Iraq war will not end with US troop withdrawal

Juan Cole sees promise for a complete US military withdrawal from Iraq as a result of three developments. (“Iraq has a Government: Can we Please Come Home Now?” Informed Comment, 12-22-10).

First, the 50,000 troops still deployed in Iraq “are scheduled to be out of the country on December 31, 2011.” This deadline is reinforced by the “newly reinstalled prime minister Nuri al-Maliki...insisting that the deadline be met.”

Second, “the United Nations Security Council removed Chapter 7 restrictions on Iraq,” that is the long-standing sanctions first imposed on Iraq back in 1991. This means that in July of 2011, when the UN decision takes effect, Iraq “will again become a fully sovereign nation in the law.”

Third, Iraq has “finally formed a new government of national unity....” These “milestones” herald “good news” and “mean that the troops really can and likely will come home now.” Cole continues: “A long nightmare is coming to an end. Iraq has been Lebanonized and will likely be fragile for years, with occasional bombings and attacks. But it can now muddle through on its own.”

The Iraq war has indeed been a nightmare for US decision-makers, US troops, US citizens/taxpayers, the mounting US debt. It has also been an illegal war that has set a perverse example to other nations and generated anger and hatred toward the United States among many people in the Middle East and in Muslim countries elsewhere. In his new book, War is a Lie, David Swanson refers to the research of Michael Haas, who “identifies and documents 263 war crimes, in addition to aggression, that have occurred just in the current War on Iraq, and divides them into the categories of ‘conduct of war,’ ‘treatment of prisoners,’ ‘and ‘the conduct of the postwar occupation’” (p. 309-310).

As Cole implies here and explicates in other posts, the war does not end for the Iraqi people even when, and if, the US troops go home. But the word “fragile” does not capture the full effects of the war (and the sanctions) on Iraq and its citizens (see examples below). Furthermore, many of the last American troops that may come home at the end of 2011, and the troops that have preceded them, in the hundreds of thousands in all, will require costly health and psychological treatment for many years, and in some cases their whole lives. The war does not end for them, their families, or for the society as a whole.

Here I list only examples and quotes from sources that focus on the situation of Iraq and its citizens. They represent a legacy of the US-initiated and –led war and occupation. What does this have to do with Afghanistan? Wherever US military forces wage war, civilians suffer, whether directly or indirectly.

Agriculture - “By August 2009, the New York Times reported that the once-rich agricultural system had been so devastated ‘during the past few years’ (that is, during the U.S. occupation) that ‘there are increasing doubts about whether it makes much sense to grow dates – or much of anything for that matter.’ (Noam Chomsky, Hopes and Prospects, 2010).

Electricity - “Iraqis promised development with the ouster of Saddam Hussein and the arrival of the U.S. are now suffering a lack of development as never before. And where it hurts every moment is through the collapse of power supply.” “More than seven years into the U.S. occupation, most Iraqis lack electricity, leading to demonstrations in towns and cities across the country.” “The problems since 2003 have been far worse” (Abdu Rahman and Dahr Jamail, After Flase Promises, the Heat in On in Iraq, http://dahrjamail.com/after-false-promises-the-heat-is-on-inIraq#more-1990).

Housing - “By United Nations estimates, Iraq has 2.8 million housing units for a population of 30 million, leaving a shortage of about 1.3 million homes. As the population continues to grow, the country needs to build 3.5 million housing units — more than doubling its stock — by 2015, said Istabraq I. al-Shouk, the senior deputy minister of construction and housing (John Leland, “Cramped Quarters Define Struggles of Iraqi Families, NYT, Feb 27, 2010).

Water - According to government statistics cited by the ICRC, one in four of Iraq’s 30 million people does not have access to safe drinking water” (Julia Apland Hitz, “Water, Another Crisis for Iraq,” Earth Institute, June 17, 2010 – http://blogs.eicolumbia.edu/2010/06/17/water-another-crisis-for-Iraq).

