An Unconventional War: U.S. Military Deaths in Iraq 2003-Present
An in-depth look into the irregular warfare that caused thousands of hostile casualties for American personnel in Iraq, 2003-Present.
Sitting on a second-story deck gazing upon the tree line that curbs the Nissequogue River, a combat veteran of the Iraq War sips his morning coffee while he fumbles with a metallic bracelet hanging from his wrist. The bracelet is emblazoned with two names, both soldiers killed in action during the U.S. military’s “surge” in Iraq. While this veteran did not know either of these men personally, he was assigned to their area of operations and was present in the areas in which they were killed, at the time that they were killed.
One of the names is Jeffrey Reed. Jeffrey was a native of Chesterfield, Virginia and joined the United States Army in 2004. He was married to Ashley Robbins and loved the Philadelphia Flyers. Jeffrey was an avid soccer enthusiast, played for his high school team and could often be seen kicking around a ball with young Iraqi children while on patrol during his deployment with the 411th MP Company out of Fort Hood, Texas.
On the morning of March 2, 2009, personnel assigned to the tactical operations center (TOC) of the 1–111th Infantry in Taji, Iraq were starting their duty day, sipping coffee, and poring over daily reports when shrills and screams abruptly shattered the otherwise calm, and quiet room. Cries rushed in over the speakers and pierced the air with, “help” and “medic!” The voice on the radio was crackling and frightened. Panic yielded confusion as the voice begged for a MEDEVAC helicopter, but the map indicated he was barely outside of the gates at Camp Taji. The chaos on the radio sent chills into the hearts of every ear that heard those screams that fateful morning.
At that moment U.S. Army Sergeant Jeffrey Reed had perished mere steps outside of the gate of his base, only a few days short of his return home to the United States. An Iraqi teen lying in wait lobbed an RKG-3 parachute grenade at Sergeant Reed’s HUMVEE, piercing its armor and killing the servicemember almost instantly.
The RKG3 parachute grenade was designed in the former Soviet Union and has become a popular weapon amongst third-world insurgencies due to its availability and capacity to pierce the armor of many advanced military equipment. Moreover, it is highly concealable and does not require much advanced training to use effectively. The weapon is designed with two destructive components: an initial explosive penetrator tip to pierce armor and a secondary shape-charge, to inflict personnel casualties after entry into the vehicle. This weapons platform is just one of many examples of an insurgency’s ability to implement conventional weapons in asymmetrical or “guerilla-style” warfare.
While this may seem obvious to many, guerilla tactics are the norm for unconventional enemy forces against large-scale, established national armies. Long gone are the days of “force-on-force” warfare where two or more armies collide with one another head on. Moreover, rarely do two nations engage in full-scale armed conflict against one another but instead embrace proxy wars where third-party locations host battles between two or more states, using loosely organized, indigenous forces to engage foreign forces.
This is also not a new premise but one that has been embraced for decades. During the Korean War, the Chinese Army renamed itself and deployed forces to battle UN troops alongside the North Koreans. During the Vietnam War, Soviet and other communist forces trained and supplied the North Vietnamese for conflict against the United States. Years later the United States reciprocated by secretly reinforcing, training, and supplying the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan against Soviet occupiers. Proxy wars and asymmetrical, ambush-style assaults on conventional armies are a time-tested way to not only inflict physical casualties, but to diminish the political will of a foe causing eventual capitulation. In fact, it is the way in which the American colonists ceded from the British some 245 years ago.
The above pie graphic depicts leading, hostile causes of American servicemembers’ deaths in Iraq since 2003 as compiled by iCasualties.org. This is a non-for-profit organization created shortly after the coalition invasion of Iraq and is operated by a software engineer that compiles figures from various news and government reports. While there are nearly 4903 total casualties, from all coalition nations in Iraq since 2003, this graphic only involves U.S. forces figures, roughly 4580 in total. Moreover, this image does not include accidental or non-hostile deaths in Iraq, nor does it include deadly incidents that involve aviation assets or those events which are vaguely described by iCasualties.org as merely “hostile acts.” The latter category includes 559 deaths however the lack of specificity in that category could incorrectly skew datasets and therefore it was omitted from the overall graphic.
