The course and immediate outcome of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, including the Coalition order of battle, the three-week ground campaign, the fall of Baghdad on 9 April 2003, the looting and breakdown of order, and the early occupation under the Coalition Provisional Authority

Needs thesis, dated evidence on both military and post-war phases, judgement.

Thesis

The Coalition won the conventional war in three weeks because of overwhelming technological advantage and Iraqi command paralysis, but lost the post-war peace through inadequate occupation planning, the disbanding of the Iraqi army, and de-Baathification.

Order of battle

US 3rd Infantry Division, 1st Marine Division, 101st Airborne, 82nd Airborne; UK 1st Armoured Division; Australian SAS and clearance divers. Total around 175,000 Coalition troops (148,000 US, 26,000 UK, 2,000 Australian). Iraqi forces around 375,000 regular plus 50,000 Republican Guard.

Opening (20 March 2003)

Cruise missile and stealth bomber strike on Dora Farm at 05:34. Ground crossing from Kuwait at 06:00 on 20 March (G+0).

Advance to Baghdad

V Corps (3rd ID) advanced west of the Euphrates; I MEF advanced east through Nasiriyah. Sandstorm 24-26 March; tactical pause. Karbala Gap crossed 31 March. Battle of Baghdad airport 3-4 April.

Thunder Runs

3rd ID conducted armoured raids into Baghdad on 5 and 7 April. The second Thunder Run on 7 April held Baghdad's government district.

Fall of Baghdad (9 April 2003)

Saddam regime collapsed. The Firdos Square statue was pulled down with US Marine assistance.

Looting and the Mosul-Tikrit campaign

Three weeks of widespread looting destroyed Iraqi state infrastructure. Mosul fell 10 April; Tikrit 14 April.

Mission Accomplished (1 May 2003)

Bush landed on the USS Abraham Lincoln. Major combat operations declared over.

CPA (13 May 2003)

Paul Bremer arrived as administrator. CPA Order Number 1 (16 May 2003) de-Baathification fired around 30,000 senior Baathists. CPA Order Number 2 (23 May 2003) disbanded the 400,000-strong Iraqi army.

Conclusion

Three-week conventional victory; eight-year insurgency aftermath.

A 6-mark "explain" needs three developed significances.

Context

Lt Gen Jay Garner had run the Office for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance from 21 April 2003. Bush replaced him with diplomat L. Paul Bremer III, who arrived in Baghdad on 13 May 2003 as administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA).

CPA Order 1, de-Baathification (16 May 2003)

Excluded the top four ranks of the Baath Party (around 30,000 people) from government, military, and educational employment. The order was much more sweeping than the South African or German precedents.

CPA Order 2, dissolution of entities (23 May 2003)

Disbanded the Iraqi army, the air force, the Republican Guard, the Special Republican Guard, the Ministry of Information, and other regime bodies. Around 400,000 trained soldiers became unemployed overnight.

Consequences

The two orders eliminated the Sunni Arab professional class from the new Iraq, created a pool of unemployed armed men with grievances, and supplied the insurgency with leadership, recruits, weapons, and motivation. Most historians identify these two orders as the largest single mistakes of the occupation. Markers reward exact CPA order numbers, the date sequence, and the link to the insurgency.

A 3-mark "outline" wants three dated stages, each in a sentence.

The opening (20 March 2003)

The war began with the Dora Farm strike (05:34) and a ground crossing from Kuwait (06:00), with V Corps moving up the western side of the Euphrates and I MEF up the east.

The advance (late March to early April)

The 3rd Infantry Division made the fastest sustained armoured advance in US Army history; the Marines fought through Nasiriyah; a sandstorm (24 to 26 March) forced a pause before the Karbala Gap was crossed.

The fall (5 to 9 April 2003)

Two Thunder Runs (5 and 7 April) broke into Baghdad, the second holding the government district, and the regime collapsed on 9 April, symbolised by the Firdos Square statue.

Marking criteria

1 mark each for three distinct, correctly dated stages; do not simply narrate the CPA aftermath.

