It is almost 20 years since Col Tim Collins gathered his troops in the dusty desert on the eve of battle and made an impassioned speech with echoes of Shakespeare, declaring their role was to “liberate, not conquer” Iraq.
“If you are ferocious in battle, remember to be magnanimous in victory,” he said in a heartfelt address that echoed around the world — even reportedly earning a place on the wall of the White House’s Oval Office.
It was March 19, 2003, when he addressed 1,600 British soldiers of the 1st Battalion The Royal Irish Regiment Battle Group as they camped at Fort Blair Mayne in the Kuwaiti desert, about 30 kilometres from the Iraqi border.
His mission was to lead the British forces in the joint US-led invasion of Iraq amid fears dictator Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.
The furore surrounding the impending invasion had gone on for months but the coalition achieved its objective — the overthrow of Saddam's regime — within weeks.
As it turned out, those who made the decision to go to war have, for years, been painted as statesmen on the wrong side of history with a lasting legacy of public mistrust after it was concluded there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
For Col Collins, that moment as he stood in the desert addressing his troops is still clear in his mind.
“The war had started without our expectation. It took us by surprise, there was no time to prepare, this whole enterprise began before we expected it to happen,” he told The National.
“We all thought this time next year it will all be sorted out.
“I had no time to prepare a speech, it was just me talking to my troops to reassure them. I never expected my words to live on. The speech I made was to my soldiers for their benefit alone.
“As far as I was concerned, we had to get on and cross the border. Everybody tried to get on with the job and we needed to get out of the camp as quickly as we could as there was a possibility it might be attacked. We needed to get to the starting position in Iraq the following day.
“At the time, we were not sure what we were hoping to achieve. It was all very confused, but one thing was clear: Iraq was on our side, we were going to liberate them. There was a great deal of goodwill and it’s sad to see how things turned out.”
Unplanned war pushed Iraq into chaos
By April, the objectives of the invasion had been completed but the fallout lasted years longer.
Within a month, Col Collins had returned to the UK. Within two months, the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) had disbanded the Iraqi army that surrendered to the invading forces.
Col Collins traces the country's descent into mayhem to the “Walt Disney script” that the CPA was following.
“It was people at the highest level making decisions to disband the army without any idea what they were doing,” he said.
“It was a Walt Disney approach by the US, treating it like a cartoon, and the British were just poodles obeying everything that was said and it was a disaster.”
Col Collins said initially they felt the operation had been a success, but as the months rolled on, it was clear Iraq was not on the path to recovery.
“When we crossed the border, there was a great deal of confusion and chaos in Iraq. They were very welcoming and had very good ideas about what should be done to get it back on a good footing,” he said.
“At the time, we didn’t really know it had gone wrong, even at the time we left, there was still a good deal of goodwill, but it deteriorated pretty quickly into the summer — there was a lot of friction.
“It was very unpleasant. There was a combination of not enough planning at the start which made a difficult situation worse. The strokes of genius at the highest levels created the perfect storm.”
He still feels anger over the “mistakes” made by those “at the highest level”, from decisions to disband Iraq’s army to the coalition's decision to eventually leave.
“By embracing Iraq’s military, they could have brought order, but by disbanding the Baath Party they disbanded everybody,” he says.
“There was no police, electricians, civil servants — they disbanded everybody who could read and write and it was no surprise the place then descended into chaos.
“Because the army had been disbanded, any group wanting to take up arms to carry on its own activities could. There was more chaos for years.
“When we thought it couldn’t get any worse, US President Barack Obama took the decision to leave and left the Iranians to do what they wished. That was a huge mistake.”
Over the past 20 years, Col Collins, now retired, has repeatedly returned to Iraq and helped to train and mentor its security services.
First elections offered a false start
His return to the country in 2005 was on an assignment to cover the elections. He found cities and towns a far cry from what he might have expected when he left two years earlier.
“It was a completely different place, it was utter chaos,” he said.
“The elections were chaos, there was a great deal of violence and everybody voted for the people from their own backgrounds. The government didn’t form and there was more chaos for years as there was very little interest in relationship building.
“It is just a fairly unhappy story.”
Battle speech made into a documentary
For Col Collins, his rallying speech still lives on and the role he played is entrenched in history.
So famous are his words that actor Sir Kenneth Branagh played Col Collins's role in the television drama 10 Days to War.
“Who wouldn’t want to be played by him?” Col Collins asked, chuckling.
The fallout of the war was again brought to the fore in 2016, with the UK’s publication of the long-awaited Iraq Inquiry, also known as the Chilcot report, which criticised the decision of former prime minister Tony Blair to go to war.
Iraq inquiry findings came too late
The report's author, Sir John Chilcot, concluded the UK chose to join the invasion before peaceful options had been “exhausted”.
“Military action at that time was not a last resort,” Sir John said.
It found Mr Blair had “deliberately” exaggerated the threat posed by Saddam and concluded US president George Bush had ignored UK advice on postwar planning for Iraq.
