political conFlictS and Migration in the Mena StateS 171
sion is that wars correlate directly with regional structure and are thus
predestined to shape the situation in the Middle East in the future as well.^16
The Third Gulf War commenced in March 2003 with the invasion of Iraq
by the allied forces (primarily from the US, but many other troops as well
from the so-called ‘Coalition of the Willing’). The war ended in December
2011 when the US declared the war over. A majority of the Iraqi people
rejected the US occupation of their country and suffered from the many
bombing attacks, acts of war and violent crimes. Sunni resistance groups,
in particular, supported by Islamic Jihad warriors, agitated against the
occupation troops and the newly (re)formed Iraqi troops consisting mainly
of Shiites. The insurgents themselves consisted of various inf ighting groups^17
that consider as their enemies anyone who does not belong to their religious
faction or ethnic group.
The goals of this invasion – from the American point of view a pre-
emptive strike – were to topple Saddam Hussein and destroy his stock of
atomic and chemical weapons (WMD or weapons of mass destruction), the
existence of which had been presumed by Western intelligence services
and served to legitimise the military attack, though, as it turned out, they
had, in fact, never existed. The primary goal at the outset was the downfall
of the Baath regime (and with it any potential danger from its employing
WMD), not the establishment of a democracy in Iraq, with its three main
zones (Kurds in the North, Shiite region, and Sunni region) added later. From
2003 to 2009, Iraq experienced a more-or-less-continual civil war which
caused up to 2.7 million internally displaced persons and up to 2 million
refugees abroad (UNHCR 2008).
At present, the entire Gulf region is still in a state of extreme stress. The
reasons are many. First, the continuing internal conf lict in Iraq between the
various political, religious and ethnic factions and its repercussions. Second,
the opposition of the US government to Iran’s nuclear ambitions, which do not
exclude a military option. To counteract such a possibility, the US has launched
a massive programme since 2007 to create an Arab front against Iran, in
the course of which the Saudi army was outf itted with the newest military
hardware (Ottolenghi 2010). Third, the existing religious (Sunni vs Shiite)
16 Based on the Arab-Israeli War of 1967 as well as the f irst and second Gulf Wars he discusses
his opinion that these wars were not primarily expressions of long existing conf licts, but rather
the attempt of the leading Arab nations to establish a hegemonic order under their leadership.
17 To these groups belonged former members of Saddam Hussein’s regime and followers of
the Iraqi Baath Party, Sunni Arabs and nationalists, Shiites following the clergyman Muqtada
al-Sadr, and both local and immigrant extremists who have (in part) joined the terror network
al-Qaida.