A 4-mark "explain" needs a cause-and-effect chain with specific detail.

CPA Order 1, de-Baathification (16 May 2003)

It barred the top four ranks of the Baath Party (around 30,000 people) from public employment, removing the administrative and professional class needed to run ministries, schools and hospitals.

CPA Order 2, dissolution of entities (23 May 2003)

It disbanded the Iraqi army (around 400,000 men), the air force and the Republican Guard, putting trained, armed and unpaid men onto the streets.

The effect

Together the orders stripped Iraq of governing capacity and created a pool of humiliated, unemployed Sunni soldiers with weapons and grievances - the leadership, recruits and motive of the insurgency.

Marking criteria

1 mark for the content of Order 1; 1 mark for the content of Order 2; 1 mark for the 400,000 figure / loss of the professional class; 1 mark for linking both orders to the insurgency.

A 5-mark "explain ... using the source" wants the source decoded, then linked to own knowledge.

Decode the source

Source A is Bremer's later self-justification (My Year in Iraq, 2006): it presents CPA Order 2 as a principled decision to break Sunni-Baathist dominance, not a blunder - revealing the CPA's political reasoning rather than its consequences.

What the orders were (own knowledge)

Bremer arrived on 13 May 2003. CPA Order 1 (16 May) de-Baathified the top four party ranks (around 30,000 people); CPA Order 2 (23 May) disbanded the 400,000-strong army and the Republican Guard. The CPA was the recognised occupying power under UNSCR 1483 (22 May 2003).

The outcome

Whatever the intention in the source, the orders left a governing vacuum and a mass of armed, unemployed men, and most historians (Ricks, Allawi) read them as the proximate trigger of the insurgency rather than the clean slate Bremer describes.

Marking criteria

1 mark for reading the source as Bremer's self-defence/perspective; 1-2 marks for the content and dates of Orders 1 and 2; 1 mark for UNSCR 1483 / the CPA's status; 1 mark for the link to the insurgency.

A 5-mark "assess the usefulness" question rewards origin/perspective plus own knowledge, ending in a judgement.

Perspective

Source B reflects the Iraqi insider view of Ali Allawi (The Occupation of Iraq, 2007) and Peter Galbraith (The End of Iraq, 2006): it locates failure in the absence of a political plan and the destruction of the state, not in troop numbers - useful because it corrects the purely American, military framing.

Corroboration from own knowledge

It fits the record: CPA Orders 1 and 2 (16 and 23 May 2003) dismantled the Baathist administration and the 400,000-strong army; the looting of 9 to 21 April had already gutted state infrastructure; and the Pentagon-State Department turf war meant no agreed reconstruction plan.

Limitation

By foregrounding political planning it can understate the military side that Gordon and Trainor stress - the "Running Start" troop levels that left too few forces to secure cities, enabling the looting in the first place.

Judgement

Highly useful for centring Iraqi agency and the political vacuum, but most complete when read alongside the military-planning critique; the two causes reinforced rather than excluded each other.

Marking criteria

1 mark for identifying the Iraqi-insider perspective; 1-2 marks for own knowledge corroborating the state-collapse thesis (CPA orders, looting); 1 mark for a limitation (troop levels / Gordon and Trainor); 1 mark for a judgement on usefulness.

A 6-mark "assess the significance" needs developed points with a weighed judgement.

What happened

From 9 to about 21 April 2003, in the absence of Coalition civil control, Baghdad and other cities were systematically looted: ministries (except the Oil Ministry), the National Museum (around 15,000 items), the National Library, universities, hospitals and ammunition dumps were stripped.

Why it mattered (significance)

First, it destroyed the physical capacity of the state to function, compounding what de-Baathification would soon remove. Second, it signalled to Iraqis and insurgents alike that the Coalition could not or would not impose order, eroding legitimacy from the first week. Third, unguarded ammunition dumps armed the coming insurgency.

