The ‘War on Terror’ is one of the most controversial phrases coined by the Bush Administration. It simply means a war against a form of warfare and so it is not particularly descriptive. Again, a basic problem is that there is no agreed definition of ‘terrorism’.
The major international event flowing from the September 11 terrorist attacks has been the controversial March 2003 invasion of Iraq by the US (assisted by Britain and Australia) and the liberation of the country from Saddam Hussein. The conflict up to 1 May 2003 went well for the US-led coalition forces, but they have since run into problems and Iraq itself is now a front in the War on Terror. In this chapter I will look at the doubtful links drawn between Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein; Iraq’s history (paying special attention to its 1990 invasion of Kuwait); the faulty intelligence that led to the US-led invasion and the fruitless hunt for weapons of mass destruction; and the quest to bring democracy to Iraq. I’ll end with a brief assessment of the Iraq invasion.
Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein
Within hours of the September 11 attack, President Bush wanted to know if and how Iraq was involved. But there was no direct link between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. Iraq was not a terrorist threat to the US. No Iraqis were among the hijackers. But the Bush Administration was skilful in its linkage of Saddam Hussein to September 11 in the public mind. Most of the Western media played along.
Saddam Hussein was an Iraqi nationalist for whom Islam was only a rallying cry. In contrast, Osama bin Laden is a religious fundamentalist who wants to create a system based on Islam, in which all leaders would be controlled by a caliph. In due course – if Osama bin Laden had been able to get rid of his larger targets, such as the Saudi royal family and Israel – he would have gone after Arab leaders such as Saddam Hussein, who were not true Islamists.
Saddam ran a secular regime – which only became a little more religious after his 1990 invasion of Kuwait because he hoped to get some Islamic support. In Saddam’s Iraq, for example, women played a greater role in public life than in many of its neighbouring countries.
In the 1980s and 1990s, paranoid Saddam Hussein was suspicious of Islamic fundamentalism, fearing that it could challenge his regime. He would not allow a terrorist group he could not control into Iraq. Like all his predecessors, he was from the minority Sunnis and so he was worried about the power of the majority Shi’as, many of whom were fundamentalist. Some of his worst violence was directed at the Shi’as. Fundamentalist Muslims are not entirely sorry that he was removed – although they are not necessarily grateful to the US for doing it.
Osama bin Laden – who did not like Saddam’s regime, which was not Islamic enough for him – may have privately welcomed the US attack on Iraq in 2003. He probably reasoned that it would drag the US into another military quagmire (which it has) and so weaken it, and that it would vindicate his criticisms of the US and so increase fundamentalist Islamic support for him (which it probably has).
Now that the Sunni government of Saddam Hussein has gone, there is a risk that the more fundamentalist Shi’as may eventually gain more influence. Iraq may become a more explicitly Islamic country than it was in the past.
There was one indirect link between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, though: in the 1980s both received aid from the US. Saddam Hussein received US military assistance for his war against Iran. (President Bush’s defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, was President Ronald Reagan’s emissary to Saddam Hussein in 1983 and was photographed shaking his hand.) And in Afghanistan Osama bin Laden received military aid as part of American support to the Afghani resistance movement.
Iraq: a history
Ironically, it was the US that made Iraq a central front in the War on Terror. Instead of the terrorists having to go to the US to kill Americans, Americans became targets in Iraq. The problem for the US now is that any sign of weakness, such as a hurried withdrawal, will be taken as yet another sign that the old superpower is on the run – as driving the Soviet Union out of Afghanistan was in 1989.
Iraq is a very old country with new borders. Britain created present-day Iraq in 1921. A major challenge for all its rulers since then has been to hold the country together. There are few ‘Iraqis’ in Iraq – instead, most people see themselves as members of specific tribes. Saddam Hussein had an army of four hundred thousand plus his militia and intelligence services to keep control.
The word Iraq means the ‘shore of a great river along its length, as well as the grazing land surrounding it’. The name has been used for the last twelve hundred years to refer to the plain of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.
