Weekly Reader | Lead Story | Five Years at War

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he war in Iraq has reached a milestone. This week, the United States will mark the conflict’s fifth anniversary. When the war started on March 20, 2003, most people thought it would be over quickly. But today, more than 158,000 U.S. troops are in Iraq and the fighting continues. Nearly 4,000 U.S. troops have died in the fighting, as have tens of thousands of Iraqis. No one knows when the war will end.

The United States and some of its allies attacked Iraq because it believed Saddam Hussein, Iraq’s leader at the time, was plotting to build weapons with the power to kill thousands of people. To date, however, no such weapons have been found. Saddam was a dictator who had invaded neighboring countries in the past and had even killed thousands of Iraqis. U.S. President George W. Bush told the world, “The people of the United States and our friends and allies will not live at the mercy of an outlaw regime that threatens the peace with weapons of mass murder.”

Critical Thinking:

What might life be like for a U.S. soldier serving in Iraq? What might life be like for Iraqi citizens?

When the war started, U.S. troops and their allies quickly defeated the Iraqi army and took control of Baghdad, Iraq’s capital. They later captured Saddam, who was in hiding. The former Iraqi dictator was tried by the Iraqis, sentenced to death, and executed for the crimes he committed against Iraqis. The Iraqi army’s and Saddam’s defeat didn’t end the war, though. Fighting quickly erupted among Iraq’s ethnic and religious groups—Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds. Each group wants to make sure it receives its fair share of power.

Terrorist and rebel groups help stoke the violence. Al Qaeda, the terrorist organization that attacked the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, has created a stronghold in Iraq. Some of the group’s members went to Iraq after the war started to fight U.S. troops.

Last year, Bush ordered a surge of more than 30,000 additional U.S. troops to Iraq to cut down on the violence in Baghdad. In addition, an Iraqi religious leader recently ordered rebels loyal to him to put down their weapons for now. Almost everyone, even long–time opponents of the war, agree that violence has now gone down.

Still, no one knows when the fighting will end and when U.S. troops can start coming home. No one wants to celebrate any more anniversaries of the war.

To learn more about the war in Iraq, go to CBBC Newsround.

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