How the U.S. Invasion of Iraq Is Still Ruining the World 20 Years Later

The U.S.-led invasion of Iraq that commenced 20 years ago in March 2003 set in motion a series of events that today still resound across the Middle East and beyond, fueling violence and instability around the world some two decades later.

Less than a year and a half after the U.S. stormed Afghanistan to set the tone for the first of what would come to be referred to in the coming years as "forever wars," a term now used by both Democrats and Republicans alike, the seismic attack on Iraq marked a new chapter in the U.S. military's legacy abroad. Wildly popular at home at the time, the conflict and its handling have become a regular source of criticism from both sides of the aisle, along with the majority of U.S. citizens.

But far more potent are the ramifications of this intervention felt within Iraq, in the wider region, and in a growing list of nations, especially in Africa, now under attack by one of the most resilient, deadliest byproducts of the conflict: the Islamic State militant group, more commonly referred to as ISIS.

"The U.S. invasion and subsequent occupation is directly related to the rise of ISIS," Zaid al-Ali, a lawyer who previously served as a legal adviser to the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq's (UNAMI) Office of Constitutional Support, told Newsweek.

The Fall of a Nation and the Rise of an Islamic State

With the 2003 dismantling of the Iraqi government and the capture of longtime President Saddam Hussein, who was subsequently executed in 2006, the U.S. military set out to pursue one of its most ambitious occupation and nation-building projects to date. Few today argue it was a successful endeavor.

"The U.S. established and encouraged a dysfunctional system of government," Ali said. "That system was fueled by corruption and allowed for political and geographic disputes to remain unresolved since 2003, which created the space for armed groups to operate virtually unopposed for years in many parts of the country."

Among these groups, one would stand out for its brutality and commitment to waging sectarian battles against the nation's Shiite Muslim majority and non-Sunni minorities: Al-Qaeda in Iraq. Originally called Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad, leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi pledged allegiance in 2004 to Al-Qaeda, the militant network that emerged out of the 1980s U.S.-backed anti-communist mujahideen campaign in Afghanistan before orchestrating the 9/11 attacks two decades later.

This group soon developed into a formidable force in war-torn Iraq that grew as U.S. troops fought both Sunni and Shiite insurgencies. Its rise would mark only the first chapter in the long saga of blowback tied to U.S. intervention in the region.

By 2010, as the U.S. had already begun to draw down from the conflict, Al-Qaeda in Iraq had rebranded itself as the Islamic State of Iraq, led by a then-lesser-known cleric named Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Baghdadi was a former detainee of the U.S. military's Camp Bucca, established as a model facility to mitigate the scandal of abuses surrounding Abu Ghraib prison, and he would go on to declare ISIS in 2013 as his jihadis expanded into Syria, where the U.S. was backing rebels fighting to overthrow another strongman, President Bashar al-Assad.

The rise of ISIS and Baghdadi's declaration of a global jihad led to yet another U.S. intervention that began in 2014, this time as part of a broader international coalition. And though ISIS' rapid takeover of large parts of Iraq and Syria would be reversed in the coming years, it remains active and continues to expand in other parts of the world, including a number of African countries, as well as in Afghanistan.

As such, Ali argued that "the war's legacy has been a disaster."

"Millions were displaced," he explained. "We aren't even sure how many people were killed. The terrorist groups that thrived in Iraq spread to other countries, including Syria, and have been devastating lives for decades now."

Sowing the Seeds of Terror

This sense of a legacy of disruption generated by the U.S. invasion of Iraq is widely shared, even among those who sought to aid in the effort to stabilize and support the crumbling Iraqi state. Despite U.S. attempts to the contrary, the country continued to deteriorate into what quickly became a hotbed for some of the most radical forces to emerge in the 21st century.

"There would have been no Al-Qaeda in Iraq without the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the U.S. policies of de-Baathification and dissolving the Iraqi military," Emma Sky, the founding director of Yale University's International Leadership Center, who served as political adviser to the Commanding General of U.S. Forces in Iraq, told Newsweek.

The term de-Baathification refers to the purge of officials who were loyal to Hussein's ruling Baath Party that took place under U.S. military rule in Iraq. This process was carried out in tandem with the mass dismissal of Iraq's armed forces, which had once waged effective campaigns to defeat jihadis under Hussein, who, for all his widely reported human rights abuses, was a staunchly anti-Islamist leader.

