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History of Iraq

Iraq is a country in West Asia that largely corresponds with the territory of ancient Mesopotamia. The history of Mesopotamia extends from the Lower Paleolithic period until the establishment of the Caliphate in the late 7th century AD, after which the region came to be known as Iraq. Encompassed within Iraqi territory is the ancient land of Sumer, which came into being between 6000 and 5000 BC during the Neolithic Ubaid period of Mesopotamian history, and is widely considered the oldest civilization in recorded history. It is also the historic center of the Akkadian, Neo-Sumerian, Babylonian, Neo-Assyrian, and Neo-Babylonian empires, a succession of local ruling dynasties that reigned over Mesopotamia and various other regions of the Ancient Near East during the Bronze and Iron Ages.

Iraq during antiquity witnessed some of the world's earliest writing, literature, sciences, mathematics, laws and philosophies; hence its common epithet, the Cradle of Civilization.

This era of self-rule lasted until 539 BC, when the Neo-Babylonian Empire was conquered by the neighbouring Achaemenid Empire under Cyrus the Great, who proclaimed himself "King of Babylon". The ancient city of the same name, which had been the titular center of both Babylonian civilizations, became the most important of the four Achaemenid capitals.

Over the next 700 years, the regions forming modern Iraq came under Greek, Parthian, and Roman rule, with the Greeks and Parthians establishing new imperial capitals in the area with the cities of Seleucia and Ctesiphon, respectively. By the 3rd century AD, when the area once again fell under Persian (Sasanian) control, nomadic Arab tribesmen originating from South Arabia (consisting mostly of modern-day Yemen) began to migrate and settle within Lower Mesopotamia, culminating in the creation of the Sassanid-aligned Lakhmid Kingdom in around 300 AD; the Arabic name al-ʿIrāq dates to roughly this time. The Sassanid Empire was eventually conquered by the Rashidun Caliphate in the 7th century, with Iraq specifically falling under Islamic rule following the Battle of al-Qadisiyyah in 636. The city of Kufa was founded shortly thereafter, in close proximity to the previous Lakhmid capital of Al-Hirah, and it became the home of the Rashidun dynasty from 656 until their overthrow by the Umayyads in 661. With the rise of the Abbasids in 750, Iraq once again became the center of Caliphate rule—first in Kufa from 750–752, then in Anbar for the following decade, and finally in the city of Baghdad after its founding in 762. Baghdad would remain the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate for the majority of its existence, during which time it became the cultural and intellectual center of the world in what is known today as the Islamic Golden Age. Baghdad's rapid growth and prosperity in the 9th century would be followed by a period of stagnation in the 10th century due to the Buwayhid and Seljuq invasions, but it remained of central importance until the Mongol invasion of 1258. After this, Iraq became a province of the Turco-Mongol Ilkhanate and declined in importance. After the disintegration of the Ilkhanate, Iraq was ruled by the Jalairids and Kara Koyunlu until its eventual absorption into the Ottoman Empire in the 16th century, intermittently falling under Iranian Safavid and Mamluk control.

Ottoman rule ended with World War I, after which the British Empire administered Mandatory Iraq alongside a nominally self-governing Hashemite monarchy headed by King Faisal I. The Kingdom of Iraq was eventually granted full independence in 1932 under the terms of the Anglo-Iraqi Treaty, signed by High Commissioner Francis Humphrys and Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Said two years prior. A republic formed in 1958 following a coup d'état. Saddam Hussein governed from 1968 to 2003, into which period fall the Iran–Iraq War and the Gulf War. Saddam Hussein was deposed following the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Prehistory
During 1957–1961 Shanidar Cave was excavated by Ralph Solecki and his team from Columbia University, and nine skeletons of Neanderthal man of varying ages and states of preservation and completeness (labelled Shanidar I–IX) were discovered dating from 60,000 to 80,000 years BP. A tenth individual was recently discovered by M. Zeder during examination of a faunal assemblage from the site at the Smithsonian Institution. The remains seemed to Zeder to suggest that Neanderthals had funeral ceremonies, burying their dead with flowers (although the flowers are now thought to be a modern contaminant), and that they took care of injured and elderly individuals.

Mesopotamia is the site of the earliest developments of the Neolithic Revolution from around 10,000 BC. It has been identified as having "inspired some of the most important developments in human history including the invention of the wheel, the planting of the first cereal crops and the development of cursive script, Mathematics, Astronomy and Agriculture."

Bronze Age
Sumer emerged as the civilization of Lower Mesopotamia out of the prehistoric Ubaid period (mid-6th millennium BC) in the Early Bronze Age (Uruk period). Classical Sumer ends with the rise of the Akkadian Empire in the 24th century BC. Following the Gutian period, the Ur III kingdom was once again able to unite large parts of southern and central Mesopotamia under a single ruler in the 21st century. It may have eventually disintegrated due to Amorite incursions. The Amorite dynasty of Isin persisted until c. 1600 BC, when southern Mesopotamia was united under Kassite Babylonian rule.

The north of Mesopotamia had become the Akkadian-speaking state of Assyria by the late 25th century BC. Along with the rest of Mesopotamia it was ruled by Akkadian kings from the late 24th to mid 22nd centuries BC, after which it once again became independent.

Babylonia was a state in Lower Mesopotamia with Babylon as its capital. It was founded as an independent state by an Amorite king named Sumuabum in 1894 BC.

Akkadian gradually replaced Sumerian as the spoken language of Mesopotamia somewhere around the turn of the 3rd and the 2nd millennium BC, but Sumerian continued to be used as a written or ceremonial language in Mesopotamia well into the period of classical antiquity.

Babylonia emerged from the Amorite dynasties (c. 1900 BC) when Hammurabi (c. 1792–1750 BC), unified the territories of the former kingdoms of Sumer and Akkad. During the early centuries of what is called the "Amorite period", the most powerful city-states were Isin and Larsa, although Shamshi-Adad I came close to uniting the more northern regions around Assur and Mari. One of these Amorite dynasties was established in the city-state of Babylon, which would ultimately take over the others and form the first Babylonian empire, during what is also called the Old Babylonian Period.