Uranium depletion effects- “Months of bombing during the first Gulf War by the United States and Great Britain left a deadly and insidious legacy: tons of shell casings, bullets and bomb fragments laced with depleted uranium. In all, the United States hit Iraqi targets with more than 970 radioactive bombs and missiles (Jeffrey St. Clair and Joshua Frank, “Iraq Wrecked Environment,” Counterpunch, May 1-3, 2009)

Cluster bomb effects - UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, “Iraq: Local NGOs welcome cluster bomb ban,” Feb 18, 2010 - BAGHDAD, 18 February 2010 (IRIN) - Iraqi NGOs working in the field of landmine and unexploded ordnance (UXO) clearance have welcomed the ratification of an international convention banning the use of cluster bombs. (http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900sid/SHIG-82SHXW?Open Document&RSS20&RSS20=FS). However:

Ali Jawad Kati, who heads the Baghdad-based NGO Aysen, which raises awareness about mine risks says: “millions of bomblets dispersed by cluster bombs were still scattered across the country as a result of the 1991 Gulf War and the 2003 US-led invasion.” “In Baghdad 331 areas are affected by cluster bomb debris, mostly from the 2003 war….Welfare runs out – “Iraq has run out of money to pay for widows' benefits, farm crops and other programs for the poor, the parliament leader told lawmakers, who have collected nearly $180,000 so far this year in one of the world's most oil-rich nations” (Lara Jakes, “Welfare funding runs out in Iraq,” AP News, Nov 21, 2010).


Missing billions and serious health rates - Juan Gonzalez, on Democracy Now - “We turn now to news from Iraq, where an official audit by the US Special Investigator for Iraq Reconstruction found that the Pentagon cannot account for almost $9 billion taken from Iraqi oil revenues between 2004 and 2007 for use in reconstruction. The report comes amidst continuing Iraqi concerns that, seven years since the US-led invasion, the billions of dollars pumped into reconstruction have failed to rebuild the country’s ravaged infrastructure.” “Meanwhile, a new medical study has found dramatic increases in infant mortality, cancer and leukemia in the Iraqi city of Fallujah, which was bombarded by US Marines in 2004. The rates of infant mortality and cancer exceed those reported by survivors of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945” (Andrew Cockburn interviewed on Democracy Now on “the missing billions in Iraq and soaring cancer and infant mortality rates,” July 29, 2010).

Devastation, Not Liberation - The US leaders said that we were invading Iraq to “liberate” it. Tom Engelhardt summarizes in the following paragraph from his book, The American Way of War (2010) the “devastation” that US forces brought to the country.

“Since then, Saddam Hussein’s killing fields have been dwarfed by a fierce set of destructive US military operations, as well as insurgencies cum-civil-wars-cum-terrorist-acts: major cities have been largely or partially destroyed, or ethnically cleansed; millions of Iraqis have been forced from their homes, becoming internal refugees or going into exile; untold numbers of Iraqis have been imprisoned, assassinated, tortured, or abused; and the country’s cultural heritage has been ransacked. Basic services – electricity, water, food – were terribly impaired and the economy was simply wrecked. Health services were crippled. Oil production upon which Iraq now depends for up to 90 percent of its government funds, has only relatively recently barely surpassed the worst levels of the pre-invasion era” (155)

US troop brutality – some sources

See Dahr Jamail, “Iraq War Vet: ‘We Were Told Just to Shoot People, and the Officers Would Take Care of Us,” Truthout, April 7, 2010

Wikileaks releases would further confirm this the summer of 2010….
Pervasive Violence – see Kamil Mahdi, “What the Wikileaks don’t reveal, Stop the War Coalition, 10-24-10 – http://stopwar.org.uk/content/view/2117/1/

More on violence – Pratap Chatterjee, “Wikileaks Iraq War Logs Reveal Private Military Contractors Killing With Impunity, Alternet.org, Oct. 25, 2010 http://www.alternet.org/story/1485941

Number of excess Iraqi deaths - Swanson refers to the findings of two “serious” studies. Here are his comments on one of them. “The second serious study of deaths caused by the War on Iraq was a poll of 2,000 Iraqi adults conducted by Opinion Research Business (ORB) in August 2007. ORB estimated 1,033,000 violent deaths due to the War, on Iraq: ’48 percent died from a gunshot wound, 20 percent from the impact of a car bomb, 9 percent from aerial bombardment, 6 percent as a result of an accident, and 6 percent from another blast/ordnance” (War is a Lie, 220).

