US Invasion of Iraq and After Effects.

What is the issue?

• The present day Iraq largely bears the impact of US-led invasion of it in 2003.
• The humanitarian catastrophe that Iraq is witnessing is a reminder to bring before law those responsible for this.

What was the 2003 event?

• The US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 marks an important turning point in Iraq's history.
• The events brought an end to Ba’ath party’s decades-long reign and Saddam Hussein's dictatorial administration.
• US attacked Iraq citing mainly two reasons -

1. Saddam administration possessed weapons of mass destruction
2. the administration had ties with al-Qaeda

What are the contentions?

• Support - The U.S. did not have a UN mandate to use force against Iraq.
• Repeated attempts by the George Bush administration to get Security Council approval failed.
• But the U.S. went ahead with forming an international coalition that included the U.K.

• Claims - The war notably had no legitimate basis and was founded on misleading intelligence information.

• The reasons cited were not convincing and proved to be false.
• Evidently, the occupying troops failed to find any weapon of mass destruction in Iraq.
• Moreover, al-Qaeda in Iraq was actually founded after the US invasion.

What impact has the war left?

• Fifteen years on, Iraq is still fighting the horrible effects of the destructive war.
• People - The war killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and displaced millions.

• The U.S. first disbanded the Iraqi military, leaving tens of thousands of soldiers jobless overnight.
• This posed a huge security threat.
• Power - There was no coherent strategy to stabilise post-Saddam Iraq.
• There were no plans to address the sectarian power struggle to fill the vacuum created.
• Destroying the state apparatus led a multi-ethnic, multi-religious country of Iraq into utter chaos.
• Terrorism - In this chaos, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi found the fertile ground to build his terrorist empire.
• This, after his death, came under the leadership of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
• He transformed itself into the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, the IS of today.
• In effect, the war got rid of a dictator, but left the country in a worse and much more dangerous situation.
• Despite a functional government in Iraq, humanitarian and political tragedies are still unfolding.
• Deepening sectarian and ethnic fault lines are evident.

What does it call for?

• Those responsible for the present chaos and disruption in Iraq have not been brought before the legal system.
• No action has been taken even based on the U.K.’s Chilcot report, which took apart the arguments used to justify the war.
• The present situations call for correcting the grave failure of the international system.

Source: The Hindu