What is important to note is the vast difference between “conventional” attacks that yielded deaths, versus “unconventional” attacks that did the same. Small arms fire (SAF) is traditionally synonymous with firefights between two forces where bullet strikes cause fatalities. In these casualties, a more conventional style of combat is usually the cause, although many SAF engagements are accompanied by unconventional attacks as well. Conversely, the vast majority of hostile fatalities against U.S. Forces in Iraq were caused by guerilla-style tactics, like those employed against Sergeant Jeffrey Reed in 2009. In these sorts of attacks, more often than not, U.S. personnel are assaulted by surprise and in a manner that precludes them from engaging their attackers. They include but are not limited to sniper fire, improvised explosive devices (IEDs,) improvised rocket launches (IRLs,) grenade attacks, mortar attacks, suicide bombings, and complex attacks that employ multiple tactics, like listed above, simultaneously.
These attacks are obviously frustrating for militaries that train and prepare for conventional warfare. The lack of being able to observe, locate and engage an attacking enemy is especially demoralizing. In his 2006 book, U.S. Army veteran Paul Rieckhoff referred to this as “chasing ghosts.” Mainly, unconventional enemies avoid head-on fights with superior forces and instead rely on battles that do not necessary require their protracted presence. This also poses an equally perilous prospect for military leaders that must attempt to combat these unconventional attacks with minimal risk to uninvolved civilian populaces, a demographic that insurgencies routinely conceal themselves within. The other issue at hand is that these attacks are often perpetrated with the blessing and assistance of adversarial nations determined to wage a proxy war against the Americans.
There are certain regions of Iraq that are more perilous than others for U.S. servicemembers. Additionally, these regions are beholden to specific ideologies that are closely aligned with certain regimes across the region that also hold unfavorable views of the U.S., and their presence in Iraq. These regimes often help to support and mentor Iraqi insurgencies in strategies and methodologies rooted in asymmetrical warfare. For instance, Baghdad and solid portions of central Iraq are closely tied with Iran. One of the leaders of successful guerilla attacks on U.S. personnel in that part of Iraq, Muqtada al-Sadr, enjoyed unwavering logistical and tactical support from leaders of Iran. In the western region of Iraq, encompassing the Al Anbar Province, local insurgents maintain a sound relationship with Syria and rely on that regime for support in a myriad of ways.
In the above graphic, death figures of American servicemembers compiled by iCasualties.org were organized to illustrate which regions hosted the most carnage for U.S. Forces. Any statistic without a clear region in Iraq denoted was not included. Moreover, statistics that listed areas outside of Iraq were left out as well. Due to the high volume of different towns, provinces and villages included in the dataset, the graphic depicts the statistics by larger regions to include central Iraq, southern Iraq, western Iraq, and northern Iraq. As in previous graphics, only hostile engagements that resulted in the death of a U.S. troop were included.
As indicated, the vast majority of American combat deaths occurred in central Iraq. This region included hotbed locations like Baghdad, Fallujah, and Ramadi; all notorious locales which often devastated U.S. Forces with unconventional guerilla attacks. And it is in this region that Sergeant Jeffrey Reed lost his life. While the majority of central Iraq is considered Sunni, small yet strong pockets of the area are dominated by Shia elements, many of whom are loyal to Muqtada al-Sadr and his Iranian allies. It is important to note that Sunnis and Shia are both followers of Islam yet disagree over whom is the rightful successor of the prophet Mohammed. This religious disagreement has caused rifts that have translated into social and political turmoil in this, and other regions of the Islamic world.
Both the Shia and Sunnis led insurgent pushes against the American Forces in Iraq. The Sunnis comprised groups like Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI,) headed by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and later the infamous Islamic State of Iraq (ISIS) that terrorized the region. And, as noted above, the Shia were responsible for insurgent organizations like Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army. While both were supported by various state-sponsors, a superfluity of weapons and expertise were seemingly funneled to the Shia by Iran. It is also important to note that the bitter rivalry between the Sunnis and Shia yielded an internal sectarian war in which both factions aimed to kill off the other, often leaving the American military as collateral damage in their wake. These groups soon learned that employing unconventional warfare strategies against the other would not only terminate Sunnis, or Shia, but, when done properly, would also decimate American military personnel.
