Skip to content
1981
2-3: The US War Against Iraq: More than 20 Years Later
  • ISSN: 2515-8538
  • E-ISSN: 2515-8546

Abstract

Parallels between the Afghanistan and Iraq wars include phony victories (bought from local forces), phony aims and claims (train the Afghan army, secure women’s rights, rebuild Iraq), shifts of alliances (allies become outcasts), creating ‘homeless Sunnis’ (who later join the IS). If we view Iraq and Afghanistan on a wider canvas alongside Pakistan, do wider parallels emerge? The Iraq and Afghanistan wars are profoundly tragic, but are they exceptional? If we view Iraq and Afghanistan as extensions of and variations on the Cold War, do different patterns emerge? Would they help us understand problems of regime change more clearly? This article views the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as part of a series and reflects on what this series tells us.

Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/journals/10.1386/jciaw_00124_1
2024-08-01
2025-04-17
Loading full text...

Full text loading...

References

  1. Abdul-Ahad, G. (2023), A Stranger in Your Own City: Travels in the Middle East’s Long War, New York: Knopf.
    [Google Scholar]
  2. Abrams, A. B. (2023), Atrocity Fabrication and its Consequences: How Fake News Shapes World Order, Atlanta: GA: Clarity Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  3. Ackerman, E. (2022), The Fifth Act: America’s End in Afghanistan, New York: Penguin.
    [Google Scholar]
  4. Ackerman, S. (2023), ‘The unlearned lessons from the war in Iraq’, The Nation, 17 March, https://www.thenation.com/article/world/iraq-war-isis-reparations/. Accessed 23 July 2023.
  5. Ahmed, J. (forthcoming 2024), ‘Saladin in Pakistan: A cold war crusade’, South Asia Journal.
    [Google Scholar]
  6. Alatas, S. F. (2013), Ibn Khaldun, London: Routledge.
    [Google Scholar]
  7. Ali, T. (2003), Bush in Babylon: The Recolonization of Iraq, London: Verso.
    [Google Scholar]
  8. Baker, P. (2023), ‘To foreign policy veteran, the real danger is at home’, New York Times, 1 July, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/01/us/politics/richard-haass-biden-trump-foreign-policy.html#:~:text=Is%20at%20Home-,Richard%20N.,security%20is%20the%20United%20States. Accessed 23 July 2023.
    [Google Scholar]
  9. Brzezinski, Z. (1997), The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives, New York: Basic Books.
    [Google Scholar]
  10. Carpenter, T. G. (2023), ‘The myth of NATO as a defensive alliance’, Global Research, 7 September, https://www.globalresearch.ca/myth-nato-defensive-alliance/5831594. Accessed 23 July 2023.
    [Google Scholar]
  11. Coll, S. (2018), Directorate S: The CIA and Americas Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan, 2001–2016, London: Allen Lane.
    [Google Scholar]
  12. Duffield, M. (2019), Post-Humanitarianism: Governing Precarity in the Digital World, Cambridge, MA: Polity.
    [Google Scholar]
  13. Dutkiewicz, P., Sakwa, R. and Lukyanov, F. (eds) (2018), Eurasia on the Edge, Lanham, MD: Lexington.
    [Google Scholar]
  14. Fisher, M. (2023), ‘20 years on, a question lingers about Iraq: Why did the U.S. invade?’, New York Times, 18 March, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/18/world/middleeast/iraq-war-reason.html. Accessed 23 July 2023.
    [Google Scholar]
  15. Gady, F.-S. (2015), ‘How Churchill fought the Pashtuns in Pakistan: Before the Soviets and before the Americans, the British were in Afghanistan’, The Diplomat, 24 October, https://thediplomat.com/2015/10/how-churchill-fought-the-pashtuns-in-pakistan/#:~:text=True%20to%20his%20bellicose%20nature,proved%20the%20British%20poet%20Hilaire. Accessed 23 July 2023.
  16. Ganesh, J. (2023), ‘The Iraq war left western societies unchanged’, Financial Times, 8 March, https://www.ft.com/content/303bdeff-89d7-4991-ad36-b137412a6585. Accessed 23 July 2023.
    [Google Scholar]
  17. Ghafari, Z. (2022), ‘They sold Afghanistan to the Taliban’, Financial Times, 2 December, https://www.ft.com/content/fc79d2ab-1a97-466b-be5d-16c8c09a960a. Accessed 23 July 2023.
    [Google Scholar]
  18. Gore, C. (2000), ‘The rise and fall of the Washington Consensus as a paradigm for developing countries’, World Development, 28:5, pp. 789804.
    [Google Scholar]
  19. Gress, D. (1998), From Plato to NATO: The Idea of the West and Its Opponents, New York: Free Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  20. Halliday, F. (1995), Islam and the Myth of Confrontation, London: I.B. Tauris.
    [Google Scholar]
  21. Harl, K. W. (2023), Empires of the Steppes: The Nomadic Tribes Who Shaped Civilisation, London: Bloomsbury.
    [Google Scholar]
  22. Haslam, J. (2022), ‘Response to H-Diplo article review 966 (2020) – “There really was an ‘Afghan Trap’”’, H-Diplo, 13 May, https://networks.h-net.org/node/28443/discussions/10247063/response-h-diplo-article-review-966-2020-there-really-was-afghan. Accessed 23 July 2023.
  23. Huntington, S. P. (1993), ‘The clash of civilizations’, Foreign Affairs, 72:3, pp. 2249.
    [Google Scholar]
  24. Iraq Study Group (2006), The Iraq Study Group Report: The Way Forward – A New Approach, New York: Vintage.
    [Google Scholar]
  25. Johnson, C. (2000), Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire, New York: Henry Holt.
    [Google Scholar]