At the time of World War I, the region was part of the 600-year-old Ottoman empire, which was fighting on the side of Germany. The British began playing a double game. On the one hand, their diplomats encouraged the Iraqi Arabs to rebel against their fellow Muslims, the Turks, by promising them independence: this has become known as the ‘Arab Revolt’, led by Lawrence of Arabia. Many of the troops who entered Damascus in 1918 with the British and Australian forces went on to become officers in the Iraqi Army. On the other hand, British diplomats negotiated a secret treaty to divide the Ottoman empire into British and French zones of interest, which would have denied full independence to the Arabs. The treaty became public when the communists took over in Moscow in late 1917 and published a number of secret agreements. There was a great deal of anger among the Arabs, who felt betrayed by both the British and the French.
Two other ethnic groups were also hoping for independent homelands. The territory of the Kurds ran from eastern Turkey across northern Iraq and into Iran. The Assyrians, based around the province of Mosul, were neither Arab nor Kurdish but descendants of some of the world’s first Christians.
At war’s end, the British occupied what is now Iraq. They knew that the region, which was strategically placed on the crossroads between Europe and their Indian empire, would become even more important as a supplier of oil. But Arab nationalism was on the rise and the Arabs were impatient for their own countries. In June 1920, some Iraqis rebelled against the British presence. The revolt was put down, but about six thousand Iraqis plus five hundred British and Indian troops died. Some form of independence became inevitable and the British sought to achieve it while remaining on good terms with as many of the new Arab countries as possible.
They not only set out Iraq’s national boundaries and ruled it under a League of Nations mandate, but they also found this new country a nominal head of state. He was an unemployed king. Amir Faisal was the son of an Arab ruler within the Ottoman empire and had been a leader of the Arab Revolt. Named King Faisal I of Iraq in 1921, he maintained a pro-British line in foreign policy and British forces remained in the country to safeguard their financial interests. But Faisal had great difficulty holding Iraq together. The country was divided on regional, tribal and religious grounds. The year before his death in 1933, Iraq was granted independence by Britain. Faisal II, who ascended the throne in 1953 aged eighteen, also had problems with national unity and in 1958 he was killed in a coup staged by republican officers led by General Kassem. Kassem in turn was killed in a coup in 1963.
The toughest Iraqi ruler, the one who ruthlessly tried to stop all forms of internal dissent, was Saddam Hussein, who came to power in 1979. He killed off his critics, including two sons-in-law, and he attempted to forge a sense of national unity built around himself and his cronies.
Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait
A turning point in recent Iraqi history was 2 August 1990, when Saddam Hussein invaded oil-rich Kuwait on its southern border. Within days President George Bush Senior had put together Operation Desert Shield, an international coalition to force Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait and protect neighbouring Saudi Arabia. Bush gave ample opportunity for negotiations to take place while the US-led forces built up, but Saddam Hussein refused to leave Kuwait.
With international patience at an end, the US-led counter-attack took place on 17 January 1991. There was a short ferocious air, land and sea fight. Kuwait was liberated after forty-three days of fighting and a brutal Iraqi occupation of six months. Saddam Hussein ordered his retreating forces to set fire to the Kuwaiti oil fields, thereby robbing the US and its allies of the very oil they had come to protect.
Well before Saddam Hussein came along, Iraq had considered that Kuwait should be part of Iraq. Iraq and Kuwait had both been part of the vast Ottoman empire. But Kuwait was ethnically, socially and historically distinct from Iraq. It had a small population of Bedouin, who lived on the fringe of the Ottoman empire and so were largely isolated from direct Turkish rule. They paid no taxes to Constantinople (present-day Istanbul) and none of their young men served in the Sultan’s army. Instead, the territory developed close links with the British. The present Iraqi port city of Basra near Kuwait had for centuries been part of the sea route to India. When Britain took over the region after World War I, Kuwait became a stop on the passage to India and Indians were brought in to run some of its services.
In 1932, when the modern nation-state of Iraq was given independence by Britain and joined the League of Nations, it was required to define its borders. Among other things, Iraq agreed that it did not have control over Kuwait. This was a controversial decision inside the country: many Iraqis did not agree with surrendering what they saw as their territory.
One of the reasons Iraq has always wanted to control Kuwait – apart from its oil reserves – is to gain greater sea frontage on the Gulf. Iran, Iraq and Kuwait all jostle for access to the coast. The Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s was fought partly over access to the Gulf and where to draw their boundaries.