In the accompanying graph, U.S. deaths from hostile acts exclusively in the areas of central Iraq were broken down by year. Again, only U.S. combat deaths were included, and any accidental, aviation-related or otherwise unspecified casualties were not included. The invasion of Iraq by coalition forces began in March of 2003 and arguably, has remained in some form or another, through present. While there was a significant draw down following the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) around 2011, there has been a continuous American presence in the region since the initial invasion.
As the graphic conveys, early losses during the opening months of the campaign were minimal in comparison to the remainder of the conflict. As the length of the occupation grew, so did the number of hostile deaths sustained by American units in Iraq as insurgents learned U.S. tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTP) and calibrated their efforts to respond effectively. With a large-scale, well-trained, properly equipped military like the U.S., unconventional options were quickly implemented to counter such. As the inaugural year of the American occupation came to end, U.S. deaths from guerilla tactics began to soar. From 2003 through 2005, just two years into the conflict, American deaths from these sorts of attacks rose about 208 percent.
As noted in his 2008 Council on Foreign Relations report, Greg Bruno pointed out that those tallies continued to grow following 2005 as “…clashes reached a peak in early 2006 after the bombing of a Shiite mosque in Samarra. Some experts speculate Muqtada’s tacit support for Shia death squads in the wake of the bombing fueled the run of violence.” Muqtada al-Sadr began to realize the power of organizing Shia in their shared hatred of Sunni and Americans alike. He consolidated power and created a figurative bridge to nearby Iran for weapons, training, financial and political support. With the successes realized in 2006, al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army wrestled control of large swaths of Baghdad and surrounding regions from Iraqi and coalition forces. As his power grew so did the U.S. death toll as 2007 hosted the bloodiest period for American troops in Iraq during the entire conflict.
In 2007, the U.S. suffered approximately 542 combat deaths in central Iraq, a dramatic increase from the prior year and an even greater escalation from the beginning of the war. As with most deaths associated with the conflict, the overwhelming majority were conducted surreptitiously by insurgents emplacing IEDs in high-volume locations to kill large numbers of Americans. SAF attacks were a distant second and more often than not, these incidents were complex engagements in which SAF accompanied another form of guerilla attack. The unprecedented violence against American forces in 2007 spurred reaction on many fronts.
To further reinforce Iranian involvement in insurgent success in Iraq, the U.S. levied sanctions against that nation in the same year. While the sanctions were multifaceted and in response to many alleged Iranian transgressions, including the pursuit of nuclear weapons technology, their indirect involvement in Iraq played a role. In his 2007 article, Bill Van Auken noted that “…the Bush administration and some senior US military commanders have repeatedly accused Iran and the Quds Force, in particular, of arming, funding and training forces in Iraq responsible for attacks on US occupation troops.”
In addition to sanctions, the bloodshed of 2007 also compelled the U.S. to enact a “surge” of forces to the region. The so-called “Surge” began in the wake of violence in 2007 and continued through the eventual withdrawal of troops following the SOFA agreement, circa 2011. This significant increase in U.S. troops empowered military leaders to secure regions of Iraq that were otherwise given minimal attention previously. They afforded leaders the ability to fight an unconventional enemy on a number of fronts.
Along with a wave in U.S. servicemember numbers came a flood of new ideas in how to combat violence being conducted by a loosely organized, irregular force. Clearly, the most renowned military in the world was experiencing adversity on levels that could not at all be comprehended. These events called for new leadership and new TTPs to face an often-unseen enemy. In the wake of increased violence against Americans in Iraq, the U.S. appointed General David Petraeus to take command of the American mission in Iraq. A career soldier with brains to match his brawn, General Petraeus reengineered the way in which U.S. Forces responded to and fought guerilla militias in Iraq. His ideas and successes would later afford him the opportunity to partake in the creation of a field manual on just how to address an enemy you cannot see but who can, and does, kill you with unimaginable lethality. In the U.S. Army and Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual, General Petraeus and his colleagues were humble enough to note that “the American Army of 2003 was organized, designed, trained, and equipped to defeat another conventional army…however, unprepared for an enemy who understood that it could not hope to defeat the U.S. Army on a conventional battlefield, and who therefore chose to wage war against America from the shadows.”
