–28, https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(06)69491-9/abstract.
17. Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies, “The Iraq Death Toll 15 Years After the US Invasion,” Common Dreams, 15 March 2018, https://www.commondreams.org/views/2018/03/15/iraq-death-toll-15-years-after-us-invasion.
18. Iraq Family Healthy Survey Study Group, “Violence-Related Mortality in Iraq from 2002 to 2006,” New England Journal of Medicine 358, no.5 (31 January 2008): 484–92, https://www.doi.org/10.1056/NEJMsa0707782.
19. Neta C. Crawford, “Blood and Treasure: United States Budgetary Costs and Human Costs of 20 Years of War in Iraq and Syria, 2003-2003,” Watson Institute at Brown University, 15 March 2023, https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/papers/2023/IraqSyria20; Association for Defending Victims of Terrorism, “Promotion and Protection of All Human Rights, Civil, Political, Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, Including the Right to Development,” A/HRC10/NGO/71 (United Nations [UN], 2020), 2, https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/3890543?v=pdf; World Health Organization (WHO), “Iraq: Nutrition Country Profile,” WHO-EM/NUT/295/E (WHO, 2023), https://iris.who.int/handle/10665/367697.
20. Amy Hagopian et al., “Mortality in Iraq Associated with the 2003–2011 War and Occupation: Findings from a National Cluster Sample Survey by the University Collaborative Iraq Mortality Study,” PLOS Medicine 10, no. 10 (Spring 2013): e1001533, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1001533.
21. Fischer, Iraq Casualties.
22. Aso Zangana et al., “Mortality Trends in Erbil, Iraq, 2007–2011,” Eastern Mediterranean Health Journal 25, no. 5 (2019): 315–21, https://doi.org/10.26719/emhj.18.042.
23. The total number of Iraqi refugees peaked in 2007, reaching around 2.3 million people. Gollob and O’Hanlon, “Iraq Index”; Joel Wing, “International Organization for Migration Report on Internally Displaced in Tamin, Ninewa, and Salahaddin,” Musings on Iraq, 30 December 2008, http://musingsoniraq.blogspot.com/2008/12/international-organization-for_30.html; Hanna Duggal and AJLabs, “‘We Are Still Displaced,’ 20 Years After the Iraq War,” Al Jazeera, 5 April 2023, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/longform/2023/4/5/iraq-war-20-years-on-visualising-the-impact-of-the-invasion. According to the Iraqi Ministry of Displacement and Migration, the insurgency displaced 1.6 million Iraqis within the country between 2006 and 2008. International Organization for Migration (IOM), “IOM Migration: Review of Displacement and Return in Iraq” (IOM, August 2010), 1, 17, https://www.iom.int/jahia/webdav/shared/shared/mainsite/activities/countries/docs/Iraq/IOM_Iraq_Review_of_Displacement_and_Return_in_Iraq_August_2010.pdf.
24. UN Environment Programme (UNEP), Support for Environmental Management of the Iraqi Marshlands, 2004-2009 (UNEP, 2009), 72–73, https://www.unep.org/resources/report/support-environmental-management-iraqi-marshlands-2004-2009.
25. MNF-I CJ 1/4/8 Surgeon, “Reliability of Data in Cholera Reports,” information paper (MNF-I, 15 October 2008); WHO, “2009: Stories that Count” (WHO, 2009), 1–40, https://iris.who.int/handle/10665/116609.
26. Joel Wing, “Baghdad’s Electrical Plan,” Musings on Iraq, 24 November 2008, https://musingsoniraq.blogspot.com/2008/11/baghdads-electricity-plan.html; UNEP, Support for Environmental Management.
27. “Iraqi Government Approves $67 Billion Budget for 2009,” Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 11 November 2008, https://www.rferl.org/a/Iraqi_Government_Approves_67_Billion_Budget_For_2009/1347841.html; Ahmed Rasheed, “Iraq Parliament Likely to Cut Budget Again,” Reuters, 28 February 2009, https://www.reuters.com/article/iraq-budget/iraq-parliament-likely-to-cut-2009-budget-again-idUKLS29536920090228/.