Assyria was an Akkadian (East Semitic) kingdom in Upper Mesopotamia, that came to rule regional empires a number of times through history. It was named for its original capital, the ancient city of Assur (Akkadian ).

Of the early history of the kingdom of Assyria, little is positively known. In the Assyrian King List, the earliest king recorded was Tudiya. He was a contemporary of Ibrium of Ebla who appears to have lived in the late 25th or early 24th century BC, according to the king list. The foundation of the first true urbanised Assyrian monarchy was traditionally ascribed to Ushpia a contemporary of Ishbi-Erra of Isin and Naplanum of Larsa. c. 2030 BC.

Assyria had a period of empire from the 19th to 18th centuries BC. From the 14th to 11th centuries BC Assyria once more became a major power with the rise of the Middle Assyrian Empire.

Iron Age
The Neo-Assyrian Empire (911–609 BC) was the dominant political force in the Ancient Near East during the Iron Age, eclipsing Babylonia, Egypt, Urartu and Elam. During this period, Aramaic was also made an official language of the empire, alongside the Akkadian language.

The Neo-Babylonian Empire (626–539 BC) marks the final period of the history of the Ancient Near East preceding Persian conquest. A year after the death of the last strong Assyrian ruler, Assurbanipal, in 627 BC, the Assyrian empire spiralled into a series of brutal civil wars. Babylonia rebelled under Nabopolassar, a member of the Chaldean tribe which had migrated from the Levant to south eastern Babylonia in the early 9th century BC. In alliance with the Medes, Persians, Scythians and Cimmerians, they sacked the city of Nineveh in 612 BC, and the seat of empire was transferred to Babylonia for the first time since the death of Hammurabi in the mid 18th century BC. This period witnessed a general improvement in economic life and agricultural production, and a great flourishing of architectural projects, the arts and science. The Neo-Babylonian period ended with the reign of Nabonidus in 539 BC. To the east, the Persians had been growing in strength, and eventually Cyrus the Great established his dominion over Babylon.

Achaemenid and Seleucid rule
Mesopotamia was conquered by the Achaemenid Persians under Cyrus the Great in 539 BC, and remained under Persian rule for two centuries.

The Persian Empire fell to Alexander of Macedon in 331 BC and came under Greek rule as part of the Seleucid Empire. Babylon declined after the founding of Seleucia on the Tigris, the new Seleucid Empire capital. The Seleucid Empire at the height of its power stretched from the Aegean in the west to India in the east. It was a major center of Hellenistic culture that maintained the preeminence of Greek customs where a Greek political elite dominated, mostly in the urban areas. The Greek population of the cities who formed the dominant elite were reinforced by immigration from Greece. Much of the eastern part of the empire was conquered by the Parthians under Mithridates I of Parthia in the mid-2nd century BC.

Parthian and Roman rule
At the beginning of the 2nd century AD, the Romans, led by emperor Trajan, invaded Parthia and conquered Mesopotamia, making it an imperial province. It was returned to the Parthians shortly after by Trajan's successor, Hadrian.

Christianity reached Mesopotamia in the 1st century AD, and Roman Syria in particular became the center of Eastern Rite Christianity and the Syriac literary tradition. Mandeism is also believed to have either originated there around this time or entered as Mandaeans sought refuge from Palestine. Sumerian-Akkadian religious tradition disappeared during this period, as did the last remnants of cuneiform literacy, although temples were still being dedicated to the Assyrian national god Ashur in his home city as late as the 4th century.

Sassanid Empire
In the 3rd century AD, the Parthians were in turn succeeded by the Sassanid dynasty, which ruled Mesopotamia until the 7th-century Islamic invasion. The Sassanids conquered the independent states of Adiabene, Osroene, Hatra and finally Assur during the 3rd century. In the mid-6th century the Persian Empire under the Sassanid dynasty was divided by Khosrow I into four quarters, of which the western one, called Khvārvarān, included most of modern Iraq, and subdivided to provinces of Mishān, Asuristān (Assyria), Adiabene and Lower Media. The term Iraq is widely used in the medieval Arabic sources for the area in the center and south of the modern republic as a geographic rather than a political term, implying no greater precision of boundaries than the term "Mesopotamia" or, indeed, many of the names of modern states before the 20th century.

There was a substantial influx of Arabs in the Sassanid period. Upper Mesopotamia came to be known as Al-Jazirah in Arabic (meaning "The Island" in reference to the "island" between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers), and Lower Mesopotamia came to be known as ʿIrāq-i ʿArab, meaning "the escarpment of the Arabs" (viz. to the south and east of "the island".

Until 602, the desert frontier of the Persian Empire had been guarded by the Arab Lakhmid kings of Al-Hirah. In that year, Shahanshah Khosrow II Aparviz (Persian خسرو پرويز) abolished the Lakhmid kingdom and laid the frontier open to nomad incursions. Farther north, the western quarter was bounded by the Byzantine Empire. The frontier more or less followed the modern Syria-Iraq border and continued northward, passing between Nisibis (modern Nusaybin) as the Sassanian frontier fortress and Dara and Amida (modern Diyarbakır) held by the Byzantines.

Islamic conquest

The first organized conflict between invading Arab tribes and occupying Persian forces in Mesopotamia seems to have been in 634, when the Arabs were defeated at the Battle of the Bridge. There was a force of some 5,000 Muslims under Abū `Ubayd ath-Thaqafī, which was routed by the Persians. This was followed by Khalid ibn al-Walid's successful campaign which saw all of Iraq come under Arab rule within a year, with the exception of the Persian Empire's capital, Ctesiphon. Around 636, a larger Arab Muslim force under Sa`d ibn Abī Waqqās defeated the main Persian army at the Battle of al-Qādisiyyah and moved on to capture the Persian capital of Ctesiphon. By the end of 638, the Muslims had conquered all of the Western Sassanid provinces (including modern Iraq), and the last Sassanid Emperor, Yazdegerd III, had fled to central and then northern Persia, where he was killed in 651.

The Islamic expansions constituted the largest of the Semitic expansions in history. These new arrivals did not disperse and settle throughout the country; instead they established two new garrison cities, at al-Kūfah, near ancient Babylon, and at Basrah in the south, while the north remained largely Assyrian and Arab Christian in character.

