The UN embargo and oil-for-food program

The UN-imposed economic embargo on Iraq remained in force during the Persian Gulf War but expired after Iraq withdrew from Kuwait. Since Iraq had refused to withdraw voluntarily, however, in April 1991 the Security Council adopted Resolution 687, which made lifting the embargo conditional on Iraq’s accepting the demarcation of the Iraq-Kuwait border according to their bilateral agreement of October 1963, surrendering all its WMD, including missiles with ranges greater than 90 miles (150 km), and destroying the ability to create such weapons. The resolution also called for the establishment of a monitoring system, to guarantee Iraq’s compliance.

The Security Council established a UN Special Commission (UNSCOM) to inspect and verify that Iraq was complying with the ban on WMD. By mid-1991, however, it was becoming clear that the embargo would very likely last longer than had been originally expected and that, in the meantime, the people of Iraq needed humanitarian aid. Thus, the Security Council passed a pair of resolutions establishing what came to be called the oil-for-food program, in which Iraq, under UN supervision, could sell a set amount of oil in order to purchase food, medicine, and other necessities.

The government of Iraq, however, rejected this offer on the grounds that it violated Iraq’s national sovereignty. In addition, between 1991 and 1993 Iraq continually obstructed UNSCOM’s search for WMD. The United States and the United Kingdom (and originally France) responded by carrying out intermittent air attacks on Iraqi military and internal security targets. Gradually, however, the Iraqi regime managed to render UNSCOM’s work almost ineffectual. In the end the Iraqis argued that all of their proscribed weapons had been destroyed, although UNSCOM insisted that the Iraqi regime was still concealing a small stockpile of prohibited items and technology. Despite ongoing Iraqi recalcitrance, the Security Council adopted new measures, which Iraq accepted only under the threat of economic collapse in 1996. In December Iraq resumed oil exports, and the first food and medicine shipments arrived in Iraq in March 1997.

In February 1998 the Security Council again raised the ceiling of the permitted sales of Iraqi oil, but Iraq continued to obstruct the work of UNSCOM, and there were fears that the country had resumed its programs for WMD, despite UNSCOM’s verification and inspection efforts. In December 1998 the United States and the United Kingdom attacked military and government targets within Iraq—primarily those suspected of being associated with WMD—in the most intense bombardment since the 1991 war.

Following the raids, however, Iraq refused to allow UNSCOM personnel to reenter the country. Iraqi leaders also rejected a new, more liberal, resolution put forward in late 1999 and instead demanded that sanctions be lifted completely. By then, however, the embargo’s effectiveness had begun to diminish. The easing of sanctions alone had allowed a greater degree of prosperity, and Iraq smuggled an increasing volume of material, particularly oil, to generate income, bring in proscribed items, and fuel consumer demands. This was facilitated by the fact that a number of countries, particularly those adjoining Iraq, derived great financial benefit from trade with that country.

In light of the deteriorating embargo—and always observant of the humanitarian toll that it produced—a number of states within the UN called for its complete abolition. Others sought to streamline the embargo by introducing what were termed “smart sanctions” that would be directed at prohibiting access to a much smaller, more specific list of materials to Iraq, including weapons and military technology. Iraq, however, refused such a program and again was able to have modifications to the existing sanctions sidelined within the UN, but it was unable to have sanctions lifted completely.

Post-9/11 tension and the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq

Following a series of deadly terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001 (see September 11 attacks), discussion of relieving the embargo on Iraq abated. Although Iraq had no connection with those attacks, U.S. Pres. George W. Bush argued that the attacks demonstrated the vulnerability of the United States and that this vulnerability, combined with Iraq’s antipathy for the United States, its desire to obtain or manufacture WMD, and its record of supporting terrorist groups, made the complete disarming of Iraq a renewed priority. At the insistence of the United States, the UN Security Council issued Resolution 1441 on November 8, 2002, demanding that Iraq readmit inspectors and comply with all previous resolutions. After some initial wrangling, Iraq agreed to readmit inspectors, who began arriving in Iraq within two weeks.

The international community soon differed on the degree of Iraq’s cooperation. Initial inspections were inconclusive, though a small block of countries led by the United States and the United Kingdom argued that Iraq had resorted to its earlier practices, that it was willfully hindering inspection efforts, and that, given the large volume of material unaccounted for from previous inspections, it doubtless continued to conceal large quantities of proscribed weapons. Other countries, particularly France, Germany, and Russia, sought to extend inspections and give the Iraqis further time to comply. The United States and the United Kingdom, however, were convinced that Iraq never intended full cooperation and began to mass troops and war matériel around Iraq in preparation for a military conflict.