The Chilcot report identified a series of major blunders by the British intelligence services that produced “flawed” information about the dictator’s alleged weapons of mass destruction — the basis for going to war.
“It didn’t come as a surprise,” Col Collins said.
“But the Chilcot report took so long that by the time it was published, the issues had gone flat and there was no appetite for it. It was probably a deliberate decision.”
Col Collins will mark the 20th anniversary of the invasion in the UK and will be returning to Iraq in the summer.
In 2006, the former SAS officer, who was nicknamed Nails by his troops, cofounded defence contractor New Century to improve nations’ intelligence services and to train the security sector.
Working with former officers from the Royal Ulster Constabulary special branch and the Irish Garda Siochana special branch, Col Collins’s firm has been mentoring Iraqi police and training the country's army’s intelligence arm.
His counter-insurgency advisers helped train Iraqi forces in tactics developed during the Northern Ireland Troubles.
“I feel responsible for something other people did,” he said. “Twenty years on and a lot of heartache later, the big difficulty they still have is a very evil actor at work in the form of Iran. I think Iraq has had enough and they just want to get their country back together.
“I spend three to four months there once or twice a year. It is much more stable than before but tensions are festering.
“I hope they are able to take control of their country and get rid of the malignant influences that are harming them, particularly from Iran.
“Looking back, it has all been deeply regrettable.”
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January 29, 2002: US President George Bush identifies Iraq, Iran and North Korea as part of an 'axis of evil' in his State of the Union address. 'States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world. By seeking weapons of mass destruction, these regimes pose a grave and growing danger,' he says. Getty -
February 15, 2002: Thousands of people gather in Hyde Park in London after finishing a protest against war in Iraq. The march is believed to be the UK's biggest ever peace protest. Getty -
March 18, 2003: US and British forces move into position before a possible military strike near the Kuwait-Iraq border. A day prior, Mr Bush gave Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and his sons 48 hours to leave the country or face war. Getty -
March 21, 2003: Fires burn in and around Saddam's Council of Ministers during the first wave of US-led coalition airstrikes on Iraq in Baghdad. 'These are the opening stages of what will be a broad and concerted campaign,' he says in an address. The attack begins with a massive air strike campaign named 'shock and awe'. Getty -
March 29, 2003: A man and child walk on a road near the entrance of the besieged city of Basra as oil fires burn in the distance. Baath Party loyalists take up positions in Basra, Iraq's second largest city, making it a target of the US-led war on Iraq. Getty -
April 9, 2003: Iraq’s capital, Baghdad, falls to US forces. Saddam’s regime loses control as American troops enter the city centre. On May 1, US President George W Bush prematurely declares the end of major combat in Iraq. Reuters -
August 30, 2003: A burnt-out car is removed from outside Najaf’s Imam Ali Mosque, the holiest Shiite shrine in Iraq, a day after 87 people were killed in a car bomb attack. The attack raises sectarian tension as thousands of Iraqi Shiites, some of them backed by Iran, demand the right to form militias. Reuters -
December 13, 2003: Ousted president Saddam Hussein is found by US troops in a cellar south of Tikrit, near his hometown. 'Ladies and gentlemen, we got him,' says US ambassador Paul Bremer, who was appointed to lead the Coalition Provisional Authority. AFP -
March 31, 2004: A car burns in the aftermath of an insurgent attack on Fallujah, in which four Blackwater private security contractors were killed and their mutilated, burnt bodies were left hanging from a bridge. Reuters -
May 3, 2004: Coffins of US military personnel killed in Iraq are prepared to be offloaded at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. Days later, Al Qaeda beheaded US businessman Nicholas Berg and recorded his killing. Reuters -
June 28, 2004: US administrator in Iraq Paul Bremer (R), Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi (C) and the country's most senior judge Midhat Mahmoud (L) smile as the US transfers sovereignty to Iraq in Baghdad. Mr Allawi calls the event 'a historic day' and says that Iraq was 'capable of controlling the security situation'. Reuters -
January 30, 2005: Iraqis vote in the first parliamentary elections of the post-Saddam era. Sunnis largely boycott the vote, while most Shiite parties coalesce into a sectarian bloc, cementing divisions within the country. Getty -
April 7, 2005: Veteran Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani raises his hands after being sworn in as Iraq's first democratically elected president. Later that month, Shiite Islamist Ibrahim Al Jaafari takes office as prime minister, hailing from the exiled Dawa Party. Getty -
July 24, 2005: Burnt-out vehicles at the scene of a lorry bombing outside a police station that killed 22 people in south-east Baghdad. The explosion also injured 25 people, destroyed 22 cars and 10 shops. AFP -
October 19, 2005: Saddam’s trial begins. Prosecutors focus on a massacre in the village of Dujail, 100 kilometres north of Baghdad, where about 150 people, including children, were killed following an assassination attempt against the former dictator. Many other charges relate to a genocidal campaign against Kurds during the 1980s, during which Saddam ordered a chemical attack on the town of Halabja, killing up to 5,000 people. Getty -