Abbasid Caliphate
The city of Baghdad was built in the 8th century and became the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate. Baghdad soon became the primary cultural center of the Muslim world during the centuries of the incipient "Islamic Golden Age" of the 8th to 9th centuries.

In the 9th century, the Abbasid Caliphate entered a period of decline. During the late 9th to early 11th centuries, a period known as the "Iranian Intermezzo", parts of (the modern territory of) Iraq were governed by a number of minor Iranian emirates, including the Tahirids, Saffarids, Samanids, Buyids and Sallarids. Tughril, the founder of the Seljuk Empire, captured Baghdad in 1055. In spite of having lost all governance, the Abbasid caliphs nevertheless maintained a highly ritualized court in Baghdad and remained influential in religious matters, maintaining the orthodoxy of their Sunni sect in opposition to the Ismaili and Shia sects of Islam.

Mongol invasion
In the later 11th century, Iraq fell under the rule of the Khwarazmian dynasty. Both Turkic secular rule and Abbasid caliphate came to an end with the  Mongol invasions of the 13th century. The Mongols under Genghis Khan had conquered Khwarezmia by 1221, but Iraq proper gained a respite due to the death of Genghis Khan in 1227 and the subsequent power struggles. Möngke Khan from 1251 began a renewed expansion of the Mongol Empire, and when caliph al-Mustasim refused to submit to the Mongols, Baghdad was besieged and captured by Hulagu Khan in 1258. With the destruction of the Abbasid Caliphate, Hulagu had an open route to Syria and moved against the other Muslim powers in the region.

Turco-Mongol rule
Iraq now became a province on the southwestern fringes of the Ilkhanate and Baghdad would never regain its former importance.

The Jalayirids were a Mongol Jalayir dynasty which ruled over Iraq and western Persia after the breakup of the Ilkhanate in the 1330s. The Jalayirid sultanate lasted about fifty years, until disrupted by Tamerlane's conquests and the revolts of the "Black Sheep Turks" or Qara Qoyunlu Turkmen. After Tamerlane's death in 1405, there was a brief attempt to re-establish the sultanate in southern Iraq and Khuzistan. The Jalayirids were finally eliminated by Kara Koyunlu in 1432.

Ottoman and Mamluk rule
During the late 14th and early 15th centuries, the Qara Qoyunlu or Black Sheep Turkmens ruled the area now known as Iraq. In 1466, the Aq Qoyunlu or White Sheep defeated the Qara Qoyunlu and took control. Later, the Aq Qoyunlu were defeated by the Safavid dynasty, who took control over Mesopotamia for some time and asserted their hegemony over Iraq in the periods 1508–1533, ending with the Ottoman–Safavid War (1532–1555), and 1622–1638, ending with the Ottoman–Safavid War (1623–1639).

In the 16th century, most of the territory of present-day Iraq came under the control of Ottoman Empire as the pashalik of Baghdad. Throughout most of the period of Ottoman rule (1533–1918) the territory of present-day Iraq was a battle zone between the rival regional empires and tribal alliances. Iraq was divided into three vilayets:
 * Mosul Province
 * Baghdad Province
 * Basra Province

During the years 1747–1831, Iraq was ruled by Mamluk dynasty of Georgian origin who succeeded in obtaining autonomy from the Ottoman Empire, suppressed tribal revolts, curbed the power of the Janissaries, restored order, and introduced a program of modernization of the economy and the military. In 1831, the Ottomans managed to overthrow the Mamluk regime and again imposed their direct control over Iraq.

British mandate of Mesopotamia
Ottoman rule over Iraq lasted until World War I, when the Ottomans sided with Germany and the Central Powers. In the Mesopotamian campaign against the Central Powers, British forces invaded the country and suffered a defeat at the hands of the Turkish army during the Siege of Kut (1915–16). However the British finally won in the Mesopotamian Campaign with the capture of Baghdad in March 1917. During the war the British employed the help of a number of Assyrian, Armenian and Arab tribes against the Ottomans, who in turn employed the Kurds as allies. After the war the Ottoman Empire was divided up, and the British Mandate of Mesopotamia was established by League of Nations mandate.

Britain imposed a Hāshimite monarchy on Iraq and defined the territorial limits of Iraq without taking into account the politics of the different ethnic and religious groups in the country, in particular those of the Kurds and the Christian Assyrians to the north. During the British occupation, the Kurds fought for independence, and the British employed Assyrian Levies to help quell these insurrections. Iraq also became an oligarchy government at this time.

Although the monarch Faisal I of Iraq was legitimized and proclaimed King by a plebiscite on 23 August 1921, simultaneously changing the official name of the country from Mesopotamia to Iraq, independence was achieved in 1932, when the British Mandate officially ended.

Independent Kingdom of Iraq
Establishment of Arab Sunni domination in Iraq was followed by Assyrian, Yazidi and Shi'a unrests, which were all brutally suppressed. In 1936, the first military coup took place in the Kingdom of Iraq, as Bakr Sidqi succeeded in replacing the acting Prime Minister with his associate. Multiple coups followed in a period of political instability, peaking in 1941.

During World War II, Iraqi regime of Regent 'Abd al-Ilah was overthrown in 1941 by the Golden Square officers, headed by Rashid Ali. The short lived pro-Nazi government of Iraq was defeated in May 1941 by the allied forces (with local Assyrian and Kurdish help) in the Anglo-Iraqi War. Iraq was later used as a base for allied attacks on Vichy-French held Mandate of Syria and support for the Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran.

In 1945, Iraq joined the United Nations and became a founding member of the Arab League. At the same time, the Kurdish leader Mustafa Barzani led a rebellion against the central government in Baghdad. After the failure of the uprising, Barzani and his followers fled to the Soviet Union.

In 1948, massive violent protests known as the Al-Wathbah uprising broke out across Baghdad with partial communist support, having demands against the government's treaty with Britain. Protests continued into spring and were interrupted in May when martial law was enforced as Iraq entered the failed 1948 Arab–Israeli War along with other Arab League members.