28. Eckart Woertz, “Iraq 20 Years After the U.S. Invasion: Challenges and Continuity,” GIGA Focus Middle East, no. 1 (March 2023): 1–9, https://www.giga-hamburg.de/en/publications/giga-focus/iraq-20-years-after-the-us-invasion-challenges-and-continuity.
29. UN, Iraq and the Region Consolidated Appeal 2009: A Mid-Year Review (UN, 2009), 7–8, https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/660402?v=pdf.
30. Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR), Learning from Iraq: A Final Report from the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR, March 2013), 119, https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/citations/ADA587236; SIGIR, Quarterly Report and Semiannual Report to the United States Congress (SIGIR, 30 January 2012), 82, https://reliefweb.int/report/iraq/sigir-quarterly-report-and-semiannual-report-united-states-congress; Bassam Yousif et al., “Conflict, Institutions, and the Iraqi Economy, 2003-2018,” ERF Working Paper No. 1387 (Economic Research Forum, April 2020), https://erf.org.eg/publications/conflict-institutions-and-the-iraqi-economy-2003-2018/.
31. John Malcom Russell, Report on Damage to the Site of Babylon, Iraq (Cultural Heritage Center, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, Department of State, April 2010), https://eca.state.gov/files/bureau/babylondamagereport.pdf; Diane C. Siebrandt, “The Impact of Coalition Military Operations on Archaeological Sites in Iraq,” chap. 10 in The Legacy of Iraq: From the 2003 War to the Islamic State, ed. Benjamin Isakhan (Edinburgh University Press, 2015).
32. “Iraq Museum Looting: 15 Years On,” University of Sydney, 10 April 2018, https://www.sydney.edu.au/news-opinion/news/2018/04/10/iraq-museum-looting--15-years-on.html; Peter Wien, “Problematic Archives: Documentary Knowledge of Modern Iraq Between Ex- and Repatriation,” Middle East Journal 77, no. 3 (Winter 2024): 350–71, https://muse.jhu.edu/article/931383.
33. Benjamin Neimark et al., “Concrete Impacts: Blast Walls, Wartime Emissions, and the US Occupation of Iraq,” Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography 56 (2023): 1–23, https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/595473392.pdf; also see Michael Izady, “Atlas of the Islamic World and Vicinity,” Gulf/2000 Project: 2006-Present, Columbia University, accessed 29 August 2025, https://gulf2000.columbia.edu/maps.shtml.
34. For debates on this, see Stephen Biddle et al., “Testing the Surge: Why Did Violence Decline in Iraq in 2007?,” International Security 37, no.1 (Summer 2012): 7–40, https://doi.org/10.1162/ISEC_a_00087.
35. Petersen, Death, Dominance, and State-Building, 89–150; see also Christiana Parreria, “Power Politics: Armed Non-State Actors and the Capture of Public Electricity in Post-Invasion Baghdad,” Journal of Peace Research 58, no. 4 (September 2020): 749–62, https://doi.org/10.1177/0022343320940768; John Agnew et al., “Baghdad Nights: Evaluating the US Military ‘Surge’ Using Nighttime Light Signatures,” Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space 40, no. 10 (October 2008): 2285–95, https://doi.org/10.1068/a41200.
36. Michael M. R. Izady, “Urban Unplanning: How Violence, Walls, and Segregation Destroyed the Urban Fabric of Baghdad,” Journal of Planning History 19, no. 1 (2020): 52–68, https://doi.org/10.1177/1538513219830106.
