Iraq War · War Crimes & Atrocities
The Iraq War produced a documented pattern of atrocities from multiple parties across its eight-year duration. Coalition forces committed the Abu Ghraib abuses, the Haditha massacre, multiple civilian air strike incidents, and operated a global detention and rendition system that involved systematic torture. Al-Qaeda in Iraq conducted mass-casualty suicide attacks specifically targeting Shia civilians to provoke sectarian civil war, killing tens of thousands. The Shia militias that emerged in response conducted death squad operations against Sunni civilians on a similar scale. The war's atrocities illustrate a pathology of counterinsurgency: occupying forces committing abuses that recruit insurgents; insurgents committing atrocities that generate civilian demand for protection; and militias formed for protection committing their own atrocities, creating cascading cycles of violence.
Victims: Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison(No deaths directly documented at Abu Ghraib specifically; at least 8 detainee deaths at U.S. facilities in Iraq were ruled homicides; Abu Ghraib abuses are non-lethal torture and degradation)
24+
deaths
Victims: Iraqi civilians in Haditha, Anbar Province(24 unarmed civilians killed including women, children, and a 76-year-old man in a wheelchair; all killed in their homes)
Victims: Iraqi Shia population (attack on holiest Shia shrine in Iraq)(No deaths in the bombing itself (conducted at night when shrine was empty); triggered sectarian reprisals killing 1,000+ Sunnis in the following days)
17+
deaths
Victims: Iraqi civilians, Nisour Square, Baghdad(17 killed, 20 wounded; all determined by multiple investigations to be unarmed civilians with no connection to insurgency)