In February 1958, King Hussein of Jordan and `Abd al-Ilāh proposed a union of Hāshimite monarchies to counter the recently formed Egyptian-Syrian union. The prime minister Nuri as-Said wanted Kuwait to be part of the proposed Arab-Hāshimite Union. Shaykh `Abd-Allāh as-Salīm, the ruler of Kuwait, was invited to Baghdad to discuss Kuwait's future. This policy brought the government of Iraq into direct conflict with Britain, which did not want to grant independence to Kuwait. At that point, the monarchy found itself completely isolated. Nuri as-Said was able to contain the rising discontent only by resorting to even greater political oppression.

Republic of Iraq
Inspired by Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, officers from the Nineteenth Brigade, 3rd Division known as "The Four Colonials", under the leadership of Brigadier Abd al-Karīm Qāsim (known as "az-Za`īm", 'the leader') and Colonel Abdul Salam Arif overthrew the Hashemite monarchy on July 14, 1958. The new government proclaimed Iraq to be a republic and rejected the idea of a union with Jordan. Iraq's activity in the Baghdad Pact ceased.

Abd al-Karim Qasim promoted a civic nationalism in Iraq which asserts the belief that Iraqis are a nation and promotes the cultural unity of Iraqis of different ethnoreligious groups such as Mesopotamian Arabs, Kurds, Turkmens, Assyrians, Chaldeans, Yazidis, Mandeans, Yarsans, and others.

Qasim's vision of nationalism involved the recognition of an Iraqi identity stemming from ancient Mesopotamia including its civilizations of Sumer, Akkad, Babylonia and Assyria.

In 1961, Kuwait gained independence from Britain and Iraq claimed sovereignty over Kuwait. A period of considerable instability followed.

The same year, Mustafa Barzani, who had been invited to return to Iraq by Qasim three years earlier, began engaging Iraqi government forces and establishing Kurdish control in the north in what was the beginning of the First Kurdish Iraqi War.

Ba'athist Iraq
Qāsim was assassinated in February 1963, when the Ba'ath Party took power under the leadership of General Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr (prime minister) and Colonel Abdul Salam Arif (president). In June 1963, Syria, which by then had also fallen under Ba'athist rule, took part in the Iraqi military campaign against the Kurds by providing aircraft, armoured vehicles and a force of 6,000 soldiers. Several months later, `Abd as-Salam Muhammad `Arif led a successful coup against the Ba'ath government. Arif declared a ceasefire in February 1964 which provoked a split among Kurdish urban radicals on one hand and Peshmerga (Freedom fighters) forces led by Barzani on the other.

On April 13, 1966, President Abdul Salam Arif died in a helicopter crash and was succeeded by his brother, General Abdul Rahman Arif. Following this unexpected death, the Iraqi government launched a last-ditch effort to defeat the Kurds. This campaign failed in May 1966, when Barzani forces thoroughly defeated the Iraqi Army at the Battle of Mount Handrin, near Rawanduz. Following the Six-Day War of 1967, the Ba'ath Party felt strong enough to retake power in 1968. Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr became president and chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council (RCC). The Ba'ath government started a campaign to end the Kurdish insurrection, which stalled in 1969. This can be partly attributed to the internal power struggle in Baghdad and also tensions with Iran. Moreover, the Soviet Union pressured the Iraqis to come to terms with Barzani. The war ended with more than 100,000 mortal casualties, with little achievements to both Kurdish rebels and the Iraqi government.

In the aftermath of the First Kurdish Iraqi War, a peace plan was announced in March 1970 and provided for broader Kurdish autonomy. The plan also gave Kurds representation in government bodies, to be implemented in four years. Despite this, the Iraqi government embarked on an Arabization program in the oil rich regions of Kirkuk and Khanaqin in the same period. In the following years, Baghdad government overcame its internal divisions and concluded a treaty of friendship with the Soviet Union in April 1972 and ended its isolation within the Arab world. On the other hand, Kurds remained dependent on the Iranian military support and could do little to strengthen their forces. By 1974 the situation in the north escalated again into the Second Kurdish Iraqi War, to last until 1975.

Under Saddam Hussein

In July 1979, President Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr was forced to resign by Saddam Hussein, who assumed the offices of both President and Chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council. Saddam then purged his opponents including those from within the Baath party.

Iraq's territorial claims to neighboring countries were largely due to the plans and promises of the Entente countries in 1919–1920, when the Ottoman Empire was divided, to create a more extensive Arab state in Iraq and Jazeera, which would also include significant territories of eastern Syria, southeastern Turkey, all of Kuwait and Iran’s border areas, which are shown on this English map of 1920.
 * Iraq's Territorial Claims to Neighboring Countries

Territorial disputes with Iran led to an inconclusive and costly eight-year war, the Iran–Iraq War (1980–1988, termed Qādisiyyat-Saddām – 'Saddam's Qādisiyyah'), which devastated the economy. Iraq falsely declared victory in 1988 but actually only achieved a weary return to the status quo ante bellum, meaning both sides retained their original borders.

The war began when Iraq invaded Iran, launching a simultaneous invasion by air and land into Iranian territory on 22 September 1980, following a long history of border disputes, and fears of Shia insurgency among Iraq's long-suppressed Shia majority influenced by the Iranian Revolution. Iraq was also aiming to replace Iran as the dominant Persian Gulf state. The United States supported Saddam Hussein in the war against Iran. Although Iraq hoped to take advantage of the revolutionary chaos in Iran and attacked without formal warning, they made only limited progress into Iran and within several months were repelled by the Iranians who regained virtually all lost territory by June 1982. For the next six years, Iran was on the offensive. Despite calls for a ceasefire by the United Nations Security Council, hostilities continued until 20 August 1988. The war finally ended with a United Nations-brokered ceasefire in the form of United Nations Security Council Resolution 598, which was accepted by both sides. It took several weeks for the Iranian armed forces to evacuate Iraqi territory to honor pre-war international borders between the two nations (see 1975 Algiers Agreement). The last prisoners of war were exchanged in 2003.

