Legacies of War in Iraq | Background Paper & Timeline

Next week marks 10 years since the US invasion in 2003. It is a good time to look back on the past to better understand future challenges.

“This is a choice we know will have enormous and tragic consequences – many as yet unimagined – for the Iraqi people, for our nation and for the world. It is a choice we believe was unnecessary, immoral and unwise…” - Quaker Statement On Launch of War, March 2003

"Iraq since 2003 represents everything that we want to avoid in the Arab world – foreign invasions, simplistic American political engineering, sharp internal polarization, ethnic cleansing and warfare…” - Rami G. Khouri

"There is no victory and no victors in the 20-year war. Except for a few war profiteers, everyone has lost." - Raed Jarrar

“So many of Iraq's contracts were blocked that, from the time the program began operating in 1996 until March, 2003, a total of only $27 billion in humanitarian goods were actually delivered to Iraq. That amounted to about $204 per person, per year for all goods; this includes food, medicine, and the reconstruction of the infrastructure, since the program began operation -- or about one-half the per capita income of Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.” - Joy Gordon, regarding the Oil-for-Food Program

Click here for the AFSC background paper, and here for a timeline.

For 30 years the Iraqi people have endured three wars and for 20 years suffered under some of the most severe and comprehensive economic and political sanctions ever imposed against a nation and its people.

A war of choice starting in 2003 destroyed the infrastructure, left hundreds of thousands dead, opened the way to civil war/ethnic fighting, and created the largest movement of refugees and internally displaced in the region since the creation of Israel in 1948.

“In April of 2003, the country lay in ruin. The infrastructure had been decimated. As we drove from Baghdad to Mosul, we passed miles of high tension electric wires that were lying on the ground as the towers that held them were melted by stinger missiles. Bomb craters dotted the countryside with clear evidence of the use of cluster munitions littering agricultural fields. Ministry buildings and cultural centers like the national theater were bombed out shells. Ministries which had not been bombed were empty carcasses looted completely bare. Communication centers were rubble leaving much of the country without phone service. The streets were full of tanks and military vehicles but they were empty of people. Stores were closed, boarded up, burned out or looted. Schools were bombed or looted. Hospitals were overflowing with injured but depleted of medical supplies. Electricity was scarce or nonexistent.

The neighborhoods were no longer safe for women and children. With the first waves of lawlessness, the children who flew kites in front of our house were locked away in their homes. A child in our neighborhood was kidnapped and held for ransom. A family in the neighborhood was robbed at gunpoint in their home. Women stopped driving and going to the store. Barricades went up at the ends of our street to keep bandits out. The wife and children of our landlord and neighbor, fled to Amman among the first wave of refugees to flee the violence. There was no law and order as there was no government. As life became more insecure, people armed themselves and looked to groups that might protect them. Group identification, by tribe, religion or political affiliation, became increasingly important as a means to security. Armed militias were formed.” - Mary Trotochaud

"In 2004, following the hanging of 4 Blackwater contractors in the Sunni stronghold of Fallujah, the US commanding officer, who would lead the siege on Falujah stated: The enemy has got a name. He's called Satan. He's in Falluja and we are going to destroy him.

The Lt. Col was good to his word: all males between 15 and 45 were denied safe passage, while ¼ million people became refugees. Of the 50,000 who stayed 6,000 died, including those whose skin was melted from their bodies from the illegal use of phosphorus bombs. 3 of the city’s water plants were destroyed the fourth crippled. 70% of buildings were damaged or destroyed. Studies have traced the use of enriched uranium in US weapons systems. US forces believed they had to destroy Fallujah to save it, while the international relief community in Iraq tried to figure out how to get emergency medical supplies, food and water to the besieged people." - Rick McDowell

Rick McDowell and Mary Trotochaud were AFSC Iraq Country Representatives from 2004 – 2007. Upon returning to the US, they worked for the Friends Committee on National Legislation in Washington DC where they brought their war experience to bear on policy makers.

What to Make of the UN Report on Civilian Casualties?

Since 2007, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan has sought to document the number of civilian casualties in the war.

The annual report for 2012 was released yesterday in Kabul and for the first time ever documents a decline in the total number of civilian deaths (12%).

The welcome news was conditioned, as UN officials and human rights groups expressed concern that it may not be sustainable, worried that the root causes of the violence were not being addressed. In fact, the report notes that civilian casualties in the second half of 2012 rose by 13% from the previous year.