37. Nir Rosen, Aftermath: Following the Bloodshed of America’s Wars in the Muslim World (Nation Books, 2010), 528.
38. Appendix 1 (Intelligence Estimate) to Annex B to Multi-National Corps-Iraq Operations Order 05-02, 1 April 2005, U.S. Central Command Iraq Papers (Document 0722), U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center (AHEC), https://ahec.armywarcollege.edu/CENTCOM-IRAQ-papers/0722.%20Annex%20B-Appendix%201-Intelligence%20Estimate.pdf; also see U.S. Central Command to U.S. Secretary of Defense and Joint Chiefs of Staff, memorandum, “Terminology to Describe the Nature of Hostile Force Operations in Iraq,” 25 July 2003, U.S. Central Command Iraq Papers (Document 0383), AHEC, https://ahec.armywarcollege.edu/CENTCOM-IRAQ-papers/0383.%20AbizaidEnemy25July03.pdf.
39. Fawaz A. Gerges, ISIS: A History (Princeton University Press, 2012), 82.
40. Abdul-Ahad, A Stranger in Your Own City, 139; Ranj Alaaldin, “Shi’a Ascendancy in Iraq and the Sectarian Polarization of the Middle East,” in Isakhan, The Legacy of Iraq, 183–86.
41. Hagopian et al., “Mortality in Iraq,” 6.
42. Izady, “Urban Unplanning,” 58–60, 62. For more on Adhamiya and Kadhimiyya, see Ula Merie and Sana Murrani, “Baghdad Behind Walls: Mapping Urban Heritage for Spatial Justice,” Middle East Journal 77, no. 3 (Winter 2024): 306–28, https://doi.org/10.3751/77.34.13.
43. Alissa Walter, Contested City: Citizen Advocacy and Survival in Modern Iraq (Stanford University Press, 2025), 218.
44. Walter, Contested City, 187–220.
45. Abdul-Ahad, Stranger in City, 142, 156; Human Terrain Systems—Research Reachback Center, Short-Notice Cultural Report: Christians in Baghdad (Human Terrain Systems—Research Reachback Center, 19 March 2008).
46. Abdul-Ahad, A Stranger in Your Own City, 142–44.
47. “Iraq Index,” Brookings Institution, 30 November 2011, https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/index20111130.pdf; Jamille Bigio and Jen Scott, “Internal Displacement in Iraq: The Process of Working Toward Durable Solutions” (Brookings-Bern Project on Internal Displacement, June 2009), https://www.brookings.edu/articles/internal-displacement-in-iraq-the-process-of-working-toward-durable-solutions/.
48. U.S. Department of State, “Iraq Status Report,” PowerPoint brief, 3 September 2008.
49. Izady, “Urban Unplanning,” 62.
50. Izady, “Urban Unplanning,” 62.
51. Samuel Helfont, Compulsion in Religion: Saddam Hussein, Islam, and the Roots of Insurgencies in Iraq (Oxford University Press, 2018); Dina Rizk Khoury, Iraq in Wartime: Soldiering, Martyrdom, and Remembrance (Cambridge University Press, 2013).
52. Amatzia Baram, Saddam Husayn and Islam, 1968-2003: Baʿthi Iraq from Secularism to Faith (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014), 81.
53. Ali A. Allawi, The Occupation of Iraq: Winning the War, Losing the Peace (Yale University Press, 2007), 164–65, 191, 245. The Sunnis also struggled to coalesce politically, unlike the Shi’a. Ronen Zeidel, “Between Aqalliya and Mukawin: Understanding Sunni Political Attitudes in Post-Saddam Iraq,” chap. 6 in Isakhan, The Legacy of Iraq; Bilal Wahab, “The Rise and Fall of Kurdish Power in Iraq,” Middle East Research and Information Project, no. 306 (Spring 2023): 1–10, https://merip.org/2023/04/the-rise-and-fall-of-kurdish-power-in-iraq/.
54. For more on Maliki’s Da’wa Party, coalition, and enemies, see Joseph Sassoon, Saddam Hussein’s Baʿth Party: Inside an Authoritarian Regime (Cambridge University Press, 2011), 222–23; Joel Rayburn, Iraq After America: Strongmen, Sectarians, Resistance (Hoover Institution Press, 2014), 9–36.