February 23, 2006: Iraqis clean up debris after an Al Qaeda bombing at Al Askariya holy Shiite shrine in Samarra, Iraq. Shiite police and militia members — in many cases indistinguishable — responded by rampaging through Sunni-majority areas, in an onslaught that coalition forces appeared powerless to halt. Getty -
June 8, 2006: Maj Gen Bill Caldwell speaks during a press conference as satellite images are shown of a US air strike that killed the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, in a joint US-Iraqi raid. Getty -
December 30, 2006: Saddam is executed by hanging. The execution and taunting of Saddam before his death is secretly filmed by a witness, stirring further tension within Iraq. Getty -
January 11, 2007: US officers watch Mr Bush's speech announcing that another 20,000 soldiers will be sent to Iraq, at Camp Ramadi in Iraq's violent Anbar province. The approach becomes known as the 'Surge,' and envisages a closer partnership between US and Iraqi forces and tribes, as well as American forces being stationed closer to Iraqi communities. Getty -
July 12, 2007: Two Reuters photographers and five civilians are killed by a US Apache helicopter in Baghdad. US video footage of the incident would later be released by Wikileaks. EPA -
December 14, 2008: Mr Bush makes his final visit to Iraq to sign a co-operation agreement between Iraq and the US known as the Strategic Framework Agreement. At a press conference with Nouri Al Maliki, Munthadar Al Zaidi, a journalist, throws his shoes at Mr Bush. Mr Al Zaidi is severely beaten and jailed for six months. Reuters -
February 27, 2009: US President Barack Obama announces Washington’s decision to withdraw most American troops by August 31, 2010. Mr Obama says 50,000 troops will remain for smaller missions and to train Iraqi soldiers. EPA -
April 23: At least 80 people are killed in three suicide bombings in Baghdad, making it the biggest daily death toll since early 2008. A woman standing in a group of other women and children receiving aid reportedly set off one of the bombs. EPA -
December 21, 2010: Iraqi Prime Minister Mr Al Maliki (L) and members of his newly formed cabinet attend a voting session at the Iraqi Parliament in Baghdad, Iraq. The new government was unanimously approved, ending nine months of deadlock. Getty -
JANUARY 8, 2011: Populist Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr returns to Iraq after four years of self-imposed exile in Iran. In his first public statement, he urges his followers to resist the 'occupiers' of Iraq. EPA -
February 25, 2011: A 'day of rage' is declared as tens of thousands of Iraqis protest against Mr Al Maliki’s government. At least 23 people are killed and hundreds injured in a sign of Mr Al Maliki’s growing authoritarianism. Getty -
December 17, 2011: The last of the US Troop Brigade board a plane to depart Iraq at Camp Adder, now known as Imam Ali Base, near Nasiriyah, Iraq. Two days prior, the US military formally declared the end of the Iraq War in a ceremony in Baghdad. Getty -
December 23, 2012: Protests against harsh security crackdowns break out in Fallujah, Ramadi and Tikrit. Sunni protesters say men are being arbitrarily jailed without evidence while the government holds back pensions for former army officers. The demonstrations last until December 2013 when the Iraqi army tries to break up protest camps. EPA -
July 22, 2013: Mourners pray at the coffin of a victim killed during an attack on a prison in Taji, during a funeral at the Imam Ali shrine in Najaf. Reuters -
December 22, 2013: Funeral proceedings for a major general of the Iraqi army’s 7th division in Anbar. The division's leadership were killed when a house they are raiding explodes after being rigged with bombs. The mixed Sunni-Shiite group is seen as one of the last non-sectarian units in the Iraqi army. Reuters -
June 11, 2014: ISIS fighters stand guard at a checkpoint in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul. Days prior, the militants seized Iraq's second biggest city of Mosul as well as Tikrit, hometown of former dictator Saddam Hussein, and other towns and cities north of Baghdad. Reuters -
July 9, 2014: Al Nuri Mosque in Mosul before it was destroyed by ISIS militants during their retreat three years later. On June 29, Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi, leader of ISIS, appeared for the first time in public at the mosque to declare the caliphate. EPA -
October 18, 2014: Smoke rises over Syrian town of Kobani after an air strike. Three days prior, Washington launched a campaign called Operation Inherent Resolve. Over the next year, the US military conducts more than 8,000 air strikes in Iraq and Syria. Reuters -
November 13, 2015: Kurdish forces seized Sinjar from ISIS after a prolonged siege, in the largest urban battle undertaken by the Kurdish Peshmerga. Getty -
October 16, 2006: Iraq launches US-backed campaign to liberate Mosul from ISIS. EPA -
October 21, 2016: Fire at an oil field that was set on fire by retreating ISIS fighters before the Mosul offensive in Qayyarah, Iraq. Getty -
July 2, 2017: While retreating from Mosul, ISIS destroys Al Nuri mosque. Iraqi forces encounter stiff resistance from ISIS with improvised explosive devices, car bombs, suicide bombers, heavy mortar fire and snipers hampering their advance. Getty -
July 9, 2017: Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al Abadi declares victory over ISIS in Mosul. In December, he declares full victory over ISIS. AFP