The real challenge of the report is that it raises more questions than it answers. Presenting readers with the dilemma of how best to interpret this very thorough effort. For example, is this a useful way to quantify violence?

What is not covered by the report is the number of young men being killed – as police, army, foreign forces, Taliban or militia member. With the total impact of the violence left blank it is hard to know if Afghanistan is emerging from war or tragically moving into a new more hidden phase of the war.

Some disturbing trends for 2012

UNAMA is starting to track the re-emergence of independent armed groups.
Women and girls killed and injured increased 20%
(IEDs)by Anti-Government Elements were the greatest threat to civilians
Targeted killings by Anti-Government Elements increased by 108%
Killing and injury to civilian Government employees increased by 700%

Here are some additional links to analysts with something to say.

Kate Clark with the Afghanistan Analyst Network has this summary.

“UNAMA said the fall in civilian deaths happened during the first five months of 2012 and was due to, ‘unseasonably harsh winter which impeded insurgent movements and [the] effects of earlier military operations against Anti-Government Elements.’ From July onwards, however, it found a 13 per cent increase in civilian casualties compared with the same period in 2011 and noted a over-proportional 17 per cent increase in civilian casualties from IEDs placed in public and civilian locations and intensified conflict in some parts of the country. So, the falling pattern of casualties is not yet assured.”

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“a new category of hostile actor, what it calls ‘armed groups’ - militias which are neither insurgents or within the formal, legal structure of the state (and often former ‘illegal armed groups’, to be dealt with by the DIAG program, but never disbanded). UNAMA has documented such groups in 40 districts in the north and north-east alone and finds they are particularly rife in Faryab and Kunduz;”

Shashank Bengali of the Los Angeles Times looks at the targeted killings.

“But the report said targeted killings -- attacks against government employees, tribal and religious leaders and Afghans involved in peace efforts -- resulted in more than twice as many deaths and injuries in 2012, in part because Taliban-led insurgents increased their use of homemade bombs that spread damage over a wider area.
U.N. officials said they were particularly disturbed by a seven-fold increase in casualties among government workers, including the murders of the two top officials in the women's affairs department in Laghman province, east of Kabul.”

Alissa J. Rubin of the NYT’s looks at structural changes and the removal of US heavy weapons.

“A factor that United Nations researchers found accounted for the drop in casualties was a reduction in ground engagements, which in some areas may be because of a declining number of Western forces. In other areas, there was an increase in engagements between the Taliban or other insurgents and the Afghan National Security Forces, but because the Afghan forces were less likely to have heavy weapons, the number of civilians killed appears to have dropped.”

Raffaela Wakeman writing at Lawfare looks at the improbable assertion that only .37% of US drone strikes resulted in civilian casualties.

"UNAMA counted five incidents out of 1,336 total “weapons releases from remote piloted aircraft” that resulted in a sum total of 16 civilian deaths and 3 injuries. That is to say that a whopping 0.37 percent of air strikes caused civilian casualties. The raw number is actually an increase. UNAMA only documented one such incident in 2011, although it’s unclear from the 2011 report how many civilian casualties resulted from the singular UAV strike. The report explains that “most” of these UAV civilian casualties were caused by weapons “aimed directly at insurgents,” but asterisks that by saying that other information indicates some of the casualties might have occurred as a result of targeting errors."

Against Stabilization | Roger Mac Ginty

Against Stabilization | Roger Mac Ginty

Roger Mac Ginty is Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies at the Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute (HCRI) and the Department of Politics. His main research interests are in international peace-support interventions and local reactions to these interventions.

"This is a polemic against the concept and practice of stabilization as practiced by leading states from the global north in peace support interventions. It is not an argument against stability. Instead, it depicts stabilization as an essentially conservative doctrine that runs counter to its stated aims of enhancing local participation and legitimacy. It is an agenda of control that privileges notions of assimilation with international (western) standards and mainstreams the military into peace-support operations. As a result, the value of peace is undercut."

How popular is the term?

A google search for ‘stabilization in Afghanistan’ brought up 2,460,000 results in .28 seconds.  It is a concrete example of how the term has come to define modern wars and intervention.

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His key points distilled.

Stabilization – as a concept and practice – lowers the horizons of peace and peace interventions. It moves us away from the realm of emancipation towards the realm of control.

