The war formally began in the early hours of 19 March 2003 with a series of non-nuclear strikes against top Iraqi/Ba’ath party officials. F-117 Nighthawk stealth fighters and Tomahawk cruise missiles fired from surface warships and submarines in the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf attacked locations around Baghdad, including a place called Dora Farms. It was rumored that Saddam Hussein and his sons, Uday and Qusay, were at the farm that morning. They were not, and Saddam had not even visited since 1995.1 Remaining Iraqi air defense sites that had not yet been attacked were then attacked by A-10 Thunderbolt IIs accompanying MH-6M and AH-6M Little Bird helicopters, followed by special forces assaulting the country from both the air and the ground. Around 5:33 AM Baghdad-time the first explosions were heard in the city.
While it was originally suspected that Coalition forces would embark on a long air campaign of bombardment and degradation prior to the arrival of ground forces, the reality was a simultaneous campaign that became known as “Shock and Awe”. The plan utilized speed and power to knock the Iraqi military out before it could respond to the invasion. The majority of Iraqi cities and towns were bypassed in the initial invasion, with armored convoys speeding through the deserts toward Baghdad. While there were isolated pockets of fierce resistance, the majority of Iraqi military formations simply dissolved ahead of the Coalition advance, with thousands surrendering without firing a shot. The memory of 1991, along with the use of precision munitions by aircraft in the hours/days prior to the land forces advance, left many Iraqi soldiers with a desire to live overpowering a desire to defend Saddam’s regime against overwhelming power.
Looting in Baghdad
Most Iraqi military formations did not engage the onrushing Coalition forces; rather, they chose to turn themselves over to avoid unnecessary deaths. The Iraqi regime continued to function in areas it controlled as though nothing had happened. There were no contingency plans. When American forces took Baghdad, the government collapsed. Looting began almost immediately, and went unaddressed by American forces. A state of anarchy broke out. At this point, Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Iraq was a minor player. The invasion gave them an opportunity to move south from the mountains of Kurdistan and to begin operations in central Iraq. As the Al Qaeda affiliate in Iraq, Ansar al-Islam, was attempting to expand and exploit the ongoing security vacuum, American administrator L. Paul Bremer III issued a series of directives impacting all of occupied Iraq.
Coalition Provisional Authority Order #1
Full members of the Ba`ath Party holding the ranks of ‘Udw Qutriyya (Regional Command Member), ‘Udw Far’ (Branch Member). ‘Udw Shu’bah (Section Member), and ‘Udw Firqah (Group Member) (together, “Senior Party Members”) are herby removed from their positions and banned from future employment in the public sector. These Senior Party Members shall be evaluated for criminal conduct or threat to the security of the Coalition. Those suspected of criminal
conduct shall be investigated and, if deemed a threat to security or a flight risk, detained or placed under house arrest.
Coalition Provisional Authority Order #2
1) Any military or other rank, title, or status granted to a former employee or functionary of a Dissolved Entity by the former Regime is hereby cancelled.
2) All conscripts are released from their service obligations. Conscriptions is suspended indefinitely, subject to decisions by future Iraq governments concerning whether a free Iraq should have conscription.
3) Any person employed by a Dissolved Entity in any form or capacity, is dismissed effective as of April 16, 2003. Any person employed by a Dissolved Entity, in any from or capacity remains accountable for acts committed during such employment.
A group of Iraqi insurgents
These two actions essentially planted the seeds of the insurgency that was to follow on the heels of the invasion. The first insurgents tended to be nationalistically motivated, many of them former Iraqi soldiers and/or Ba’athists. As the occupation wore on and as Iraq continued to stagnate, desperation and anger began to set in. The political and security situation combined with an already frustrated population to create fertile ground for extremism. As former Ba’athists and soldiers steadily ran low on cash reserves and weapons, the void was slowly filled by religious extremists like those affiliated with Al Qaeda (an ample supplier of cash). Former Ba’athists and religious extremists shared power for a time, but as summer of 2003 approached, those with money began to consolidate their power. Tactics began to shift. Early in the war, the Fedayeen Saddam would rush out of the cities into the open deserts to attack the American forces, where they were cut down in their thousands. Urban tactics initially included sniping and random shots at convoys and collections of US soldiers, but this began shifting to tactics involving the use of improvised explosive devices (IED), the setting of ambushes, and mortar/rocket fire.
Aftermath of the bombing of the United Nations headquarters
As American forces attempted to combat this insurgency, they inevitably made enemies of the local populations. As the Ba’ath party had been dominated by Sunnis, Sunni cities saw the brunt of American counterinsurgency (COIN) operations. This led to further disillusionment and resentment, making it easier than ever before for jihadist elements to recruit among the population. Finally, in August it became clear that Al Qaeda’s affiliate (Jama’at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad) was beginning to assert itself in Iraq. On August 19th the United Nations mission, headquartered at Baghdad’s Canal Hotel, was attacked with a suicide truck bomb, killing 22 (including the UN envoy to Iraq). Ten days later another suicide attack struck the Imam Ali shrine in Najaf, killing Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim and dozens of others. These two key incidents set in motion a series of events that would, in time, lead to a rapid degradation of the security situation in Iraq, allowing a full-fledged civil war to take place. The invasion of Iraq had been completed, but the war was to be far from over.
1 Michael R. Gordon and Bernard E. Trainor. “Iraqi Leader, in Frantic Flight, Eluded U.S. Strikes.” The New York Times. March 12, 2006. Accessed March 11, 2018. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/12/world/middleeast/iraqi-leader-in-frantic-flight-eluded-us-strikes.html.
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Information in this article regarding the timeline of events following the US invasion has been gleaned from various sources, including “The Saddam Tapes“, “Wars of Modern Babylon”, and “The Iraqi Perspectives Report“.
