What happened in Iraq after the US invasion is a pointer to Ukraine’s looming challenges

On March 19, 2003, over 150,000 US troops landed in Iraq. (Illustration by Suneesh K)

Some analysts are predicting that Russia’s war with Ukraine could end by summer this year. If that happens, attention will turn to the state of both nations’ economies. For Ukraine the catastrophic loss of life and the devastation of its cities are already visible even to outsiders. Sadly it comes as no surprise. Another superpower invasion, exactly 20 years ago, prepares us for the fate of smaller nations in the aftermath of such wars.

On March 19, 2003, over 150,000 US troops landed in Iraq. It was an invasion of a free nation and no amount of equivocation could alter the egregious nature of what transpired.

The circumstances of the invasion are of course well-chronicled and constituted some of the most bare-faced lying by men and women in the highest-ranking positions of the US administration. The weapons of mass destruction, in ostensible search of which George Bush Jr sent his troops into a sovereign nation, were never found. With good reason: they never existed.

But it was what happened after the flimsy Iraqi defences had fallen that is the big lesson for the world. Within a few days of the invasion of the country, US diplomat Paul Bremer was appointed as the overall head of Iraq’s interim administration. One of his first orders was to dissolve the entire former Iraqi army comprising 400,000 soldiers. He then proceeded to fire nearly half a million Iraqi government employees in an effort to rid the country not just of Saddam loyalists but also anyone else linked to his Baath party.

It turned out to be a disaster of Tughlakian proportions. With all the administrators capable of running services thrown out, there was virtually no one left to run the state-owned enterprises that ran companies across key industries ranging from cement to steel.

Worse was to follow. Among those rendered jobless overnight, thousands went over to insurgency, initially just to feed their families. Eventually many of them joined the dreaded Daesh which was to wreak such havoc upon the blighted country.

With the Iraqi economy crippled, giant US contractors now had a field day. Symptomatic of the excesses was a new prison that was built in the middle of the desert. "Learning From Iraq: A Final Report From the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction" details the waste and corruption involved: “In May 2004, the CPA awarded Parsons Delaware an $80 million task order to build the Khan Bani Sa’ad Prison, which would add 3,600 beds to the province’s correctional capacity." Four years and $40 million later, the partially complete, shoddily built facility, was effectively abandoned. The ensuing free-for-all saw bribery, money laundering, and the theft of millions of dollars of reconstruction money.

As with Ukraine today, it is important to understand the historical context and not get trapped in the smog of current events. By all accounts, till the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, Iraq was one of most advanced economies in the Arab world with an industrial sector that was reasonably well developed, over and above its petrol wealth. With a sizeable middle class, it boasted a 1985 GDP per capita of $3,074 as compared to $2,482 for South Korea and $1,288 for Brazil. This came on the back of an excellent educational system and high standards of medical care.

The country’s eventual descent into sectarian violence and chaos started with the folly of Husein’s attack on Kuwait which plunged the nation into a ruinous war against the US and its allies. Its oil installations suffered from lack of sufficient upkeep, leading to a decline in production. Prior to the US invasion, Iraq’s oil output averaged about 1.5 million barrels per day (bpd), well below the 3.5 million bpd it was producing before the 1990 invasion of Kuwait. By the time the US pulled out, production had crept up to 2.5 million bpd. Currently, it is pumping 4.5 million barrels every day.

In a brilliant piece for Rolling Stone titled "The Iraq War Unleashed an Age of Grift. We’re Still Living in It", author Spencer Ackerman writes: "The type of public deception the Iraq War helped rationalize, license, and unleash has only compounded and escalated in corporate America, from schemes run by Goldman Sachs to the insurance giant AIG and the crypto superfund FTX.”

For Ukraine, it is a warning to be careful with what it wishes for in terms of help from outsiders.