Mainstreaming of stabilization has resulted in a hollowing out of peace in international approaches to intervention.

The concept of stabilization further normalizes the role of the military and aligned security agencies into peacebuilding. As seen by both the US and UK, stabilization is about harnessing civilian and military know-how, and institutionalizing the working relationships between the two sectors.

Read the article here.

Live From Kabul | An Afghan Conversation

Join us for a live video conference with Afghan civil society activists on Thursday, Dec. 6, 2012 at 10 a.m. Eastern. With upcoming milestones such as the removal of NATO/U.S. forces and presidential elections to replace Hamid Karzai after 10 years of rule, this is a critical time to discuss the role U.S. civil society can play. 



To participate during the event submit your questions to Questions@afsc.org

You can also follow and ask questions on twitter use #AfghanConversation

If you can't join us on-line, here are details for a listen-only phone conference.

Dial 866-740-1260 (US toll free & Skype callers) or 303-248-0285 (int'l toll call)
For your Access Code, enter 2419975#

Sponsors: American Friends Service Committee, Community Supported Film

To really link U.S. and Afghan civil society groups, we need to know and understand each other better. Send us your questions now. They will be shared with all the speakers before the call. You will also be able to ask questions during the call. 

Bios of Participants in Kabul

Sayed Ikram Afzali is the co-founder and president of Youth in Action Association – a non-profit youth-led organization dedicated to enhancing peace and sustainable development in Afghanistan. He has been a youth advocate and development professional for the past decade focusing on peace building and anti-corruption issues. With an aim to help rebuild Afghanistan, Afzali returned to Afghanistan after 20 years of refugee life in Pakistan. Affected by years of conflict in the region, he has been a strong believer in bringing about peace through youth using non-violent approaches – such as using sport as a vehicle for peacebuilding. Sayed has also worked with the United Nations and other national organizations for more than seven years in the area of democratic governance with a focus on civil society and anti-corruption. He is currently Head of Advocacy and Communication at Integrity Watch Afghanistan (IWA)

Integrity Watch Afghanistan (IWA) was established as an independent civil society organization in 2006. IWA’s mission is to put corruption under the spotlight by increasing transparency, integrity, and accountability in Afghanistan through the provision of policy-oriented research, the development of training tools, and through facilitation of policy dialogue.

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Hassina Serjan is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Aid Afghanistan for Education and the owner and Chief Executive Officer of Boumi Company – an internationally recognized women-owned home accessory business. Hassina co-authored the book Toughing It Out in Afghanistan, and has published numerous op-eds in the New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, USA Today, and more. She received a Master’s of Public Administration from Harvard Kennedy School and has an Honorary Doctorate of Law degree from Queen’s University in Canada.

Aid Afghanistan for Education (AAE) is dedicated to empowering Afghans and rehabilitating the education system in Afghanistan, and provides primary and secondary education for marginalized Afghans. Boumi – Farsi for “indigenous” – manufactures Afghan-made products with raw materials produced in Afghanistan, supplying high-end products to the global marketplace.

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Najib Sharifi is the Founder and Director of Afghanistan New Generation Organization. Najib is a medical doctor by training, but over the past ten years he has worked for some of the leading news organizations around the world including the New York Times, BBC, CNN, National Public Radio and the Washington Post. He has researched for the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit and Human Rights Watch. In addition, he served as senior political officer for the Office of the Special Representative of the EU for Afghanistan. In 2009, Najib won a Humphrey/Fulbright scholarship and studied public policy and leadership at the University of Maryland, College Park. Najib’s analysis and opinion pieces have appeared on various Western media outlets including South Asia Global Affairs and the foreign policy magazine. He is a frequent commentator of issues of domestic Afghan politics and foreign policy of the Western countries towards Afghanistan on Afghan and international media.

Afghanistan New Generation Organization is a non-profit youth empowerment organization with aims to empower the youth to become competent community advocates by providing training in such areas as public speaking, media literacy, and use of information technology among others.

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Michael Sheridan, Director and Founder of Community Supported Film, is a filmmaker, educator and activist. For nearly 20 years Michael has engaged the public in stories from Asia, Africa and the Americas about people in poor and developing communities challenging the status quo and struggling to improve their lives. Michael co-founded Oxfam America’s documentary production unit and has sought to break new ground in the effective use of media to educate and change policy. He has taught documentary filmmaking for 15 years at the community and university level, extensively in the United States and Afghanistan, and as a Fulbright Scholar in Indonesia.