When General Kassem seized power in Iraq in 1958, he claimed control over Kuwait but did nothing about it. Then in 1961 Kuwait was granted independence from Britain. Kassem reaffirmed Iraq’s claim and moved his forces towards the border.
The British, then still a major military power, had forces deployed around the world. General Sir Hugh Beach was instructed by London to work out how to get troops, food, petrol, ammunition and medical supplies to the combat zone. Once the forces started arriving at Mutla Ridge, in the north of Kuwait, Kassem realised that the British were serious about fighting off an invasion. He recalled his troops and the invasion was averted.
In recent years, Sir Hugh has noted that the Americans failed to give a similar clear signal to Saddam Hussein as he got ready for his 1990 invasion. As the Iraqi troops moved towards the Kuwait border, US Ambassador April Glasspie did not make it clear to him that if Iraq made a move against Kuwait, the whole weight of the US would be brought against him. If he had been told that, the subsequent invasion might never have happened.
The 1990 invasion went ahead. The US-led forces successfully beat it off.
Bush Senior then had a problem. His international coalition had come together only to liberate Kuwait. The Arab states did not want the Americans to invade Iraq. Therefore, Bush could not drive on to Baghdad and remove Saddam.
Even if Saddam Hussein had been overthrown, there was no obvious pro-American replacement for him. Saddam Hussein had killed off all his potential rivals. If the Iraqi Army had been destroyed, it would have created a power vacuum to be filled by either Syria or Iran, neither of which is pro-American.
Bush Senior (and then Bill Clinton) made the best of a bad situation during the 1990s. They kept Saddam Hussein down but not out. They tried to restrain him from attacking his ethnic populations, hoping that eventually he would stop being aggressive and return to his pre-1990 attitude.
Saddam Hussein did not take the hint. He remained violently anti-American. In 2001, after 9/11, President Bush Junior decided that he had to topple Saddam. The final offensive took place in March 2003.
The search for Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction
On 12 September 2002 President Bush called on the United Nations to do more to force Iraq to get rid of its weapons of mass destruction (WMD): that is, its chemical and biological weapons and any nuclear weapons it may have had.
This was not a new demand. After Iraq was driven out of Kuwait in 1991, it remained the subject of UN sanctions until it disposed of its WMD. Saddam Hussein played a game of cheat and retreat: once he had allowed the UN inspectors in, he would find a way of expelling them, then be forced by international pressure to re-admit them, find an excuse to expel them again, and so on. By the end of the 1990s, the international community was sick of the dictator’s games. Also, there was growing concern about the Iraqis who were dying because they could not receive foreign goods and services because of the UN sanctions.
Iraq certainly had WMD in the early 1990s – the UN teams found them. Indeed, Saddam Hussein had used them, in what was the greatest use of chemical warfare since World War I, in his campaign against the Kurdish minority in northern Iraq in the late 1980s.
But did Iraq still have any WMD in 2002? If they had survived the 1990s intact, some of them would have deteriorated: chemical and biological weapons go stale over a period of time and lose their fatal qualities. Research and manufacturing facilities might have remained, though, which would have allowed the Iraqis to continue their deadly activities.
It now seems that there were no WMD left in Iraq by 2003. Nothing at all has been found since the US occupation after 1 May 2003. Why, then, did Saddam Hussein carry on with the cheat and retreat game? Possibly it was a matter of ‘face’ – he did not want to admit that he had in fact given in to international pressure. Possibly he wanted to give the impression that he still had some weapons to try to deter attacks, either from the US or neighbours such as Iran. Possibly his own scientists and generals preferred to deceive him rather than admit their failure to continue to be able to manufacture WMD – because of the UN sanctions, they would have difficulty obtaining the necessary materials from overseas. What is certain is that Saddam did not pose any military threat to the US or Britain – and certainly not to Australia.
No-one doubts now that President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair received faulty intelligence. This has been reaffirmed by the 2004 Butler inquiry in the UK and the March 2004 intelligence report to the US president. The Australian Government also received this inaccurate information.
Iraqi watchers, both within the intelligence community and outside, may have got into a rut. They had seen how Saddam Hussein had used WMD on the Kurds, they knew that Iraq had had these weapons in the early 1990s, and so they could not believe that Iraq did not possess them in 2002. Saddam Hussein had lied so often that they could not believe that he was now telling the truth.