One of the tenets of General Petraeus’ new strategy to combat unconventional warfare was to embrace local populaces and make them part of the solution, not a part of the problem. Starting in 2007, the U.S. adopted a policy that is commonly referred to as “The Awakening” in which they employed local Iraqis in hot spot locations to assist in security operations. Later known as the “Sons of Iraq,” (SOI) these locals were predominately comprised of Sunni males that helped combat violence in exchange for renewed American assistance in infrastructure projects as well as other financial incentives. While their deployment was not without controversy and some insider-based attacks, generally the movement created stability and afforded U.S. personnel the opportunity to concentrate of specific targets and threats across the region.
Furthermore, along with these new approaches and renewed sanctions against Iran, came a laser-focused effort to target Muqtada al-Sadr. Under General Petraeus’ guidelines, targeting specific leaders and networks that implement asymmetrical warfare and weapons was a top priority. This development was not lost on Muqtada al-Sadr who chose to flee Iraq in 2007, seeking shelter in Iran. With his departure and direct, day-to-day influence now gone, the U.S. was afforded a respite from his clutches and formulated a methodical approach to stimulate the attrition of unconventional attacks of their personnel.
As the sum of all of these measures was applied to U.S. strategies in Iraq starting in 2007, measurable changes were soon observable. Notably, as the accompanying chart depicts, troop deployment numbers surged globally. According to the Rand Corp, the number of personnel deployed across all services of the U.S. military world-wide rose and fell in conjunction with Iraq troop levels. On average, the U.S. military deployed approximately 427 thousand troops annually, across the globe, from 2007–2009. This increase in servicemembers away from American shores reinforced the U.S. commitment to new policies in fighting unconventional cells across Iraq. Additionally, reviewing the previous graphic of U.S. deaths in central Iraq will note that following 2007, the number of deaths from these guerilla attack began to decline sharply. In 2008 U.S. combat deaths in central Iraq experienced a nearly 75% decline and shortly thereafter, worldwide American military deployments began to taper as well. As the years ticked on, the number of U.S. dead in central Iraq continued to drop as did global movements of U.S. troops.
Knowing that the insurgency enjoyed a great deal of support from outside actors, including Iran, part of the new U.S. plan involved logistical interdiction of weapons used in guerilla tactics against Americans. Iraq borders two nations hostile toward the U.S.: Iran and Syria. While it is true that Iraq also hosted an exorbitant number of weapons on its own, major supply routes (MSRs) into and out of the country played a key role in unconventional attacks on Americans in that country. Regardless of whether these tools of war are organic to Iraq, of if they were smuggled in from external nations, many of these weapons platforms were often concealed in caches across the region prior to use against U.S. Forces.
While much of the information regarding weapons cache locations and seizures was, and still is, classified, there is some data regarding the magnitude of these operations. According to a U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request response, over 2000 weapons caches were seized by U.S. Forces in Iraq between October and December of 2007. While there is not comparative data for prior times, this period aligns well with the U.S. strategy shift in the wake of the elevated 2007 bloodshed against Americans in Iraq. The seizure of 2000 weapons caches destined for furtive attacks against U.S. Forces in a mere three-month period is significant to say the least. As part of that FOIA release, the U.S. DOD released details about dozens of these more significant cache seizures, their locations, and contents.
As the accompanying image illustrates, many of the more substantial caches seized were located within central Iraq. Look at any map and one can see that this region is relatively close to the border with Iran. Additionally, a closer look at the U.S. DOD reports on just these three months’ worth of 2007 cache data will yield some remarkably interesting findings. The aforementioned caches recovered by U.S. Forces contained 500 blocks of Iranian C4 with manufacturer labels listing ‘January 2007,’ 27 Iranian 107 mm rockets (4 of which were manufactured in 2006,) 4 unspecified caliber Iranian rockets, and thousands of rounds of SAF ammunition with Iranian markings. Thus, these discoveries corroborate the suspected correlations between central Iraqi insurgent groups and Iran. That, and their proximity to the Iranian border seem to lend credence to the suggestions that the Iranians were actively involved in the insurgencies killing American troops in Iraq.