The war came at a great cost in lives and economic damage—half a million Iraqi and Iranian soldiers, as well as civilians, are believed to have died in the war with many more injured—but it brought neither reparations nor change in borders. The conflict is often compared to World War I, in that the tactics used closely mirrored those of that conflict, including large scale trench warfare, manned machine-gun posts, bayonet charges, use of barbed wire across trenches, human wave attacks across no-man's land, and extensive use of chemical weapons such as mustard gas by the Iraqi government against Iranian troops and civilians as well as Iraqi Kurds. At the time, the UN Security Council issued statements that "chemical weapons had been used in the war." However, in these UN statements, it was never made clear that it was only Iraq that was using chemical weapons, so it has been said that "the international community remained silent as Iraq used weapons of mass destruction against Iranian as well as Iraqi Kurds" and it is believed.

A long-standing territorial dispute was the ostensible reason for Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990. In November 1990, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 678, permitting member states to use all necessary means, authorizing military action against the Iraqi forces occupying Kuwait and demanded a complete withdrawal by January 15, 1991. When Saddam Hussein failed to comply with this demand, the Gulf War (Operation "Desert Storm") ensued on January 17, 1991. Estimates range from 1,500 to as many as 30,000 Iraqi soldiers killed, as well as less than a thousand civilians.

In March 1991 revolts in the Shia-dominated southern Iraq started involving demoralized Iraqi Army troops and the anti-government Shia parties. Another wave of insurgency broke out shortly afterwards in the Kurdish populated northern Iraq (see 1991 Iraqi uprisings). Although they presented a serious threat to the Iraqi Ba'ath Party regime, Saddam Hussein managed to suppress the rebellions with massive and indiscriminate force and maintained power. They were ruthlessly crushed by the loyalist forces spearheaded by the Iraqi Republican Guard and the population was successfully terrorized. During the few weeks of unrest tens of thousands of people were killed. Many more died during the following months, while nearly two million Iraqis fled for their lives. In the aftermath, the government intensified the forced relocating of Marsh Arabs and the draining of the Iraqi marshlands, while the Coalition established the Iraqi no-fly zones. On 6 August 1990, after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, the U.N. Security Council adopted Resolution 661 which imposed economic sanctions on Iraq, providing for a full trade embargo, excluding medical supplies, food and other items of humanitarian necessity, these to be determined by the Security Council sanctions committee. After the end of the Gulf War and after the Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait, the sanctions were linked to removal of weapons of mass destruction by Resolution 687. To varying degrees, the effects of government policy, the aftermath of Gulf War and the sanctions regime have been blamed for these conditions.

The effects of the sanctions on the civilian population of Iraq have been disputed. Whereas it was widely believed that the sanctions caused a major rise in child mortality, recent research has shown that commonly cited data were fabricated by the Iraqi government and that "there was no major rise in child mortality in Iraq after 1990 and during the period of the sanctions." An oil for food program was established in 1996 to ease the effects of sanctions.

Iraqi cooperation with UN weapons inspection teams was questioned on several occasions during the 1990s. UNSCOM chief weapons inspector Richard Butler withdrew his team from Iraq in November 1998 because of Iraq's lack of cooperation. The team returned in December. Butler prepared a report for the UN Security Council afterwards in which he expressed dissatisfaction with the level of compliance. The same month, US President Bill Clinton authorized air strikes on government targets and military facilities. Air strikes against military facilities and alleged WMD sites continued into 2002.

2003 U.S. invasion
After the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington in the United States in 2001 were linked to the group formed by the multi-millionaire Saudi Osama bin Laden, American foreign policy began to call for the removal of the Ba'ath government in Iraq. Neoconservative think-tanks in Washington had for years been urging regime change in Baghdad. On August 14, 1998, President Clinton signed Public Law 105–235, which declared that ‘‘the Government of Iraq is in material and unacceptable breach of its international obligations.’’ It urged the President ‘‘to take appropriate action, in accordance with the Constitution and relevant laws of the United States, to bring Iraq into compliance with its international obligations.’’ Several months later, Congress enacted the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 on October 31, 1998. This law stated that it "should be the policy of the United States to support efforts to remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq and to promote the emergence of a democratic government to replace that regime." It was passed 360 - 38 by the United States House of Representatives and 99–0 by the United States Senate in 1998.

The US urged the United Nations to take military action against Iraq. American president George W. Bush stated that Saddām had repeatedly violated 16 UN Security Council resolutions. The Iraqi government rejected Bush's assertions. A team of U.N. inspectors, led by Swedish diplomat Hans Blix was admitted, into the country; their final report stated that Iraqis capability in producing "weapons of mass destruction" was not significantly different from 1992 when the country dismantled the bulk of their remaining arsenals under terms of the ceasefire agreement with U.N. forces, but did not completely rule out the possibility that Saddam still had weapons of mass destruction. The United States and the United Kingdom charged that Iraq was hiding WMD and opposed the team's requests for more time to further investigate the matter. Resolution 1441 was passed unanimously by the UN Security Council on November 8, 2002, offering Iraq "a final opportunity to comply with its disarmament obligations" that had been set out in several previous UN resolutions, threatening "serious consequences" if the obligations were not fulfilled. The UN Security Council did not issue a resolution authorizing the use of force against Iraq.

In March 2003, the United States and the United Kingdom, with military aid from other nations, invaded Iraq.

Over the following years in the U.S. occupation of Iraq, Iraq disintegrated into a civil war from 2006 to 2008, and the situation deteriorated in 2011 which later escalated into a renewed war following ISIL gains in the country in 2014. By 2015, Iraq was effectively divided, the central and southern part being controlled by the government, the northwest by the Kurdistan Regional Government and the western part by the Islamic State. IS was expelled from Iraq in 2017, but a low-intensity ISIL insurgency continues mostly in the rural parts of northern western parts of the country, due to Iraq's long border with Syria.

Occupation (2003–11)
In 2003, after the American and British invasion, Iraq was occupied by U.S.-led Coalition forces. On May 23, 2003, the UN Security Council unanimously approved a resolution lifting all economic sanctions against Iraq. As the country struggled to rebuild after three wars and a decade of sanctions, it was plagued by violence between a growing Iraqi insurgency and occupation forces. Saddam Hussein, who vanished in April, was captured on December 13, 2003 in ad-Dawr, Saladin Governorate.Jay Garner was appointed Interim Civil Administrator with three deputies, including Tim Cross. Garner was replaced in May 2003 by Paul Bremer, who was himself replaced by John Negroponte on April 19, 2004. Negroponte was the last US interim administrator and left Iraq in 2005. A parliamentary election was held in January 2005, followed by the drafting and ratification of a constitution and a further parliamentary election in December 2005.