Judgement

The looting was not merely disorder but the first occupation failure, set up by the "Running Start" troop levels and crystallised by Rumsfeld's "stuff happens" (11 April 2003) dismissal; it ranks alongside the CPA orders as a foundational cause of the collapse, though the orders did the deeper structural damage.

Marking criteria

1-2 marks for accurate detail of the looting; 2 marks for two-three developed significances; 1 mark for linking to troop levels / the CPA orders; 1 mark for a weighed judgement.

This is an extended-response/essay. Markers reward a sustained, evidence-based argument that addresses the comparison directly and weaves in historiography - not a narrative.

Band-6 PLAN

• Thesis. The post-war collapse owed more to Coalition choices than to any inevitability in Iraqi conditions: the "Running Start" troop levels left cities unsecured, and Bremer's CPA Orders 1 and 2 dismantled the state and the army; Iraq's sectarian fault lines were real but were activated, not created, by these decisions. Planning failure was the primary cause; Iraqi conditions were the accelerant.
• Argument 1 - The military planning failure (the enabling factor). Rumsfeld's lighter force (around 148,000 US troops, against Army Chief Eric Shinseki's February 2003 estimate of "several hundred thousand") won the conventional war but could not hold ground, so Baghdad was looted from 9 to 21 April 2003 and ammunition dumps went unguarded. Evidence: the National Museum and ministries stripped; Rumsfeld's "stuff happens" (11 April).
• Argument 2 - The political planning failure (the decisive choices). CPA Order 1 (16 May 2003) de-Baathified around 30,000 officials; CPA Order 2 (23 May) disbanded the 400,000-strong army - converting trained, armed Sunni men into recruits and leaders for the insurgency in a fortnight. Evidence: the orders followed a Pentagon-State turf war that left no reconstruction plan.
• Argument 3 - Iraqi conditions (the accelerant, not the origin). Sunni-Shia-Kurd fault lines, three decades of Baathist rule and the absence of civil society made stabilisation hard; but these conditions produced collapse only once the Coalition removed the state's coercive and administrative spine. Without the orders, the same fault lines might have been contained.
• Historiography. Michael Gordon and Bernard Trainor (Cobra II, 2006) locate failure in military under-resourcing and the troop-level decision; Thomas Ricks (Fiasco, 2006) treats Rumsfeld's and Bremer's choices as the foundation of the insurgency; Ali Allawi (The Occupation of Iraq, 2007) and Peter Galbraith (The End of Iraq, 2006), writing from Iraqi and diplomatic vantage points, stress the absence of a political plan and the activation of pre-existing fault lines.
• Judgement. Weigh planning failure (Gordon/Trainor on troops, Ricks on the orders) against Iraqi conditions (Allawi, Galbraith): the conditions were necessary but not sufficient; the Coalition's own decisions were the decisive, avoidable cause.

MODEL PARAGRAPH (Argument 2)

The single clearest sign that the peace was lost by choice rather than circumstance lies in the two orders Paul Bremer issued within his first fortnight in Baghdad. CPA Order Number 1 of 16 May 2003 excluded the top four ranks of the Baath Party - around 30,000 people - from public employment, stripping ministries, schools and hospitals of the administrators who alone knew how to run them; CPA Order Number 2 of 23 May then disbanded the Iraqi army, air force and Republican Guard, sending some 400,000 trained and humiliated men home without pay but, in many cases, with their weapons. In a country the Coalition had failed to secure - Baghdad had been looted unchecked from 9 to 21 April - these orders did not merely remove a regime; they removed the state, and handed the emerging insurgency its leadership, recruits and motive at a stroke. As Thomas Ricks argues in Fiasco (2006), these were the foundational errors of the occupation, while Ali Allawi, writing as an Iraqi minister in The Occupation of Iraq (2007), insists the deeper failure was the absence of any political plan to fill the vacuum the orders created. The fault lines of Iraqi society were real, but it was the Coalition that pulled out the keystone.

