Iraqi conflict: A Visual History

The Iraqi conflict began with the US-led invasion of 20 March 2003 that toppled Saddam Hussein in three weeks on the false premise of weapons of mass destruction. Disbanding the army and de-Baathification fed a Sunni insurgency and al-Qaeda in Iraq under Zarqawi; the bombing of the Samarra shrine in 2006 unleashed a Shia-Sunni civil war that killed tens of thousands; the US surge and Sunni Awakening reduced violence by 2008 and US troops left in 2011. Maliki's sectarianism revived the insurgency as the Islamic State, which took Mosul in June 2014 and declared a caliphate; a US-led coalition, the Iraqi army, Kurdish peshmerga and Iranian-backed Popular Mobilisation militias destroyed it by 2017 at Mosul. Iraq since has faced protest movements, militia power and Iran-US proxy strikes. Over 200,000 civilians have died violently since 2003.

When it was fought: the era ribbon

The bold bar is Iraqi conflict. The lighter bars are empires and wars from the same era and the same part of the world. Click any bar to jump to its page.

Documented civilian violent deaths per year

Timeline of the Iraqi conflict

1. 2003
   Invasion; Baghdad falls; insurgency begins
2. 2004
   Fallujah; Abu Ghraib; Mahdi Army rising
3. 2006
   Samarra bombing; civil war; Saddam hanged
4. 2007
   Surge; Anbar Awakening
5. 2011
   US withdrawal
6. 2014
   ISIS takes Mosul; caliphate declared
7. 2017
   Mosul retaken; ISIS defeated in Iraq
8. 2020
   Soleimani killed in Baghdad

Invasion and occupation, 2003-2005

Bush's 'shock and awe' campaign and a drive from Kuwait took Baghdad on 9 April 2003; the statue of Saddam fell in Firdos Square, and Bush declared 'mission accomplished' on 1 May. Paul Bremer's Coalition Provisional Authority dissolved the army and purged Baathists, throwing 400,000 armed men out of work; looting stripped Baghdad; no WMD were found. Insurgency spread through the Sunni triangle with IEDs; Fallujah was stormed twice in 2004; Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army rose in the Shia south; Abu Ghraib photographs shamed the occupation. Saddam was captured in December 2003 and hanged in 2006.

Civil war and surge, 2006-2011

Zarqawi's al-Qaeda in Iraq bombed the Askari shrine in Samarra on 22 February 2006, triggering Shia death squads and Sunni bombings that killed 3,000 a month in Baghdad; neighbourhoods were cleansed and 4 million people displaced. Bush's 2007 surge of 30,000 troops under Petraeus, with the Anbar Awakening of Sunni tribes turning against al-Qaeda and Sadr's ceasefire, cut violence sharply. Obama withdrew combat forces in 2010 and the last US troops left in December 2011 under the 2008 agreement; Maliki, re-elected in 2010, then targeted Sunni politicians and protests.

ISIS and after, 2014 to present

The Islamic State of Iraq, rebuilt under Baghdadi and swollen by the Syrian war, took Fallujah in January 2014 and Mosul on 10 June as the army fled, massacring 1,700 cadets at Camp Speicher and enslaving Yazidis at Sinjar; Baghdadi proclaimed the caliphate from Mosul's mosque. Sistani's fatwa raised the Popular Mobilisation Forces; a US-led coalition bombed from August 2014; Tikrit, Ramadi and Fallujah were retaken in 2015-2016 and Mosul after a nine-month battle in July 2017. Since then Iraq has seen the 2019 Tishreen protests, the US killing of Qasem Soleimani at Baghdad airport in January 2020, Iranian-aligned militias attacking US bases, and a slow economic and political recovery; ISIS cells remain in the deserts.

Related empires and wars

Chosen automatically by overlap in time and geography, plus a few hand picked connections.

Empires of the same era and region

• United States (1776 to present)
• British Empire (1583 to 1997)
• Abbasid Caliphate (750 to 1258)
• Ottoman Empire (1299 to 1922)
• Second French colonial empire (1830 to 1980)

Wars of the same era and region

• Gulf War (1990 to 1991)
• Iran-Iraq War (1980 to 1988)
• Syrian Civil War (2011 to 2024)
• War in Afghanistan (2001-2021) (2001 to 2021)
• Kurdish-Turkish conflict (1978 to present)
• Yemeni Civil War (2014 to present)

8 surprising things about the Iraqi conflict

1. No weapons of mass destruction were found; the Chilcot inquiry in Britain judged the war unnecessary and its legal basis 'far from satisfactory'.
2. Bremer's orders dissolving the army and Baath party are widely regarded as the occupation's decisive mistakes.
3. The Iraq war cost the US over 2 trillion dollars including veterans' care.
4. ISIS at its peak ruled about 8 million people across Iraq and Syria and earned a million dollars a day from oil.
5. The battle of Mosul in 2016-2017 was the largest urban battle since World War II, with about 100,000 Iraqi troops.
6. Sistani's June 2014 fatwa raised tens of thousands of Shia volunteers within days.
7. Camp Speicher's 1,700 murdered cadets are commemorated as Iraq's worst massacre since Saddam's Anfal.
8. The killing of Iranian general Soleimani by a US drone in January 2020 nearly triggered war between the US and Iran on Iraqi soil.

Sources

• Iraq War Encyclopaedia Britannica
• Iraqi conflict (2003-present) Wikipedia
• Iraq Body Count Iraq Body Count
• Thomas E. Ricks, Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq (2006) Penguin

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