Another facet of the improved American strategy involved innovative modifications to U.S. equipment to help deter unconventional, surprise attacks. While studying the TTPs of insurgent groups that inflicted major American combat deaths, officials realized that many of these casualties could be stymied by relatively minor tweaks and annexations to American military equipment. For instance, it was determined that the weapon that killed Sergeant Jeffrey Reed, the RKG-3 grenade, could be foiled by affixing steel screens across certain vehicles like the MRAP. Commonly referred to as “slat” armor, these screens could combat both RPG and RKG attacks by disrupting shape charges prior to penetration of the actual vehicle.
To combat another major threat to U.S. personnel, the IED, authorities ordered that vehicles be outfitted with the “Rhino” system. Essentially, the Rhino was a mechanical arm affixed to the front of vehicles that could be lowered while in transit, extending approximately 10 feet in front of the vehicle. At the tip of the “Rhino” a heat source was energized and when passing over, or near, an IED it could trigger infrared sensors that would prematurely prompt explosively formed penetrators (EFPs) to detonate. EFPS were an especially dangerous weapon that were responsible for a plethora of American deaths across Iraq.
As the behemoth ship that was U.S. policy in Iraq began to right itself following 2007, a bigger question arose: how did this happen in the first place? In the lightning “shock and awe” days of the early invasion, the U.S. mission seemed all but cast as an unequivocal success. Everyone can recall the photo-op in which then-President George W. Bush emerged from a deployed aircraft carrier fighter jet, wearing an OD green flight suit under a banner that read “Mission Accomplished.” Yet, as history would later reveal, that was anything but the case in Iraq. So, again, how did this happen?
The short answer is leadership failure, policy flaws and an inability to detect and respond to rapidly emerging guerilla forces across the nation. Regarding leadership failure, there are many suppositions that have emerged to reinforce this premise however one of the major missteps in the initial days of the conflict revolved around the American decision to dissolve the Iraqi military. Just prior to the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, the military of that country was vast and robust to say the least. According to the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) at the start of the 2003 U.S. invasion, ground forces of Iraq numbered over 400,000.
Regardless of political sentiments regarding the Baath regime in Iraq, when you abruptly disband a professional military that is no longer being paid, fed, equipped, or tasked with a purpose, the writing is on the wall for what can happen. The notion at the time was that the Iraqi Army would largely remain intact, even without a task or mission. Moreover, as Kenneth Pollack described in his 2006 Brookings piece,“…the Administration does not seem to have intended to use the Iraqi army to secure the population, they believed that because it would remain cohesive, there would be little threat from disgruntled soldiers joining organized crime or insurgent groups, as actually happened.” Abrupt and unequivocal unemployment yields resentment, desperation, and chaos. These traits are magnified in a profession in which pride and structure play pivotal roles in daily life. The decision to marginalize the Iraqi military created a power vacuum across the nation that was rapidly filled by insurgents, state-sponsored proxies and opportunists looking to capitalize on American leadership errors.
Along with the poor choice of disbanding the Iraqi military, overall American policy toward the future of post-Saddam Hussein Iraq wreaked havoc on the mission. Again, there are several points in which U.S. policy failed the universal mission in that nation, yet one of the larger flaws was the failure to identify, interpret and respond to the complex nature of the social and religious composition of the national populace. Moreover, the complexities of the demographics of Iraq were exacerbated by the historic, internal conflicts fueled by Saddam Hussein’s predominately Sunni regime controlling and ostracizing the majority Shia populace within the country.