Soaring Cancer rates in Fallujah - David Edwards, “The Non-Reporting of Fallujah’s Cancer Catastrophe,” Znet,Sept., 12, 2010, makes the following points.

“After all, the cancer crisis reported in the study is impacting thousands of people in one of Iraq's largest cities and is so severe that local doctors are advising women not to have children.

“In the Independent, Patrick Cockburn wrote:

‘Dramatic increases in infant mortality, cancer and leukemia in the Iraqi city of Fallujah, which was bombarded by US Marines in 2004, exceed those reported by survivors of the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, according to a new study.’ (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/toxic-legacy-of-us-assault-on-fallujah-worse-than-hiroshima-2034065.html)

Millions of refugees - Fred Branfman – http://www.alternet.org/story/147281, June 22, 1010:

“’Counting both internal and external refugees, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates that nearly 5 million of Iraq’s population of 24 million have been uprooted during the conflict,’ the N.Y. Review of Books reported on May 13, 2010. This is the equivalent of 60 million Americans by percentage of population. Five-hundred thousand are homeless squatters within Iraq, whose ‘settlements all lack basic services, including water, sanitation and electricity and are built in precarious places -- under bridges, alongside railroad tracks and amongst garbage dumps’ according to Refugees International in March 2010. The emigration of 2-3 million Iraqis to refugee camps in Syria and other Mideast countries decimated Iraq's educated middle class, with some daughters forced to become prostitutes and sons menial laborers just to keep their families alive.”

Iraqi children – a humanitarian and educational crisis – from Save the Children: Iraq, July 2009 (includes the entire, unedited post from: http://www.savethechildren.org)

“Although the violence that followed the invasion of Iraq by multi-national forces in 2003 has ebbed and flowed, Iraq remains within the top five humanitarian emergencies in the world. Children continue to suffer from the psychological trauma of war and conflict, and access to education and development opportunities has been severely constrained.

“As an example, in the northern part of Iraq (where Save the Children is currently operating) 15 schools host operations for 43 separate institutions — that is, most schools serve three to four shifts of students per day, for a few hours at a time. Besides overcrowding, these schools lack a clean water supply, sanitation and garbage disposal systems — as do many of the communities in which the schools are based.

“In the south of the country, including Basra, the situation is more acute. In particular, access to fresh water remains a key issue due to the use of a brackish water supply in Basra. Exacerbating the situation, temperatures can reach 140 F during the summer. Because of the salty residue, the water supply needs to go through a complex process of desalinization and purification, which is costly, time consuming and not always effective. It remains another obstacle for children in obtaining a quality education and having a healthy childhood.”

Iraq – a country of orphans

John Tirman estimated in Feb. 2009 that there were 5 million orphans. See John Terman, “4.5 Million Displaced, 1-2 Million Widows, 5 Million Orphans,” The Nation, Feb 2, 2009
Editor-in-Chief: Saad Albazzaz, “Iraq a country of Orphans,” Azzaman.com, September 13, 2010:

“One in every six Iraqis is an orphan. That is the toll Iraqi children are paying in a country which is supposedly under the occupation and protection of the world’s only superpower.

“Not all the orphans are the result of the violence that swept the country in the aftermath of the 2003-U.S. invasion.

“But the invasion has caused untold miseries for Iraqis, surpassing those inflicted on them by their former tormentors, the clique that ruled Iraq under Saddam Hussein.

“There were unconfirmed reports that Iraq has turned into a country of orphans. But the exact figure only became a reality recently, when the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs made public its own statistics.