55. James L. Jones, “The National Police,” in The Report of the Independent Commission on the Security Forces of Iraq (Atlantic Council, 2007), 109–15; see also Matthew Nanes, “Sectarianism and Conflict in the Iraqi Police,” in Policing for Peace: Institutions, Expectations, and Security in Divided Societies (Cambridge University Press, 2021), 42–66; Michael J. Totten, In the Wake of the Surge (Belmont Estate Books, 2011), 211–12, 219, 229–30, 234; Abdul-Ahad, Stranger in Your Own City, 165–66.
56. Sassoon, Saddam Hussein’s Baʿth Party, 45–47. Even then, the party’s hierarchy had several steps before reaching full membership status. Thousands of Iraqis only ever reached the bottom tiers of mu’ayyid (sympathizer) or nasir (supporter); many only did so as a prerequisite for the occupation or position.
57. There is a certain sense of irony that the DBC exceeded the Coalition Provisional Authority’s (CPA) objectives of the de-Baʿthification given that the head of the CPA, L. Paul Bremer III, faced accusations and criticisms that his orders to disband the Iraqi military eclipsed the Bush administrations’ intent. President George W. Bush was quoted saying that American policy was to “keep the [Iraqi] army intact” but that it “didn’t happen.” Robert Draper, Dead Certain: The Presidency of George W. Bush (Free Press, 2007), 211. Bremer wrote a scathing rebuttal over claims that the CPA Order No. 2 was not only a grave mistake but an ill-advised decision that exacerbated the course of the war, arguing that the CPA policies were crafted by Pentagon leadership, including Under Secretary of Defense Douglas J. Feith, they were “popular” with Iraqis, and that “Iraqi leaders … broadened the decree’s impact far beyond our original decision.” L. Paul Bremer, “What We Got Right in Iraq,” Washington Post, 13 May 2007, https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/2007/05/13/what-we-got-right-in-iraq/dc5be712-cbee-4579-97a2-810a0e26484d/. Declassified materials, however, suggest the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Joint Chiefs of Staff, and other Pentagon and U.S. officials advocated for retaining various elements of the Iraqi military and vetting prior Baʿth and military personnel before removal leading up to the May announcement. See SIGIR, Hard Lessons: The Iraq Reconstruction Experience (SIGIR, 1 January 2009), 100–4, https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/citations/ADA493696; Paul Bremer to Donald Rumsfeld, memorandum, “Dissolution of the Ministry of Defense and Related Entities,” 19 May 2003, https://library.rumsfeld.com/doclib/sp/340/2003-05-19%20from%20Bremer%20re%20Dissolution%20of%20the%20Ministry%20of%20Defense%20and%20related%20Entities.pdf. For his part, Feith would later tell American regulators that while the approval process for CPA Order No. 2 was flawed, the final decision was correct. SIGIR, Hard Lessons, 103.
58. The Accountability and Justice Commission eventually permitted some prior Baʿth members to join the Iraqi security forces and lower levels of government service (except for intelligence and security positions). See Benjamin Isakhan, “The De-Baathification of Post-2003 Iraq: Purging the Past for Political Power,” chap. 1 in The Legacy of Iraq; Ronen Zeidel “Between ‘Aqalliya’ and ‘Mukawin’: Understanding Sunni Political Attitudes in Post-Saddam Iraq,” chap. 6 in Isakhan, The Legacy of Iraq; James P. Pfiffner, “US Blunders in Iraq: De-Baʿthification and Disbanding the Army,” Intelligence and National Security 25, no. 1 (February 2010): 76–85.
59. Alissa J. Rubin, “Ahmad Chalabi and the Legacy of De-Baʿthification,” New York Times, 3 November 2015, https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/04/world/middleeast/ahmad-chalabi-and-the-legacy-of-de-baathification-in-iraq.html; Miranda Sissons and Abdulrazzaq Al-Saiedi, A Bitter Legacy: Lessons of De-Baathification in Iraq (International Center for Transnational Justice, March 2013), 22–23, https://www.ictj.org/publication/bitter-legacy-lessons-de-baathification-iraq.