According to the Library of Congress projections, around the time of the 2003 U.S.-led invasion into Iraq, the local population was comprised of between 60–65 percent Shia and 32–37 percent Sunni, for a total national population of over 26 million people. Moreover, the minority Sunni-led government ruled over the majority Shia population with a ruthless fist, for decades. One would have to look no further than the 1991 Karbala massacre to learn of the breadth of Saddam Hussein’s disdain for Shia inhabitants of Iraq. As Wafa Amr noted in a 2001 Associated Press article, reports of “dried blood stains…misery in people’s eyes…” littered accounts of the Iraqi regime’s response to post-Gulf War protests in Iraq. With lifetimes of animosity brewing, the U.S. administration should have foreseen the likely potential for a bloody reckoning.
However, one of the early miscalculations of American policy in Iraq was failure to realize these issues and attempt to rebuild Iraq with them in mind. Even prior to the invasion, Kenneth Pollack noted in his work that “…General Tommy Franks, and the office of the Secretary of Defense made clear that they wanted to reduce the American military presence in Iraq as quickly as possible, and if there were any serious efforts at nation-building to be made, they were determined that someone else do it.” In a place where Shia and Sunni animosity has been metastasizing for years and without a sound plan for rebuilding and reconciliation, violence was virtually a forgone conclusion.
As all of these circumstances comingled, a recipe was crafted for a violent, guerilla insurgency to thrive. A massive, disbanded military, a jaded and divided population and a world superpower standing by to observe, Iraq became ground zero for a new era of bloodshed that took the lives of hundreds of thousands of people on all sides of the issue. The organization IraqBodyCount.org has taken pains to garner open-source media accounts of civilians killed in Iraq during the conflict. Admittedly, many experts put these figures on the lower end of the spectrum as they only account for numbers given in confirmed media reports over the years. However, being that these figures are confirmed by independent media accounts, it is more palatable to rely on such conservative estimates, which are still eyepopping figures to say the least.
Just as 2007 was a bloody year for U.S. personnel, it was equally deadly for Iraqi civilians. The data represented in the graphic does not include cause of death, nor who perpetrated these volatile acts. It also depicts statistics from the invasion of 2003 through 2020. This is important because as noted above, certain U.S. decisions reverberated across Iraq even beyond the removal of the bulk of American forces following 2011. This reinforces the point that the prevalence of sectarian violence cost lives across the board and was permitted to thrive due to inaction on the part of the American occupying force.
This and the failure to prioritize the stabilization of the Iraqi infrastructure, economy, and security, created means and opportunities for insurgent forces to flourish. Notably, civilian death tolls dropped following a reduction of U.S. forces around 2011 but skyrocketed years later as ISIS gripped the country and engaged upon a campaign of extermination of those who did not recognize their caliphate. Again, these death tolls are a direct reflection on the Americans’ inability to forecast problems with rushing a fledgling Iraqi government into action, a move that Kenneth Pollack’s article described as “… the marginalization of a number of important Iraqi communities, most notably the Sunni tribal segment of the population.” Factions hostile toward other Iraqis as well as the Americans became ubiquitous and a chaotic, ever-changing U.S. policy in the region drafted a perfect storm of sorts. This is one reason why years after the departure of American forces groups like ISIS emerged and killed even more civilians than during the American war years.
Clearly, Iraq was a complex undertaking from the start. It is a nation of deep, intricate history wrought with a complicated people routinely led by a series of unsavory characters. The initial American invasion was swift and successful yet exuberance spawned a series of missed opportunities. Eventually, after much bloodshed, the U.S. military took measures to rectify their early misgivings. While the changes in U.S. policy and TTPS were not enough to prevent the death of Sergeant Jeffrey Reed, they did pay dividends in the overall reduction of unconventional attacks that killed Americans across Iraq. The approach of insurgents to waging guerilla-style attacks against Americans forced the U.S. to reinvigorate the way it fights wars. Moreover, as denoted above, these insurgencies were used by outside actors as a means to fight a proxy war against the U.S. and its allies in Iraq. These external influences helped train and outfit local militias and afforded them even more successes than they would have garnered without their involvement. The use of conventional weapons in unconventional ways is a classic, often-used tactic and one that paid off for enemy forces in Iraq. In the end, these realizations by U.S. Forces were perhaps the ultimate homage to soldiers like Jeffrey Reed in that their willingness to adapt their protocols perhaps prevented the further carnage of countless American lives.