Did all this suspicion justify a war? The problem is that intelligence is a very inexact science. The James Bond movies have given the impression of intelligence agencies working with great efficiency. In fact, there have been some atrocious intelligence failures throughout history, to which Iraq should now be added.
Additionally, by the time raw intelligence works its way up the chain of command, there is a tendency for it to be coloured by the political persuasions of the politicians who will be its ultimate audience. The intelligence agencies know what their political masters want to read and tailor the message accordingly. For example, we now know that during the Vietnam War, the CIA field staff kept reporting that the war could not be won. But the closer the reports got to the White House, the more they were changed to contain the spin that the war was winnable. There is a need for more honesty in the intelligence agencies, but telling the truth can sometimes be a career-limiting move.
Was the invasion of Iraq legal?
The legality of the US-led invasion has been a persistent question. During the past century, international law governing the use of military force as an instrument of national policy has changed a great deal. A degree of confusion and uncertainty has been the result.
Over the centuries, law and custom have limited the use of force in an actual conflict (forbidding the killing of prisoners of war, for example), but there were no limits on a government deciding to use force in the first place. However, the increased destructiveness of war in the nineteenth century encouraged governments to outlaw the use of war and find alternative ways of settling disputes.
The Hague Peace Conferences of 1899 and 1907 adopted the Convention for the Pacific Settlement of International Disputes. This stipulated that states are ‘to use their best efforts to ensure the pacific settlement of international differences’. This could be done by the use of mediation, for example, or an international commission of inquiry. The dramatic beginning to World War I, in which countries tumbled into the conflict after the terrorism at Sarajevo (see chapter 3) – unaware of how long and terrible the conflict would be – vindicated the conferences’ pioneering work in trying to discourage governments from going to war.
The covenant establishing the League of Nations, which was part of the Treaty of Versailles signed at the end of World War I, built upon the work of the Hague conferences. It paid particular attention to arbitration and mediation, with the creation of a ‘cooling-off’ period before countries went to war. The covenant did not actually stop the use of war as an instrument of national policy. That step came with the 1928 Pact of Paris, in which states ‘renounce [war] as an instrument of national policy in their relations with one another’ and make a commitment to settle disputes by peaceful means. This treaty remains in force.
The next stage was the 1945 United Nations Charter. Two key UN Charter principles are articles 2(3) and 2(4):
2(3) All Members shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security, and justice, are not endangered.
2(4) All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.
There has been no formal declaration of war since the Soviet Union’s against Japan in 1945. (Throughout most of World War II, it had suited both countries not to be formally at war with each other, even though they were members of alliances that were at war.) Now, because of the UN Charter, governments go to great lengths to justify their use of force – such as claiming that they had to attack in ‘self-defence’.
Strictly speaking, in international legal terms, ‘war’ no longer exists. Thus, official statements usually refer to ‘armed conflict’. Also, war offices and war departments have been renamed ‘departments of defence’.
Given this prohibition on the use of force, Britain was particularly anxious that there should be a specific UN Security Council resolution in late 2002/early 2003 authorising the US-led attack on Iraq. The Security Council refused to give that authorisation, with three of the five permanent members – France, Russia and China – threatening to use their veto powers. Therefore, some international lawyers have argued that the war is illegal. In the end only two countries decided to follow the US into the invasion – Britain and Australia. Other countries have since supplied military forces and relief teams but they have been clear to distance themselves from the original invasion.
The debate continues as to what will be the long-term consequences – if any – of the war’s legal status. Assuming that eventually Iraq does become a flourishing democracy, then it could be argued that the war may have been ‘illegal’ but it was a ‘good’ war because the outcome was good. On the other hand, if the war goes badly, then its doubtful legal status will be held against the former leaders of the US, Britain and Australia.
Democracy for Iraq?
Iraq held its first free election in December 2005. The Iraqis very bravely got out to vote – despite the violence from those opposed to the elections. The US, which wants to create a wave of democracy across the Arab world, sees this as a major development towards Iraq becoming a modern state. But as the people of Iraq are now learning, there is more to a democracy than just voting. When the British left their colonies, they usually arranged for elections to be held, but then most of the colonies in Africa soon fell into dictatorships. There has to be the creation of a set of social values and the establishment of political and judicial institutions to underpin the democratic process. This does not happen overnight.