“The statistics points to dangerous demographics with grave social, health and economic consequences for a country which still lacks basic infrastructure.

“ These are the voiceless Iraqis. Their U.S. occupiers have almost cut and run and their Iraqi rulers are not so much concerned about their livelihood and well-being.

“In a violent country like Iraq, where U.S. marines with bullet-proof jackets and thick armor, cannot feel safe, there is not so much room for an orphan.

“Hundreds of thousands of them live on the street. There is no social security system to look after them.”


Children – PSID (post-traumatic stress disorder) -- “The great number of Iraqi children affected with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is one of the saddest, and least known, legacies of the Iraq war. That a new clinic for their treatment opened last August in Baghdad is the first of its kind says a lot about how this problem is being addressed. Until now, hundreds of children suffering from PTSD have been treated by Dr. Haider Maliki at the Central Pediatric Teaching Hospital in Baghdad. Hundreds of thousands remain untreated” (Cesar Chelala, “Iraqi Children Bear the Costs of War,” CommonDreams.org, March 5, 2010).


Imprisonment – Tens of thousands of Iraqi men spent years in American prisons. Most of the prisons and prisoners have been transferred to the Iraqis, who are known for the brutal treatment of prisoners. (Leila Fadel, “Some worry about abuse as U.S. hands over final detention center to Iraq,” Washington Post Foreign Service, July 16, 2010).
Democracy Now interview with Malcolm Smart on Amnesty International of Abuses in Iraqi Prisons, Sept 20, 2010:

Amy Goodman: Amnesty International has released a new report that finds more than 30,000 prisoners are being held in Iraq without charge, including 10,000 prisoners who were recently transferred from US custody. Amnesty’s report is called "New Order, Same Abuses: Unlawful Detentions and Torture in Iraq."

Torture - Tim Branfman reports: “Tens of thousands of innocents imprisoned, many tortured: “In an article headlined "In Iraq, A Prison Full of Innocent Men, the Washington Post reported that ‘100,000 prisoners have passed through the American-run detention system in Iraq,’ that Iraqi Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi says that ‘most of the people they detain are innocent’ but that prisoners are not permitted to prove their innocence. Conditions have been even worse in the secret torture chambers run for five years by General Stanley McChrystal, from which all outside observers including the Red Cross have been excluded. Salon's Glenn Greenwald recently reported that ‘72% of Guantanamo detainees who finally were able to obtain just minimal due process -- after years of being in a cage without charges -- have been found by federal judges to be wrongfully detained.’ Countless innocent Iraqis have been regularly tortured.”

The situation of women and girls has deteriorated - Nadje Al-Ali, “The Iraq Legacy: Millions of Women’s Lives Destroyed,” Alter Net.com, March 31, 2008 – (http://www.alternet.org/story/80609) [Also Nadje Al-Ali and Nicola Pratt’s book, What Kind of Liberation?: Women and the Occupation of Iraq.]

“In fact, Iraq's women have become the biggest losers in the post-invasion disaster. While men have borne the brunt in terms of direct armed violence, women have been particularly hard-hit by poverty, malnutrition, lack of health services and a crumbling infrastructure, not least chronic power cuts which in some areas of Iraq see electricity only available for two hours a day.

“More than 70 percent of the four million people forced out of their homes in the past five years in Iraq have been women and children. Many have found temporary shelter with relatives who share their limited space, food and supplies. But this, according to the UN refugee agency, has created ‘rising tension between families over scarce resources.’ Many displaced women and children find themselves in unsanitary and overcrowded public buildings under constant threat of eviction.

“Meanwhile, rampant political violence has also engulfed women in Iraq. Islamist militias with links to political parties in government and insurgent groups opposing both the government and the occupation have particularly targeted Iraqi women and girls. A new Islamist puritanism is seeing women and girls being violently pressured to conform to rigid dress codes. Personal movement and social behaviour are being ‘regulated,’ with acid attacks (deliberately designed to disfigure ‘transgressive’ women's faces), just one of the sanctions of the new moral guardians of post-Saddam Iraq.”