Community Supported Film strengthens the documentary filmmaking capacity in crisis and post-crisis communities where the dissemination of objective and accurate information is essential. Local women and men are trained to produce stories on their community’s socioeconomic issues, and the resulting films are screened in audience engagement campaigns. Michael founded Community Supported Film in 2010 with a pilot program in Afghanistan that resulted in the production of 10 Afghan-made films, The Fruit or Our Labor. Michael also runs his filmmaking company SheridanWorks.

Moderated by

Peter Lems is the Program Director of education and advocacy for Iraq and Afghanistan at the American Friends Service Committee. He is also the co-coordinator of the Wage Peace campaign, a program initiative that seeks to wage peace with the same determination and energy that nations wage war.

The American Friends Service Committee carries out service, development, social justice, and peace programs throughout the world. Founded by Quakers in 1917 to provide conscientious objectors with an opportunity to aid civilian war victims, AFSC’s work attracts the support and partnership of people of many races, religions, and cultures.

Support for Pakistani Activist Malala Yousafzai

Protests condemning the assassination attempt on 14 year-old Malala Yousafzai have spread across Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Malala was targeted on October 9 while returning home from school in Saidu Sharif, the capital of the northwestern Swat district. The Taliban has claimed responsibility for the attack because of her diaries about the group’s atrocities and her insistence to attend school despite threats. She remains in critical condition.

Afghan Local Police | A Dangerous and Deadly Path

The Upper House of Parliament today demanded an investigation into the Afghan Local Police (ALP) after the killing of 11 civilians in Kunduz province on Sunday. Armed and trained by US Special Forces and initiated by General Petraeus the ALP is under the control of the Interior Ministry.

Most Afghans understand the program to be the creation of unaccountable militia forces. Bringing back memories of the terrible civil war violence between foreign armed militia armies.

It's a dangerous and deadly path.

Last September Human Rights Watch said the initiative was "a high-risk strategy to achieve short-term goals in which local groups are again being armed without adequate oversight or accountability."

Emal Habib, writing for the Afghanistan Analyst Network, investigates governmental and international support for the militia. Noting that the Afghan Local Police (or Arbaki) are presented as “armed, popular local uprisings” that have “expelled the Taliban” from several districts in eastern Afghanistan.

As commander of US forces in Afghanistan before taking over as head of the CIA David H. Petraeus said in hearings before the US Senate Committee on Armed Services that the arming of the private militias was “… in essence, a community watch with AK–47s”

On Sunday US forces announced they were suspending the training of 1,000 recruits of the 15,000 person force due to attacks against foreign forces (LA Times, The Hill, NYT )

Additional Resources:

The Generals Visit | Night Raids and Militia Forces

Impunity, Militias and the Afghan Local Police | HRW Report

From Arbaki to Local Police | Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission

Suicides Outnumber Battlefield Deaths for July

click on image to activate

Last month witnessed a record number of suicides in the U.S. military. In fact, more soldiers took their own lives then died on the battlefield. The interactive graphic above was published in June by Time.

Rebecca Burns writing for In These Times has a powerful profile entitled ‘Suicide is Anything but Painless.’ She features the field organizer Maggie Martin from Iraq Veterans Against War.

Yesterday the New York Times ran graphics and pictures to acknowledge that the death toll for US forces in and around Afghanistan had passed 2,000.

The average age is 26.

More detailed graphics here.

The Invisible Wounds of War: Coming Home from Iraq and Afghanistan

“The month of July set a record high for the number of suicides in the U.S. military. An Army report reveals a total of 38 troops committed suicide last month, including 26 active-duty soldiers and 12 Army National Guard or reserve members — more soldiers than were killed on the battlefield. The reasons for the increase in suicides are not fully understood. Among explanations, studies point to combat exposure, post-traumatic stress, misuse of prescription medications and personal financial problems.

Army data suggest soldiers with multiple combat tours are at greater risk of committing suicide. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta addressed the issue in June at the annual conference on suicide prevention in the military, saying, "Despite the increased efforts, the increased attention, the trends continue to move in a troubling and tragic direction." We speak with Marguerite Guzmán Bouvard, whose new book is called, "The Invisible Wounds of War: Coming Home from Iraq and Afghanistan."”

- Democracy Now 21 August 2012