Marker's note. A band-6 response sustains the comparison throughout (always weighing "planning failures" against "Iraqi conditions"), anchors every claim in specific dated evidence (the order numbers and dates, the looting window, the 400,000 figure), sets at least two historians in genuine tension (Gordon/Trainor and Ricks on Coalition choices against Allawi and Galbraith on the Iraqi vacuum), and reaches a judgement rather than listing causes. Narrating the invasion without arguing why the peace was lost caps the response in the middle bands.

This is an extended-response/essay. Markers reward a sustained, evidence-based argument that engages the paradox in the question and weaves in historiography - not a narrative.

Band-6 PLAN

• Thesis. The very features that produced the three-week victory - a lean, fast force and a focus on toppling the regime rather than holding the country - directly set up the collapse; the speed was not separate from the failure but its precondition. The view is largely correct, though the decisive damage came from political choices (the CPA orders) made after the victory, not from the speed alone.
• Argument 1 - Speed bought the win but not the peace. The "Running Start" (around 148,000 US troops) and the Thunder Runs (5 and 7 April 2003) took Baghdad by 9 April, but the same lean force could not garrison the city, so it was looted from 9 to 21 April and the ammunition dumps that armed the insurgency went unguarded. Evidence: National Museum and ministries stripped; Shinseki's "several hundred thousand" warning ignored.
• Argument 2 - Victory bred complacency and the CPA orders. The apparent ease of the win - sealed by the "Mission Accomplished" speech of 1 May 2003 - encouraged the belief that Iraq could be remade cheaply, enabling Bremer's de-Baathification (16 May) and dissolution of the army (23 May) without fear of consequences. Evidence: the orders followed weeks after the victory, when caution might have prevailed.
• Argument 3 - The counter-case: the collapse was avoidable. The speed need not have caused collapse: a larger occupation force, guarded ammunition dumps, and a retained Iraqi army could have held the gains. So the rapid victory made collapse more likely only because the Coalition compounded it with avoidable choices - it was a risk realised, not a destiny.
• Historiography. Michael Gordon and Bernard Trainor (Cobra II, 2006) tie the post-war vacuum directly to the under-resourced, speed-focused plan; Thomas Ricks (Fiasco, 2006) treats the troop levels and the CPA orders together as the foundation of the insurgency; Ali Allawi (The Occupation of Iraq, 2007) stresses that no speed of victory could substitute for the missing political plan.
• Judgement. The rapid victory made collapse more likely by leaving cities unsecured and breeding complacency, but it was the avoidable political decisions that converted risk into reality; the view is sound but incomplete without the CPA orders.

MODEL PARAGRAPH (Argument 1)

The strongest case that the speed of victory seeded the collapse lies in the fortnight after Baghdad fell. The "Running Start" plan had deliberately invaded with roughly a third of the Desert Storm force - around 148,000 US troops - betting that air supremacy and the Thunder Runs of 5 and 7 April 2003 could substitute for mass, and on 9 April it appeared vindicated as the regime evaporated. Yet the very leanness that made the advance so fast left no troops to hold what had been taken: from 9 to about 21 April Baghdad was looted unchecked, the National Museum lost some 15,000 items, ministries were gutted, and crucially the regime's ammunition dumps were stripped to arm the coming insurgency. General Eric Shinseki had warned in February 2003 that occupation would need "several hundred thousand" troops; his estimate was dismissed. As Michael Gordon and Bernard Trainor argue in Cobra II (2006), the post-invasion vacuum was not bad luck but the direct product of a plan optimised to win the war and not to hold the peace - the speed and the collapse were two faces of the same decision.

Marker's note. A band-6 response engages the paradox in the question (that the victory's strengths were the peace's weaknesses), rather than narrating the war; it anchors the argument in dated specifics (troop numbers, the looting window, Shinseki's warning, the Thunder Run dates), uses historians in tension (Gordon/Trainor's military-planning thesis against Allawi's political-plan thesis), and reaches a graded judgement that the view is largely but not wholly correct. Listing the events of the war without weighing the causal link caps the response in the middle bands.