By pursuing these policies, Sky said that the U.S. "unintentionally collapsed the state, unleashing a breakdown in social order as Iraqis took revenge on each other for decades of abuse, and caused Iraq's descent into civil war."

"Among the chaos," she added, "a new generation of jihadis were mobilized, flourished and attracted recruits."

And at that point the troubles were far from over. Controversy erupted in the wake of the elections held in 2010, when then-Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki retained power after fraught negotiations to prevent a new full-on conflict. His U.S.-backed rule, which was also seen by an already alienated minority Sunni population as being aligned with Iran, led to further crackdowns on Sunnis, pushing many of them to determine "that ISIS was the lesser of two evils," according to Sky.

She argued that the consequences of the U.S. invasion extended far beyond the immediate region.

"The Iraq War undermined the rules-based international order," Sky said, "and America's reputation as the standard bearer of democracy."

A Transcontinental Caliphate

The U.S. reputation was further tarnished and Islamists were further empowered by another Western intervention that took place as the U.S. was winding down its military presence in Iraq in 2011. In March of that year, NATO began a bombing campaign in support of insurgents seeking to oust longtime Libyan leader Muammar el-Qaddafi.

Just one day after Qaddafi was captured and executed by rebels in October, and in the wake of an unsuccessful push to greenlight intervention in Syria at the U.N., then-U.S. President Barack Obama announced the total withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. But, as with the removal of Hussein, the initial elation in the wake of Qaddafi's downfall gave way to new crises as civil war emerged, leaving the country divided to this day between rival governments.

In the midst of these divisions, ISIS managed to expand its self-proclaimed caliphate across continents, once again finding fertile ground where an anti-Islamist authoritarian previously held power. With the green flags of Qaddafi's Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya fallen, jihadis flooded across the Sahara to other parts of Africa, including the Sahel and Lake Chad region, and their ideology traversed borders to the Congo, the Horn of Africa and even further south through the continent to Mozambique.

In 2015, while the group was already active in North Africa, ISIS recognized the Islamic State West Africa Province, followed by the Islamic State in Somalia. The Islamic State in the Greater Sahara was recognized by the jihadis the following year and the Islamic State Central Africa Province was announced in 2019, shortly after then-U.S. President Donald Trump declared ISIS to be "100 percent" defeated.

Today, many in Africa blame the West for bringing ISIS to their countries as a result of interventions in Iraq, Syria, and particularly in Libya.

"There is frustration among local elites about the spread of ISIS, particularly in the Sahel, since the conflict was initially fueled by the war in Libya," Jerome Drevon, senior analyst on jihad in modern conflict at the Crisis Group headquartered in Belgium, told Newsweek.

He noted, however, that "the conflicts that ISIS exploits in Africa preceded the group," to which a multitude of existing militant factions such as Boko Haram in Nigeria and the Allied Democratic Forces in Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo went on to pledge allegiance.

The group that rose out of the strife of the U.S. invasion of Iraq now issues reports of daily assaults on security forces, civilians—especially Christians—and rival groups across a number of African nations, with propaganda materials published regularly in multiple languages.

"Africa is where ISIS is most active right now, alongside Afghanistan," said Drevon, who previously served as an adviser for non-state armed groups to the International Committee of the Red Cross. "Most armed attacks are perpetrated by ISIS affiliates in the Sahel, Nigeria, DRC, and Mozambique. This is quite clear in terms of claims of responsibilities for armed attacks. The threat is particularly important in the Sahel, where ISIS fights local regimes and the regional al-Qaeda affiliate."

African Countries At 'a Tipping Point'

This resurgence has caught the attention of the U.S. administration led by President Joe Biden. The Pentagon has long maintained a network of military bases across Africa, and has conducted operations against ISIS, often in coordination with local partners. These activities included a January airstrike that killed one of the group's local leaders in Somalia, a country where the U.S. has usually focused its operations against Al-Qaeda-affiliated Al-Shabab.

Speaking to how this threat has evolved on the other side of the continent, U.S. Africa Command chief Marine Corps General Michael Langley told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday that "West Africa is at a tipping point."

"And what I mean is how these extremist groups, whether we're talking about ISIS West Africa, or even JNIM [Jama'at Nasr al-Islam wal Muslimin], or Boko Haram, they're all at the door, especially in the Gulf of Guinea states," Langley said. "As I've done my travels and I was in Ghana, they said, 'We don't want your boots on the ground, but we would like your equipment.'"

