All events · The Long Emergencies

2003 Iraq War and Sectarian Displacement

2003–2008 · Middle East & North Africa

Displacement Mass Killing

Displaced

4.7 million

Approximately 4.7 million Iraqis were displaced by 2008: roughly 2.7 million internally and about 2 million as refugees, mainly in Syria and Jordan

Share of the population affected

18%

of the population of Iraq at the time of the 2003 invasion, 2003

Killed

100,000–655,000

excess mortality incl. disease and starvation

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What happened

The 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq toppled Saddam Hussein's government but was followed by a prolonged insurgency and, from 2006, an intense Sunni–Shia sectarian civil war marked by militia violence, bombings of mosques and markets, and ethnic cleansing of mixed neighborhoods, particularly in Baghdad. By 2007–2008, an estimated 4.7 million Iraqis had been displaced, roughly 2.7 million internally within Iraq and about 2 million as refugees, overwhelmingly in Syria and Jordan, which together hosted the bulk of the externally displaced population. Baghdad's demographic makeup shifted markedly as previously mixed neighborhoods became segregated along sectarian lines. Displacement eased somewhat after 2008 as violence declined, though it was later compounded by the rise of ISIS after 2014.

Parties

A US-led coalition invaded Iraq and toppled Saddam Hussein's government in 2003; the ensuing insurgency and, especially, the 2006–2008 Sunni–Shia sectarian civil war displaced millions of Iraqis internally and to neighboring countries, mainly Syria and Jordan.

Disputed

Estimates of both displacement and civilian death tolls from this period vary substantially between coalition, Iraqi government, and independent sources (such as the disputed Lancet mortality surveys), and responsibility for the sectarian violence is debated among historians and the parties involved.

The denominator

UN estimates put Iraq's population at roughly 26 million in 2003; no full census had been taken since 1987 outside the Kurdish region, so all figures for the period are projections.

The affected figure adds internally displaced people (about 2.7 million at the 2008 peak) to refugees abroad (about 2 million, mostly in Syria and Jordan); large numbers later returned, and some were displaced again after 2014, so it is a peak rather than a permanent total.

Where the baseline comes from

World Population Prospects — UN Population Divisionofficial
Refugees of Iraq — Wikipediaopen-edited

On the death toll

These ends measure different things and are not comparable. Iraq Body Count's incident-verified record of violent civilian deaths reached 114,212 for 2003–2011, with roughly 90% of them by 2009 — a documentary floor, not an estimate. The high end is the Burnham et al. Lancet survey of 2006, which estimated about 655,000 excess deaths through mid-2006 and was heavily contested on sampling grounds; the later University Collaborative Iraq Mortality Study in PLOS Medicine (2013) estimated about 461,000 excess deaths for 2003–2011 with a 95% uncertainty interval of 48,000–751,000, and the WHO-backed IFHS survey produced a death rate roughly between IBC and the Lancet. Excess-mortality estimates include deaths from collapsed health services and displacement, and are frequently misquoted as counts of people killed.

Documented forms of violence

Mass KillingSummary ExecutionTortureEnforced DisappearanceDestruction of Property

UNAMI's bi-monthly Human Rights Reports (2006–2007), Human Rights Watch, and the US Army's own Taguba investigation into Abu Ghraib documented sectarian mass killings and bodies bearing signs of summary execution, torture in official and militia-run detention, enforced disappearance, and the seizure and destruction of homes during sectarian expulsions in Baghdad.