On March 17, 2003, the United States and its allies declared an end to negotiations, and on March 20 they launched the first in a series of precision air attacks on targets in Iraq, followed by an invasion of American and British ground forces from Kuwait in the south. As U.S. troops drove northward, they met resistance that was sometimes heavy but was generally poorly organized. On April 9 resistance in Baghdad collapsed, and U.S. soldiers took control of the city. On that same day, British forces secured Basra, and Iraq’s other major cities fell within days, sparking a short but intense period of rampant looting of stores and government buildings. Major fighting ended by late April, but acts of common criminality continued, and, as the months passed, a pattern of concerted guerrilla warfare began to unfold. On December 13, 2003, Saddam surrendered to U.S. troops when he was found hiding near Tikrīt, and other major figures from the regime were tracked down and arrested.

Following the fall of the Baʿath Party, an entity known as the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), which was headed by a senior American diplomat, assumed the governance of Iraq. An Iraqi governing council appointed by the CPA had limited powers. The primary goal of the CPA was to maintain security and rebuild Iraq’s badly damaged and deteriorated infrastructure, but its efforts were widely hampered by an escalating insurgency involving a variety of groups comprising both Iraqis and non-Iraqi fighters from other Arab and Islamic countries. Prominent among them were remnants of the former Baʿathist regime and fighters belonging to an affiliate of the al-Qaeda network known as al-Qaeda in Iraq.

Responsible for countless killings and sabotage, the insurgents targeted coalition forces, new Iraqi security forces and recruitment centres, electrical installations, oil pipelines, and other civilian institutions. The resistance was concentrated mainly in Baghdad and the Sunni-dominated areas north and west of the capital, especially in Fallujah. A push by U.S. and central government forces failed to gain control of that city in April 2004, but a renewed effort succeeded in November. Major confrontations between coalition and government forces and those loyal to Muqtada al-Sadr, a Shiʿi cleric, also occurred south of Baghdad, mainly in Najaf and Karbala.

Rocky transition to civilian government

Meanwhile, efforts to hand over control of the government to the Iraqis continued. In June 2004 the CPA and the governing council were dissolved, and political authority passed to an interim government headed by Ghāzī al-Yāwar. Subsequently Ayad Allawi was selected prime minister. U.S. and coalition forces remained. Although no WMD were unearthed, the discovery of mass graves and records found in the offices of Baʿathist intelligence services bore witness to the human toll of the atrocities committed by Saddam’s regime. Ironically, revelations of assault and mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. soldiers at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad brought their own international outcry. On January 30, 2005, despite the ongoing violence, general elections were successfully held for Iraq’s new 275-member Transitional National Assembly. Iraqis around the world were allowed to vote in absentia. In April 2005 Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani was elected president of Iraq.

A draft constitution approved by a national referendum in October 2005 called for a new legislature, the members of which largely would be elected from constituent districts (some members would be appointed). Sunni Arabs voted overwhelmingly against the new constitution, fearing that it would make them a perpetual minority. In a general election on December 15, the Shiʿi United Iraqi Alliance (UIA) gained the most seats but not enough to call a government. After four months of political wrangling, Nouri al-Maliki of the Shiʿi party Islamic Daʿwah formed a coalition government that included both Arabs and Kurds. Talabani, who was reelected as president in April 2006, nominated Maliki as head of the new government, which was sworn in on May 20, 2006.

Political violence continued to grow. Attacks directed at coalition forces, which had begun to rise in 2005, became even more violent and sophisticated. Yet it was attacks against Iraqi civilians, mostly in and around Baghdad, that consumed the attention of the international community as Shiʿi and Sunni militia and terror groups targeted members of the opposite group. Many of these attacks were directed at the police and their families; even with U.S. assistance, the Iraqi government had a difficult time recruiting and training police officers and soldiers to assume domestic security duties. The death of al-Qaeda in Iraq’s leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, in June 2006 did nothing to reduce the violence.

Saddam was executed by an Iraqi court on December 30, 2006. Shortly thereafter, U.S. President Bush proposed a controversial plan to temporarily increase U.S. troop levels by more than 20,000 to help stem the flow of violence—an effort that became known as the surge. By that time, Iraqis had grown increasingly weary of the violence, and American support for the war, which had come to be called simply the Iraq War, reached an all-time low.

Levels of violence in Iraq began to decline during 2007, and some of the additional troops deployed by the United States were withdrawn. The declining levels of violence were attributed not only to the surge itself but to a confluence of factors, including the Sunni Awakening—a movement in which Sunni tribesmen who had formerly fought against U.S. troops eventually realigned themselves to help counter other insurgents, particularly those affiliated with al-Qaeda in Iraq—as well as a voluntary cease-fire observed by Sadr and his forces.