Iraqis need to work things out for themselves. This may take years, if not decades. After all, democracy did not suddenly occur in Britain or the US – it evolved over the centuries. In the meantime, Iraq needs economic growth and the re-creation of the middle class, which was wrecked by the UN sanctions in the 1990s.
Democracy can triumph, but it has to come from within the country in its own time. It cannot be force-fed from the outside. So it is doubtful that the US can inject democracy into Iraq.
Iraq today
The US has been trying to encourage a greater sense of national unity in Iraq, but has had little success, because:
Assessing the Iraq invasion
What can we now say about the invasion? Saddam Hussein has been removed, been tried for his crimes and executed. Unfortunately, though, we also know now that many errors were made in the lead-up to and conduct of the invasion.
For a start, it is clear that Iraq was not involved in the September 11 attacks, and was not working with al-Qa’ida – but al-Qa’ida has gained recruits and supporters as a result of the invasion.
Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction left by 2003 – the world had succeeded in disarming Iraq without recognising it. Iraq was not attempting to buy uranium from Niger (as President Bush claimed in early 2003 as part of the justification for the attack).
The invasion of Iraq may have been contrary to international law (particularly the UN Charter), and the Iraqis definitely did not welcome the US-led coalition forces as liberators.
It was wrong for President Bush to stand onboard the USS Abraham Lincoln on 1 May 2003 in front of a banner stating ‘Mission Accomplished’ – the mission was only just beginning. The Americans did not plan carefully enough for the post-war activities, and failed to estimate the extent of the rebuilding challenge. Iraq has not recovered quickly enough to pay for itself out of oil revenues, and it is not known how long the US will have to stay in Iraq.
US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was wrong to think that invading Iraq would end the ‘Vietnam syndrome’ – that is, the American people’s reluctance to use force. Instead he has got the US bogged down in another Vietnam-type quagmire.
The final financial cost of the invasion is not known – taking into account the cost of lifetime disability and health care of military personnel, replacing military equipment, and the increased burden of military recruiting. The US Government has paid for the invasion and occupation by going into deeper debt and this debt will need to be repaid along with interest costs.
The US was wrong to think that a strong stand in Iraq would make other ‘rogue states’ cower before its might. On the contrary, Iran and North Korea have been freshly emboldened by the US getting bogged down in Iraq. Invading Iraq has not made America, Britain, Australia or the world safer.
Failure to use creative thinking
In Iraq, the Americans once again failed to make the most of the creative thinking that is required for complex irregular warfare. Here are three examples.
First, the world has been shocked by the photographs of US brutality coming from the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad. It was a notorious prison under Saddam Hussein. The US simply took it over and made use of it as its own prison. Given Abu Ghraib’s notoriety, the US missed a chance for lateral thinking. It could have closed the prison down immediately after the invasion in 2003. Then, given the Iraqi interest in computers, it could have opened it up a few weeks later with a fresh coat of paint as a free computer training school.
Second, Iraq – as could be expected – was a mess. Debris and rubbish were strewn in the streets. Why not give, in effect, petty cash to local religious leaders to give to kids to collect the rubbish? It would put money into the local economy, involve the religious figures in something useful and give the kids an opportunity to make money and be constructive. A lot of money has gone to international contractors. Foreign personnel have done well out of the occupation. But an opportunity was lost to involve the locals.
A third example concerns power shortages. Years of sanctions, followed by the 2003 conflict, meant that in Iraq power is often disrupted. The US could have hired as many portable electrical power generators as it could find and made Iraq a ‘country of light’. Reliable electricity could have become a symbol of US success. Its media spin masters could have played on the image of Saddam Hussein as a ‘man of darkness’, in contrast with the US, which brings light. It would have been an important way for the US to distinguish itself from the Saddam Hussein regime. It would have given ordinary Iraqis more of an incentive to support the occupation (and reject the terrorists). But, once again, the US lost an opportunity to win the hearts and minds of people. As late as 2007, people were still complaining about power shortages.
None of these ideas are sophisticated ‘rocket science’. They simply require creative thinking. Obviously when it comes to thinking creatively, Osama bin Laden is way ahead of the US Government.