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IRAQ WAR. After the terrorist attacks by the group formed by the multi-millionaire Saudi Osama bin Laden on New York and Washington in the United States in 2001, American foreign policy began to call for the removal of the Ba'ath government in Iraq.
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After the terrorist attacks by the group formed by the multi-millionaire Saudi Osama bin Laden on New York and Washington in the United States in 2001, American foreign policy began to call for the removal of the Ba'ath government in Iraq.
The US urged the United Nations to take military action against Iraq. The American president George Bush stated that Saddām had repeatedly violated 16 UN Security Council resolutions. The Iraqi government rejected Bush's assertions. A team of U.N. inspectors, led by Swedish diplomat Hans Blix was admitted, into the country; their final report stated that Iraqis capability in producing "weapons of mass destruction" was not significantly different from 1992 when the country dismantled the bulk of their remaining arsenals under terms of the ceasefire agreement with U.N. forces, but did not completely rule out the possibility that Saddam still had Weapons of Mass Destruction.
The United States and the United Kingdom charged that Iraq was hiding Weapons and opposed the team's requests for more time to further investigate the matter. Resolution 1441 was passed unanimously by the UN Security Council on November 8, 2002, offering Iraq "a final opportunity to comply with its disarmament obligations" that had been set out in several previous UN resolutions, threatening "serious consequences" if the obligations were not fulfilled. The UN Security Council did not issue a resolution authorizing the use of force against Iraq.
In March 2003 the United States and the United Kingdom, with military aid from other nations, invaded Iraq.
In 2003, after the American and British invasion, Iraq was occupied by Coalition forces.
Terrorism emerged as a threat to Iraq's people not long after the invasion of 2003. Al Qaeda now has a presence in the country, in the form of several terrorist groups formerly led by Abu Musab Al Zarqawi. Al-Zarqawi was a Jordanian militant Islamist who ran a militant training camp in Afghanistan. He became known after going to Iraq and being responsible for a series of bombings, beheadings and attacks during the Iraq war. Al-zarqawi was killed on June 7, 2006. Many foreign fighters and former Ba'ath Party officials have also joined the insurgency, which is mainly aimed at attacking American forces and Iraqis who work with them. The most dangerous insurgent area is the Sunni Triangle, a mostly Sunni-Muslim area just north of Baghdad.
By the end of 2006 violence continued as the new Iraqi Government struggled to extend complete security within Iraq. U.S. and Coalition forces remained in Iraq. An increasingly disturbing trend had arisen - sectarian fighting. As the country attempted to move from occupation by western forces to a new entity within the Middle East, a new phase of conflict seemed to have erupted within Iraq. This new phase of conflict was waged predominately along the religious sectarian lines that the Americans had used to divide the population. Fighting was primarily between the majority Shia and the minority Sunni.
Reported acts of violence conducted by an uneasy tapestry of independence activists and opponents of foreign domination steadily increased by the end of 2006. These attacks become predominately aimed at Iraqi collaborators rather than foreign occupation forces
In addition to these sectarian and religious divides, an incredible amount of collateral damage has been the result. For example, evidence suggests that women's human rights and freedoms have dramatically been cut since the US-led invasion. According to the Hague and Geneva Conventions, the US, as an occupying power, was responsible for the human rights and security of Iraqi civilians. But US forces failed to meet this responsibility.
There is dispute about the number of people who have died in Iraq. One of the main sources used by the media is Iraq Body Count, whose website is IraqBodyCount.net. They had a number of deaths from March 2003 to January 2009 of around 90,000. However they rely almost entirely on deaths reported in the media, and they themselves admit that their figures are likely to be a great underestimate. There have been a couple of serious studies. They came to the following figures: 655,000 as of June 2006 according to a Lancet study 151,000 as of June 2006 according to a New England Journal of Medicine study The Lancet and The New England Journal of medicine are two of the most respected medical journals in the world.