Terrorism emerged as a threat to Iraq's people not long after the invasion of 2003. Al Qaeda now had a presence in the country, in the form of several terrorist groups formerly led by Abu Musab Al Zarqawi. Al Zarqawi was a Jordanian militant Islamist who ran a militant training camp in Afghanistan. He became known after going to Iraq and being responsible for a series of bombings, beheadings and attacks during the Iraq war. Al Zarqawi was killed on June 7, 2006. Many foreign fighters and former Ba'ath Party officials also joined the insurgency, which was mainly aimed at attacking American forces and Iraqis who worked with them. The most dangerous insurgent area was the Sunni Triangle, a mostly Sunni-Muslim area just north of Baghdad.

Reported acts of violence conducted by an uneasy tapestry of insurgents steadily increased by the end of 2006. Sunni jihadist forces including Al Qaeda in Iraq continued to target Shia civilians, notably in the 23 February 2006 attack on the Al Askari Mosque in Samarra, one of Shi'ite Islam's holiest sites leading to a civil war between Sunni and Shia militants in Iraq. Analysis of the attack suggested that the Mujahideen Shura Council and Al-Qaeda in Iraq were responsible, and that the motivation was to provoke further violence by outraging the Shia population. In mid-October 2006, a statement was released stating that the Mujahideen Shura Council had been disbanded and was replaced by the "Islamic State of Iraq". It was formed to resist efforts by the U.S. and Iraqi authorities to win over Sunni supporters of the insurgency. Shia militias, some of whom were associated with elements in the Iraq government, reacted with reprisal acts against the Sunni minority. A cycle of violence thus ensued whereby Sunni insurgent attacks were followed reprisals by Shiite militias, often in the form of Shi'ite death squads that sought out and killed Sunnis. Following a surge in U.S. troops in 2007 and 2008, violence in Iraq began to decrease. The U.S. ended their main military presence in 2011, however, resulting in renewed escalation into war.

Insurgency and war (2011–2017)
The departure of US troops from Iraq in 2011 triggered a renewed insurgency and by a spillover of the Syrian civil war into Iraq. By 2013, the insurgency escalated into a state renewed war, the central government of Iraq being opposed by various factions, primarily radical Sunni forces.

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant  invaded Iraq in 2013–14 and seized the majority of Al Anbar Governorate, including the cities of Fallujah, Al Qaim, Abu Ghraib and (in May 2015) Ramadi, leaving them in control of 90% of Anbar. Tikrit, Mosul and most of the Nineveh province, along with parts of Salahuddin, Kirkuk and Diyala provinces, were seized by insurgent forces in the June 2014 offensive. ISIL also captured Sinjar and a number of other towns in the August 2014 offensive, but were halted by the Sinjar offensive launched in December 2014 by Kurdish Peshmerga and YPG forces. The war ended with a government victory in December 2017.

On 30 April 2016, thousands of protesters entered the Green Zone in Baghdad and occupied the Iraqi parliament building. This happened after the Iraqi parliament did not approve new government ministers. The protesters included supporters of Shia cleric Muqtada Al Sadr. Although Iraqi security forces were present, they did not attempt to stop the protesters from entering the parliament building.

Continued ISIL insurgency and protests (2017–present)
Tensions between the federal Iraqi government and Kurdistan Region arising from the Kurdistan Region independence referendum of 25 September 2017 escalated into armed conflict in October 2017. As a result of the conflict, Kurdistan Region lost a fifth of the land mass it had administered prior to the conflict and was forced to cancel the results of the referendum.

By 2018, violence in Iraq was at its lowest level in ten years.

Protests over deteriorating economic conditions and state corruption started in July 2018 in Baghdad and other major Iraqi cities, mainly in the central and southern provinces. The latest nationwide protests, erupting in October 2019, had a death toll of at least 93 people, including police.

In November 2021, Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi survived a failed assassination attempt.

Cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Sadrist Movement was the biggest winner in the 2021 parliamentary elections. Governmental stalemate lead to the 2022 Iraqi political crisis.

In October 2022, Abdul Latif Rashid was elected as the new President of Iraq after winning the parliamentary election against incumbent Barham Salih, who was running for a second term. The presidency is largely ceremonial and is traditionally held by a Kurd. On 27 October 2022, Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, close ally of former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, took the office to succeed Mustafa al-Kadhimi as new Prime Minister of Iraq.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: History of Iraq


text:
Geography of Iraq

The geography of Iraq is diverse and falls into five main regions: the desert (west of the Euphrates), Upper Mesopotamia (between the upper Tigris and Euphrates rivers), the northern highlands of Iraq, Lower Mesopotamia, and the alluvial plain extending from around Tikrit to the Persian Gulf.

The mountains in the northeast are an extension of the alpine system that runs eastward from the Balkans through southern Turkey, northern Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan, eventually reaching the Himalayas in Pakistan. The desert lies in the southwest provinces along the borders with Saudi Arabia and Jordan and geographically belongs in the Arabian Peninsula.

Major geographical features
Most geographers, including those of the Iraqi government, discuss the country's geography in terms of four main zones or regions: the desert in the west and southwest; the rolling upland between the upper Tigris and Euphrates rivers (in Arabic the Dijla and Furat, respectively); the highlands in the north and northeast; and the alluvial plain through which the Tigris and Euphrates flow. Iraq's official statistical reports give the total land area as 438446 km2, whereas a United States Department of State publication gives the area as 434934 km2.

Upper Mesopotamia
The uplands region, between the Tigris north of Hamrin Mountains and the Euphrates north of Hit, is known as Al Jazira (the island) and is part of a larger area that extends westward into Syria between the two rivers and into Turkey. Water in the area flows in deeply cut valleys, and irrigation is much more difficult than it is in the lower plain. The southwest areas of this zone are classified as desert or semi-desert. The northern parts, which include such places like the Nineveh Plains, Duhok, Zakho and Amedi, mainly consist of Mediterranean vegetation. The vegetation cyclically dries out and appear brown in the virtually arid summer and flourish in the wet winter.