So far, the Biden administration has committed to only limited operations in battling ISIS, mostly focused on targeting commanders, whether in Africa or other parts of the world, including Afghanistan, where ISIS' so-called Khorasan province, or ISIS-K, has proven to be among the deadliest affiliates.

But as Drevon pointed out, "one of the risks, beyond Western involvement in the region, is to believe that only military solutions will quell and ultimately terminate these conflicts."

"Jihadis exploit local grievances and political failures in the region," he explained. "They are unlikely to disappear as long as those are not addressed too."

Akinola Olojo, project manager of the Lake Chad Basin team at the Institute for Security Studies, which has offices in South Africa, Ethiopia, Senegal and Kenya, spoke to these underlying issues that have allowed ISIS to spread throughout the continent.

"There were already governance gaps and socio-economic deprivation," he said, "which collectively served as a 'push factor' in communities where vulnerability was apparent."

The international jihadi creed of ISIS, intentionally crafted to supersede ethnic or national origin, also served as what Olojo described as a "pull factor," which "expressed itself in the way ISIS affiliates exploited (and still exploit) religion to forge an ideology that attracts people to its cause."

He told Newsweek that the link goes back to Baghdadi's original reign over the group, when "Africa was already of strategic importance and thus became a platform for ISIS' expansion and rebuilding after losses suffered in Iraq and Syria."

Disillusioned with the West

Olojo too recognized the "frustration" felt by Africans as they contend with this new challenge that has emerged out of existing deficiencies. But he also highlighted African-led initiatives that focus not only on the military dimension but also on political cooperation, human rights, governance, and women's and youth issues as well.

He argued that both the Africa-centric and comprehensive nature of these initiatives were important, pointing to "pros and cons" that came with inviting foreign military intervention. The upside of this international action includes the potential for powerful militaries to degrade ISIS capabilities on the continent, while the risk includes the possibility of such campaigns generating more grief through the use of indiscriminate force, as was the case in the Middle East, and now serves as burgeoning source of controversy in Africa.

He pointed to the fact that at least 500 people lost their lives as a result of U.S. airstrikes in Somalia between 2017 and 2019.

"We should think beyond waiting for the U.S. or Western countries to lead and begin to highlight the role and agency of African countries in terms of leading efforts to counter ISIS and its affiliates," Olojo said. "The solution to these challenges would not come from outside Africa. They should be inspired from within Africa, since after all a huge proportion of the ISIS challenge is on the continent."

However, even in the absence of a more active U.S. military intervention in Africa, many countries have increasingly come to reject the West's role in the local fight against jihadis.

"The frustration is largely felt in the Western Sahel," Confidence MacHarry, a security analyst at the SBM Intelligence firm in Nigeria, told Newsweek, "where more than a decade of international counterterrorism operations has yet to stem the tide of jihadist attacks in Burkina Faso and Mali, and is beginning to affect more coastal states than before."

These two countries are part of a larger trend of African nations that also included the Central African Republic, Madagascar, Mozambique, Sudan and others that are instead looking to Russia and its Wagner private military group for assistance.

"Across the continent, there is a growing disillusionment with Western security presence following a lack of improvement in the situation on ground," MacHarry said. "This has been spearheaded by anti-French feelings."

But without proven results yet in partnerships with Moscow, he said "there is a growing feeling of resignation to the situation and/or accommodation with the armed groups."

'We've All Come A Long Way'

As for Washington, which continues to grapple with ISIS on multiple fronts, the Biden administration has a complicated relationship with the legacy of the Iraq War that paved the way for the group's formation.

In the Senate, Biden openly championed U.S. plans to invade Iraq, including in a decisive October 2002 vote as he led the Foreign Affairs Committee. He would express his regret for this position in the years to come, even as he later, as vice president, led the charge of President Barack Obama's approach to the conflict in which his eldest son, Beau, deployed for a year.

After Beau Biden died from brain cancer in May 2015, Biden would go on to link his son's illness to the use of burn pits by the U.S. military to dispose of waste in Iraq, including in several comments made in recent weeks. And when the president addressed the nation amid a chaotic withdrawal from the U.S.' longest-ever war in Afghanistan in August 2021, he made it clear that he was also "ending an era of major military operations to remake other countries."

Speaking on the current approach to defeat-ISIS (D-ISIS) operations, a White House National Security Council spokesperson told Newsweek that "today's D-ISIS campaign is a change in strategy from the Iraq War."

