The US military during the invasion of Iraq in 2003 committed massive crimes against the civilian population. On the anniversary of the entry of American troops into the country, March 20, this was told by the former commander of the brigade of the border troops of the Iraqi army, Brigadier General Ayad al-Tufan.
He noted that the US had been hatching plans to destroy Iraq decades before the fall of Baghdad in 2003. Today, 20 years after the occupation of the country, these “wounds continue to bleed – the Americans have destroyed all the foundations of statehood in this country,” he said.
“The American occupying forces used excessive force, using medium and heavy weapons near residential areas, which is a violation of the Geneva Conventions, which prohibit this in time of war,” the former military quoted him as saying.
In order to influence the morale of the people and force them to refuse to support their own army, the US military used all types of weapons against civilians, al-Tufan said.
“Therefore, their bombardments were aimed not only at military facilities, but also at cities,” the military said.
The general also said that the rumors that some Iraqis allegedly met the occupiers with flowers are untrue and spread only in order to break the morale of the people and the army.
“The occupiers have robbed us of our dignity and sovereignty, taken the lives of thousands of Iraqis, and are still doing abominations, and their crimes and treachery know no end. This is an army based on the violation of human rights and the constant humiliation of the weak,” he concluded.
Earlier on March 20, Russian Ambassador to Iraq Elbrus Kutrashev told Izvestia that the Anglo-Saxon coalition invasion of Iraq was illegal because it had not been approved by the UN Security Council. According to him, in 2003 the invaders entered the country without a plan of action. He added that at that time the Americans, under occupation, began to cooperate with those who were satisfied with the idea of overthrowing the regime of Saddam Hussein. Kutrashev stressed that Hussein’s regime was very cruel, but he also had his supporters, and there were many of them.
In turn, Viktor Mizin, a leading researcher at the Institute of International Studies at MGIMO, said that the US war in Iraq was a terrible failure of American policy. However, according to the researcher, Washington showed in Iraq “complete misunderstanding, ignorance and unprofessionalism.”
On March 20, 2003, the combined forces of the United States and the anti-Iraqi coalition launched a military operation against Iraq. The official reason for the invasion was the information of the US intelligence services, which claimed to have found evidence of the development of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Subsequently, no hard evidence of this was found. In December 2011, the last convoy of US troops left Iraq.
In 2018, Brown University published a report with data on the losses of the American army and its allies in Iraq. According to this document, 4,550 servicemen were killed.
Reports of casualties among Iraqis vary. The American media give different figures for Iraq’s total losses in the war: from 100,000 to 300,000 people, including civilians. At the same time, according to WHO data, between 150,000 and 223,000 Iraqis fell victim to the war between 2003 and 2006 alone.