  26. Keohane, R. O. (1984), After Hegemony, Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  27. Kurlantzick, J. (2022), ‘The revival of military rule in South and Southeast Asia’, discussion paper, February, New York: Council on Foreign Relations, https://cdn.cfr.org/sites/default/files/report_pdf/Kurlantzick-RevivalMilitaryRule_0.pdf. Accessed 23 July 2023.
    [Google Scholar]
  28. Layne, C. (2000), ‘US hegemony and the perpetuation of NATO’, Journal of Strategic Studies, 23:3, pp. 5991.
    [Google Scholar]
  29. Malik, H. (2008), US Relations with Afghanistan and Pakistan: The Imperial Dimension, Karachi: Oxford University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  30. Malikyar, H. (2022), ‘Russia-Ukraine war: Is Washington reprising the Soviet–Afghan playbook?’, Middle East Eye, 11 March, https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/russia-ukraine-war-washington-reprising-soviet-afghan-playbook#:~:text=Some%20elements%20of%20Russia's%20invasion,sovereignty%2C%20and%20Nato's%20circumspect%20response. Accessed 23 July 2023.
  31. McClintock, M. (1985), The American Connection, Vol. 1: State Terror and Popular Resistance in El Salvador; Vol. 2: State Terror and Popular Resistance in Guatemala, London: Zed.
    [Google Scholar]
  32. McNeill, W. H. (1982), The Pursuit of Power, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  33. Mishra, P. (2011), ‘The journey’, in A. Soueif (ed.), Reflections on Islamic Art, Doha: Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation, pp. 2231.
    [Google Scholar]
  34. Narayan, D., Chambers, R., Kaul Shah, M. and Petesch, P. (2000), Voices of the Poor: Crying Out for Change, Washington, DC: World Bank and Oxford University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  35. Nazemroya, M. D. (2013), The Globalization of NATO, Atlanta, GA: Clarity Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  36. Nederveen Pieterse, J. (1989), Empire and Emancipation: Power and Liberation on a World Scale, New York: Praeger.
    [Google Scholar]
  37. Nederveen Pieterse, J. (2003), ‘London calling: “Down with this sort of thing”’, CounterPunch, 24 February, https://www.counterpunch.org/2003/02/24/reflections-on-the-protest-in-london/. Accessed 23 July 2023.
  38. Nederveen Pieterse, J. (2004), Globalization or Empire?, New York: Routledge.
    [Google Scholar]
  39. Nederveen Pieterse, J. (2010), Development Theory: Deconstructions/Reconstructions, 2nd ed., London: Sage.
    [Google Scholar]
  40. Nepal, R. M. (2020), ‘Gurkha recruitment, remittances, and development’, International Journal of English Literature and Social Sciences, 5:5, pp. 152636.
    [Google Scholar]
  41. O’Rourke, L. A. (2018), Covert Regime Change: America’s Secret Cold War, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  42. Quigley, C. (1966), Tragedy and Hope, a History of the World in Our Time, New York: Macmillan.
    [Google Scholar]
  43. Rashid, A. (2001), Taliban, the Story of the Afghan Warlords, London: Palgrave Macmillan.
    [Google Scholar]
  44. Rashid, A. (2008), Descent into Chaos: The United States and the Failure of Nation Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia, New York: Viking.
    [Google Scholar]
  45. Rubin, A. J. (2023), ‘20 years after U.S. invasion, Iraq is a freer place, but not a hopeful one’, New York Times, 18 March, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/18/world/middleeast/iraq-war-20th-anniversary.html#:~:text=Young%20Iraqis'%20perceptions%20are%20shaped,the%20Hitler%20of%20our%20times. Accessed 23 July 2023.
    [Google Scholar]
  46. Schell, J. (2003), ‘American tragedy’, The Nation, 7 April, pp. 45.
    [Google Scholar]
  47. Shoukat, A. (2016), ‘Power reconfigurations and enterprise development: Elite contestations and the rise of business groups in Pakistan’, Ph.D. thesis, Kuala Lampur: University of Malaya.
    [Google Scholar]
  48. Suchoples, J., James, S. and Hanka, H. (eds) (2024), The Cold War Recalled: Ideological and Geopolitical Conflict, Berlin: Peter Lang.
    [Google Scholar]
  49. Tian, N. (2023), ‘20 years of US military aid to Afghanistan’, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, 22 September, https://www.sipri.org/commentary/topical-backgrounder/2021/20-years-us-military-aid-afghanistan#:~:text=These%20come%20from%20two%20sources,billion%20in%20constant%202019%20dollars. Accessed 23 July 2023.
    [Google Scholar]
  50. Toynbee, A. (1972), A Study of History, rev. abridged ed., London: Thames and Hudson.
    [Google Scholar]
  51. van Bijlert, M. (2009), ‘Imaginary institutions, state building in Afghanistan’, in P. van Lieshout, M. Kremer and R. Went (eds), Doing Good or Doing Better: Development Policies in a Globalising World, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, pp. 15775.
    [Google Scholar]
  52. Vine, D. (2020), The United States of War: A Global History of America’s Endless Conflicts, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  53. Zayas, A. de (2023), The Human Rights Industry, Atlanta, GA: Clarity Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  54. Nederveen Pieterse, J. (2018), Multipolar Globalization: Emerging Economies and Development, London: Routledge.
    [Google Scholar]
/content/journals/10.1386/jciaw_00124_1
Loading
This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was a success
Invalid data
An error occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error
Please enter a valid_number test