"It's a sustainable U.S. investment with sustainable outcomes," the spokesperson said. "The small U.S. footprint in the region, in partnership with local forces, has had big results."

"Our national objectives are crystal clear," the spokesperson added. "We, in partnership with local forces, seek the enduring defeat of ISIS to ensure the group can never resurge to control territory and become a threat to the United States or to our partners and interests in the region."

The spokesperson described this approach as being "consistent with what is effectively the Biden doctrine for the Middle East."

"This Administration is keenly focused on policy goals that are as ambitious as they are practical, realistic, and implementable," the spokesperson added. "One of the key principles of our approach is a focus on partnerships, which is especially evident in our campaign against ISIS. With that in mind, we are working with partners across the region and globally against shared counterterrorism objectives."

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin made a surprise visit to Iraq earlier this month, pledging that the Pentagon remained committed to maintaining troops in the country, where pro-Iranian militias also opposed to ISIS continue to call for a U.S. withdrawal and occasionally stage attacks.

Responding to Newsweek's question during a press call Friday, National Security Council Strategic Communications Coordinator John Kirby also weighed in, saying that "we are committed to our partnership with the Iraqi security forces, a partnership where we are there in Iraq at their invitation in an advise, assist and enable role that will continue."

But Kirby insisted that "the threat of ISIS remains viable." And while asserting that "we're going to continue to say focused on that threat," he also added that, "I think it's safe to say that we've all come a long way since the invasion of Iraq 20 years ago."

"Yes, it's a milestone and I think it will lead to some reflection," Kirby said, adding that, at the same time, "you have to have to keep it in perspective. Iraq itself and the Iraqi people have overcome an awful lot in the last 20 years, and this relationship we have with them and the improving competence and capability of the Iraqi security forces, all that gives us hope for the future."

Great Power Relations on the Line

Samuel Helfont, an assistant professor at the U.S. Naval War College and an Iraq War veteran who served as a U.S. Navy intelligence officer, also described the U.S. invasion as a "milestone"—but for more reasons than one.

He argued that not only has "the war and its aftermath inflamed Islamists across the greater Middle East," but said it brought with it vast geopolitical consequences, particularly in Washington's relationship with Moscow.

As he recalled, even before the rise of Russian President Vladimir Putin and his bid to assert Russian influence in regions such as the Middle East and Africa, a phone call took place in 1998 in which then-Russian President Boris Yeltsin warned his U.S. counterpart Bill Clinton that the budding U.S.-Russia relationship was on the line over Iraq.

As Putin came to power at the turn of the century, the drums of war were already beginning to beat in Washington. And a day before the invasion was launched in March 2003, Putin called it a "mistake," warning it would beget "grave consequences."

"Iraq played a critical but underappreciated role in the breakdown in Russian-American relations during the 1990s and early 2000s," Helfont said. "The U.S. had worked hard to bring Russia into a 'rules-based' system following the Cold War, but in places like Iraq and the Balkans, the U.S. increasingly broke the rules it claimed were sacrosanct."

The U.S. invasion of Iraq and its aftermath have been a frequent source of criticism from some of the top foes of the U.S., including Russia, China, Iran and North Korea. When faced with condemnation from Washington, officials from these nations and others often claim double standards.

After the International Criminal Court announced on Friday a warrant against Putin over allegations regarding the mass deportation of Ukrainian children amid the ongoing conflict, Russian Permanent Representative to the United Nations Vassily Nebenzya fired back, highlighting how the decisions "were made public on the eve of the 20th anniversary of the U.S. illegal invasion of Iraq, where the ICC had jurisdiction, but did nothing to bring the perpetrators to responsibility."

Like Russia, the U.S. is not a party to the ICC's founding Rome Statute, and Washington has threatened the court and its judges over any attempts to charge U.S. citizens, including soldiers, over alleged war crimes.

And now, language similar to that once used by President George W. Bush's administration to justify the war in Iraq has been heard emanating from the halls of the Kremlin in relation to Russia's war in Ukraine, including accusations that Kyiv was seeking to obtain weapons of mass destruction and aiding and abetting extremists.

"There are significant differences between the Iraq War and the war in Ukraine," Helfont said, "but American actions in Iraq seem to have helped untether Russia from a rules-based international order."

"It is difficult to know Putin's motivations," he added, "but one could see how, from the Russian standpoint, if Washington was not going to be constrained by the rules of the liberal world order, why should Moscow?"