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| Picture Credit: Ramzi Haidar, EPA |
After months of threats and a long military buildup, the United States and Britain attacked Iraq on March 20, 2003. Washington cut short UN arms inspections, acting in spite of the UN Security Council's refusal to pass a war-sanctioning resolution. Materials here on the Invasion look at the military operations and related developments. There is also a section looking back to the US Road to War.
US forces quickly set up prisons in Iraq, where they first held prisoners of war and then thousands of Iraqi civilian detainees indefinitely, without charge. As opposition to the occupation intensified, the US held as many as twenty-five thousand Iraqis, most at an enormous prison camp in the southern desert. Prisoners were subject to mistreatment, abuse and torture, notoriously in Abu Ghraib Prison west of Baghdad. A section here looks at the topic of Prisons and Torture.
Soon after the invasion, there developed a diverse movement of Resistance to the Occupation. This section looks at the different types of resistance, ranging from non-violent and secular to hyper-violent, sectarian groups. The resistance put great pressure on the occupiers and made the US military presence very costly. Iraqi public opinion grew increasingly opposed to the foreign forces, as documented in dozens of Iraqi Public Opinion Polls on the Occupation.
The frustrated occupiers lashed out at the armed resistance, using extremely violent Siege Tactics and Attacks on Population Centers. US occupation forces repeatedly targeted heavily-populated civilian centers, including Fallujah, Ramadi, Tal Afar, Smarra and Najaf, resulting in many thousands of civilian casualties and massive destruction of the urban physical infrastructure. In these operations, the occupiers cut off urban residents from vital necessities, including food, water and medical supplies.
US force also used Indiscriminate and Especially Injurious Weapons, some banned by international law or widely criticized - such as napalm firebombs, white phosphorous devices, and cluster munitions. US forces and their British allies also committed Atrocities and Criminal Homicides including murder, rape and the multiple killing of civilians. Occupation forces also routinely killed innocent Iraqis at checkpoints, in house searches, and as "collateral damage" from ground operations and air strikes.
The US-UK governments, having failed to gain UN approval, sought cover by constructing a multi-nation "Coalition" which was little more than a public relations exercise. Few coalition members sent fighting forces and all but two of these "allies" refused to engage in robust military operations. Faced with enormous political pressure from their publics (and in some cases election changes), these coalition governments withdrew in a steady stream, leaving Washington and London to continue their operation virtually alone.