Lower Mesopotamia
An alluvial plain begins north of Baghdad and extends to the Persian Gulf. Here the Tigris and Euphrates rivers lie above the level of the plain in many places, and the whole area is a river delta interlaced by the channels of the two rivers and by irrigation canals. Intermittent lakes, fed by the rivers in flood, also characterize southeastern Iraq. A fairly large area (15000 km2) just above the confluence of the two rivers at Al Qurnah and extending east of the Tigris beyond the Iranian border is marshland, known as Hawr al Hammar, the result of centuries of flooding and inadequate drainage. Much of it is permanent marsh, but some parts dry out in early winter, and other parts become marshland only in years of great flood.

Because the waters of the Tigris and Euphrates above their confluence are heavily silt- laden, irrigation and fairly frequent flooding deposit large quantities of silty loam in much of the delta area. Windborne silt contributes to the total deposit of sediments. It has been estimated that the delta plains are built up at the rate of nearly twenty centimeters in a century. In some areas, major floods lead to the deposit in temporary lakes of as much as thirty centimeters of mud.

The Tigris and Euphrates also carry large quantities of salts. These, too, are spread on the land by sometimes excessive irrigation and flooding. A high water table and poor surface and subsurface drainage tend to concentrate the salts near the surface of the soil. In general, the salinity of the soil increases from Baghdad south to the Persian Gulf and severely limits productivity in the region south of Al Amarah. The salinity is reflected in the large lake in central Iraq, southwest of Baghdad, known as Bahr al Milh (Sea of Salt). There are two other major lakes in the country to the north of Bahr al Milh: Buhayrat ath Tharthar and Buhayrat al Habbaniyah.

Baghdad area
Between Upper and Lower Mesopotamia is the urban area surrounding Baghdad. These "Baghdad Belts" can be described as the provinces adjacent to the Iraqi capital and can be divided into four quadrants: northeast, southeast, southwest, and northwest. Beginning in the north, the belts include the province of Saladin, clockwise to Baghdad province, Diyala in the northeast, Babil and Wasit in the southeast and around to Al Anbar in the west.

Highlands

The northeastern highlands begin just south of a line drawn from Mosul to Kirkuk and extend to the borders with Turkey and Iran. High ground, separated by broad, undulating steppes, gives way to mountains ranging from 1000 to 3611 m near the Iranian and Turkish borders. Except for a few valleys, the mountain area proper is suitable only for grazing in the foothills and steppes; adequate soil and rainfall, however, make cultivation possible. Here, too, are the great oil fields near Mosul and Kirkuk. The northeast is the homeland of most Iraqi Kurds.

Desert
The desert zone, an area lying west and southwest of the Euphrates River, is a part of the Syrian Desert and Arabian Desert, which covers sections of Syria, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia and most of the Arabian Peninsula. The region, sparsely inhabited by pastoral Bedouins, consists of a wide stony plain interspersed with rare sandy stretches. A widely ramified pattern of wadis–watercourses that are dry most of the year–runs from the border to the Euphrates. Some wadis are over 400 km long and carry brief but torrential floods during the winter rains.

Western and southern Iraq is a vast desert region covering some 64,900 mi2, almost two-fifths of the country. The western desert, an extension of the Syrian Desert, rises to elevations above 1,600 ft. The southern desert is known as Al-Hajarah in the western part and as Al-Dibdibah in the east. Both deserts are part of the Arabian Desert. Al Hajarah has a complex topography of rocky desert, wadis, ridges, and depressions. Al-Dibdibah is a more sandy region with a covering of scrub vegetation. Elevation in the southern desert averages between 1,000 and 2,700 ft. A height of 3,119 ft is reached at Mount 'Unayzah at the intersection of the borders of Jordan, Iraq and Saudi Arabia. The deep Wadi Al-Batin runs 45 mi in a northeast–southwest direction through Al-Dibdibah. It has been recognized since 1913 as the boundary between western Kuwait and Iraq.

Tigris–Euphrates river system
The Euphrates originates in Turkey, is augmented by the Balikh and Khabur rivers in Syria, and enters Iraq in the northwest. Here it is fed only by the wadis of the western desert during the winter rains. It then winds through a gorge, which varies from two to 16 kilometers in width, until it flows out on the plain at Ar Ramadi. Beyond there the Euphrates continues to the Hindiya Barrage, which was constructed in 1914 to divert the river into the Hindiyah Channel; the present day Shatt al Hillah had been the main channel of the Euphrates before 1914. Below Al Kifl, the river follows two channels to As-Samawah, where it reappears as a single channel to join the Tigris at Al Qurnah. The Tigris also rises in Turkey but is significantly augmented by several rivers in Iraq, the most important of which are the Khabur, the Great Zab, the Little Zab, and the Adhaim, all of which join the Tigris above Baghdad, and the Diyala, which joins it about thirty-six kilometers below the city. At the Kut Barrage much of the water is diverted into the Shatt al-Hayy, which was once the main channel of the Tigris. Water from the Tigris thus enters the Euphrates through the Shatt al-Hayy well above the confluence of the two main channels at Al Qurnah.

Both the Tigris and the Euphrates break into a number of channels in the marshland area, and the flow of the rivers is substantially reduced by the time they come together at Al Qurnah. Moreover. the swamps act as silt traps, and the Shatt al Arab is relatively silt free as it flows south. Below Basra, however, the Karun River enters the Shatt al Arab from Iran, carrying large quantities of silt that present a continuous dredging problem in maintaining a channel for ocean-going vessels to reach the port at Basra. This problem has been superseded by a greater obstacle to river traffic, however, namely the presence of several sunken hulls that have been rusting in the Shatt al Arab since early in the Iran-Iraq war.

The waters of the Tigris and Euphrates are essential to the life of the country, but they sometimes threaten it. The rivers are at their lowest level in September and October and at flood in March, April, and May when they may carry forty times as much water as at low mark. Moreover, one season's flood may be ten or more times as great as that in another year. In 1954, for example, Baghdad was seriously threatened, and dikes protecting it were nearly topped by the flooding Tigris. Since Syria built a dam on the Euphrates, the flow of water has been considerably diminished and flooding was no longer a problem in the mid-1980s. In 1988 Turkey was also constructing a dam on the Euphrates that would further restrict the water flow.