60. Here are just a mere sampling of articles and responses on this issue: Peter Dahl Thruelsen, “Misaligned in Mesopotamia: Conflicting Ambitions in NATO Mission Iraq,” War on the Rocks, 16 September 2021, https://warontherocks.com/2021/09/misaligned-in-mesopotamia-conflicting-ambitions-in-nato-mission-iraq/; Haroro J. Ingram and Omar Mohammed, “History’s Rhymes in the Fall of Kabul and Mosul: Flawed Ideas, Broken Promises, and Poisonous Spin,” International Centre for Counter-Terrorism, 2 September 2021, https://icct.nl/publication/historys-rhymes-fall-kabul-and-mosul-flawed-ideas-broken-promises-and-poisonous-spin; Walden Bello, “September 11 and the Debacle of ‘Nation Building’ in Iraq and Afghanistan,” Foreign Policy in Focus, 10 September 2021, https://fpif.org/september-11-and-the-debacle-of-nation-building-in-iraq-and-afghanistan/; Michael Hirsh, “The Lessons Not Learned from Iraq: Twenty Years On, the War Still Shapes Policy—Mostly for the Worse,” Foreign Policy, 17 March 2023, https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/03/17/iraq-war-anniversary-lessons-bush-biden-afghanistan/.
61. For example, see the Iraqi government’s Banning the Baath Party Act No. 32 of October 2016, https://www.unodc.org/uploads/icsant/documents/Legislation/Iraq/Iraq/English/Law_No._32_of_2016.pdf; see also Marsin Alshamary and Shamiran Mako, “Hierarchized Knowledge Production and Iraq’s Ba‘th Party Archives,” in Ba‘thist Iraq Through Archives: Reflections, Explorations, and Opportunities, ed. Samuel Helfont and Lisa Blaydes (Stanford University Press, 2026); Tobey Matthiesen, “Ba‘thists in the Arab Gulf States and Iraq-Gulf Relations,” in Helfont and Blaydes, Ba‘thist Iraq Through Archives.
62. Jarret Bencks, “2019 Protests in Iraq: A Primer,” BrandeisNOW, 11 December 2019, https://www.brandeis.edu/now/2019/december/iraq-protests-2019.html; “Iraq: Four Years After Tishreen Protests, No Justice for State and Militia Violence,” Amnesty International, 27 September 2023, https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/09/iraq-four-years-after-tishreen-protests-no-justice-for-state-and-militia-violence/. For a recent study on the legacy of the Iran-Iraq War and its impact on memory and Shi’a militias today, see Younes Saramifar, “Collective (Non-)Memory of the Iran-Iraq War and Sectarian Thinking Among Veteran-Turned-Shi’i Militias Fighters,” Middle East Journal 77, no. 3-4 (Winter 2024): 290–305, https://muse.jhu.edu/article/931380.
63. Jane Arraf, “15 Years After U.S. Invasion, Some Iraqis are Nostalgic for Saddam Hussein Era,” NPR, 30 April 2018, https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2018/04/30/605240844/15-years-after-u-s-invasion-some-iraqis-are-nostalgic-for-saddam-hussein-era. This has become ingrained in Iraqi education as well. According to Eric Davis, a political scientist at Rutgers University, Iraqi history textbooks do not accurately convey the past, “So, Saddam is only referred to from time to time, where it’s necessary, as a dictator. It’s almost as if he didn’t exist.” Deborah Amos, “Wide Gulf Divides Iraqi Youth from Older Generation,” NPR, 3 January 2011.
64. Walter, Contested City, 220.
65. United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Global Report 2024—Iraq Situation (UNHCR, 2024), 1–3; Crawford, “Blood and Treasure,” 18–19.
66. Duggal and AJLabs, “‘We Are Still Displaced.”

 

 

 

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