missile bombardment directed at Saddam’s
palaces, as well as the ministries and command
centres. Inevitably there were innocent civilian
casualties in surrounding houses when a missile
landed off-target. It bore the euphemistic descrip-
tion of ‘collateral damage’ which the US pilots
had done their utmost to avoid. On paper a
large regular army and elite Republican Guard
divisions were defending the country. There was
anxiety that Saddam when cornered would resort
to chemical warfare. In Washington, Donald
Rumsfeld was criticised for believing that heavy
bombing and a relatively small armoured force
would lead to rapid defeat. Those who said the
war would be a ‘walk over’ were derided. As it
turned out, Baghdad and practically the whole
country was in allied hands in three weeks.
Saddam’s armed forces exposed to heavy air
attacks just melted away. Trouble came from the
militias and fanatical Baathist party adherents who
fired on the invading force. On 7 April the British
forces took Iraq’s second city, Basra; two days
later the Americans were in Baghdad, and during
the following two days Kurds in the north occu-
pied Mosul and Kirkuk. The oil wells remained
intact. The war against Saddam was won by some
255,000 American troops, 45,000 British, 2,000
Australian and token support from 400 Czechs
and Slovaks and 200 Poles. Allied casualties were
light, more caused by accidents of ‘friendly fire’
than enemy action, some 150 killed, wounded
and missing including the death of thirty-three
British soldiers and airmen. Iraqi losses can only
be estimated, possibly 2,400 troops and 6,400
civilians killed or wounded, but Iraqi deaths may
well have been much higher. At least the war was
no repeat of Korea or Vietnam.
The much harder task of creating a stable post-
Saddam Iraq without a strongman terrorising the
people lay ahead. Power, water and electricity had
to be restored in a situation where law and order
had broken down and looting was widespread.
Corruption, more than sanctions, had deprived the
hospitals of essential medical supplies. The situa-
tion could not improve until the corruption and
the insurgency were rooted out. The vacuum of
power needed to be filled as speedily as possible
and there were plenty of claimants after the war
had ended in April 2003. Neither Britain nor the
US wanted to remain longer than they had to. The
occupiers proved ill-prepared for what lay ahead.
The isolated attacks, in which the soldiers were
suffering continuous casualties from fanatics,
inflicted more lossess than during the war. The
attacks became more widespread, better organised,
aimed at Iraq’s fragile infrastructure as well as all
foreign intervention. The UN headquarters in
Baghdad were bombed causing heavy loss of
life; the UN withdrew and only returned the fol-
lowing year with a skeleton staff. Local Iraqi dis-
content was being exploited by terrorists, some of
whom infiltrated from outside Iraq. The capture
of Saddam Hussein in December 2003 did not, as
was expected, diminish the attacks on coalition
forces. In 2004 they escalated and spread from
militant Sunni to militant Shias. The fighting that
erupted after April 2004 was the worst the country
had seen.
The Shia insurgency lessened in the autumn of
2004 thanks to the intervention of the Grand
Ayatollah Alial-Sistani who brokered a peace in
the holy city of Najav. The younger more junior
Ayatollah Muqtada al-Sadr who formed a militant
group known as the ‘Mahdi Army’ appeared
ready to enter the political process leading to elec-
tions in January 2005 that will replace the interim
government of Iyad Allawi. The biggest prize was
the cessation of fighting and the insurgency in the
north-east of Baghdad, the rundown quarters of
Sadr City, where two million Shias live. The other
insurgency of Sunnis in the so-called Sunni trian-
gle west of Baghdad raged furiously in Fallujah.
A particularly ruthless leader, a Jordanian fanatic
Musab al-Zarqawi, emerged in 2004 inspiring
more martyr car bombings, targeting foreigners
and Iraqis working for Americans especially the
Iraqi police not caring how many innocent civil-
ian bystanders were killed in the crowded streets.
The kidnapping of foreigners and their gruesome
executions shown on videotape destabilised the
country and undermined efforts of reconstruc-
tion. The capture and destruction of Fallujah by
US forces supported by Iraqis in November 2004
did not end the Sunni insurgency. Some 138,000
US troops and 9,000 British were not sufficient
to ensure peace and order, and the build-up of an
effective Iraqi army will take time. But Bush was
determined to succeed.934 GLOBAL CHANGE: FROM THE 20th TO THE 21st CENTURY