Until the mid-twentieth century, most efforts to control the waters were primarily concerned with irrigation. Some attention was given to problems of flood control and drainage before the revolution of July 14, 1958, but development plans in the 1960s and 1970s were increasingly devoted to these matters, as well as to irrigation projects on the upper reaches of the Tigris and Euphrates and the tributaries of the Tigris in the northeast. During the war, government officials stressed to foreign visitors that, with the conclusion of a peace settlement, problems of irrigation and flooding would receive top priority from the government.

Iraqi coastal waters boast a living coral reef, covering an area of 28 km2 in the Persian Gulf, at the mouth of the Shatt al-Arab river (29.61667°N, 48.8°W). The coral reef was discovered by joint Iraqi–German expeditions of scientific scuba divers carried out in September 2012 and in May 2013. Prior to its discovery, it was believed that Iraq lacks coral reefs as the local turbid waters prevented the detection of the potential presence of local coral reefs. Iraqi corals were found to be adapted to one of the most extreme coral-bearing environments in the world, as the seawater temperature in this area ranges between 14 and 34 °C. The reef harbors several living stone corals, octocorals, ophiuroids and bivalves. There are also silica-containing demo-sponges.

Settlement patterns
In the rural areas of the alluvial plain and in the lower Diyala region, settlement almost invariably clusters near the rivers, streams, and irrigation canals. The bases of the relationship between watercourse and settlement have been summarized by Robert McCormick Adams, director of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. He notes that the levees laid down by streams and canals provide advantages for both settlement and agriculture. Surface water drains more easily on the levees' back-slope, and the coarse soils of the levees are easier to cultivate and permit better subsurface drainage. The height of the levees gives some protection against floods and the frost that often affect low-lying areas and may kill and/or damage winter crops. Above all, those living or cultivating on the crest of a levee have easy access to water for irrigation and household use in a dry, hot country.

Although there are some isolated homesteads, most rural communities are nucleated settlements rather than dispersed farmsteads; that is, the farmer leaves his village to cultivate the fields outside it. The pattern holds for farming communities in the Kurdish highlands of the northeast as well as for those in the alluvial plain. The size of the settlement varies, generally with the volume of water available for household use and with the amount of land accessible to village dwellers. Sometimes, particularly in the lower Tigris and Euphrates valleys, soil salinity restricts the area of arable land and limits the size of the community dependent on it, and it also usually results in large unsettled and uncultivated stretches between the villages.

Fragmentary information suggests that most farmers in the alluvial plain tend to live in villages of over 100 persons. For example, in the mid-1970s a substantial number of the residents of Baqubah, the administrative center and major city of Diyala Governorate, were employed in agriculture.

The Marsh Arabs of the south usually live in small clusters of two or three houses kept above water by rushes that are constantly being replenished. Such clusters often are close together, but access from one to another is possible only by small boat. Here and there a few natural islands permit slightly larger clusters. Some of these people are primarily water buffalo herders and lead a semi-nomadic life. In the winter, when the waters are at a low point, they build fairly large temporary villages. In the summer they move their herds out of the marshes to the river banks.

The war has had its effect on the lives of these denizens of the marshes. With much of the fighting concentrated in their areas, they have either migrated to settled communities away from the marshes or have been forced by government decree to relocate within the marshes. Also, in early 1988, the marshes had become the refuge of deserters from the Iraqi army who attempted to maintain life in the fastness of the overgrown, desolate areas while hiding out from the authorities. These deserters in many instances have formed into large gangs that raid the marsh communities; this also has induced many of the marsh dwellers to abandon their villages.

The war has also affected settlement patterns in the northern Kurdish areas. There, the struggle for a Kurdish state by guerrillas was rejected by the government as it steadily escalated violence against the local communities. Starting in 1984, the government launched a scorched-earth campaign to drive a wedge between the villagers and the guerrillas in the remote areas of two provinces of Kurdistan in which Kurdish guerrillas were active. In the process whole villages were torched and subsequently bulldozed, which resulted in the Kurds flocking into the regional centers of Irbil and As Sulaymaniyah. Also as a "military precaution", the government has cleared a broad strip of territory in the Kurdish region along the Iranian border of all its inhabitants, hoping in this way to interdict the movement of Kurdish guerrillas back and forth between Iran and Iraq. The majority of Kurdish villages, however, remained intact in early 1988.

In the arid areas of Iraq to the west and south, cities and large towns are almost invariably situated on watercourses, usually on the major rivers or their larger tributaries. In the south this dependence has had its disadvantages. Until the recent development of flood control, Baghdad and other cities were subject to the threat of inundation. Moreover, the dikes needed for protection have effectively prevented the expansion of the urban areas in some directions. The growth of Baghdad, for example, was restricted by dikes on its eastern edge. The diversion of water to the Milhat ath Tharthar and the construction of a canal transferring water from the Tigris north of Baghdad to the Diyala River have permitted the irrigation of land outside the limits of the dikes and the expansion of settlement.

Climate
The climate of Iraq is mainly a hot desert climate or a hot semi-arid climate to the northernmost part. Averages high temperatures are generally above 40 °C at low elevations during summer months (June, July and August) while averages low temperatures can drop to below 0 °C during the coldest month of the year during winter The all-time record high temperature in Iraq of 53.9 °C was recorded near Basra on 22 July 2016. Most of the rainfall occurs from December through April and averages between 100 and 180 mm annually. The mountainous region of northern Iraq receives appreciably more precipitation than the central or southern desert region, where they tend to have a Mediterranean climate.

Roughly 90% of the annual rainfall occurs between November and April, most of it in the winter months from December through March. The remaining six months, particularly the hottest ones of June, July, and August, are extremely dry.

Except in the north and northeast, mean annual rainfall ranges between 100 and 190 mm. Data available from stations in the foothills and steppes south and southwest of the mountains suggest mean annual rainfall between 320 and 570 mm for that area. Rainfall in the mountains is more abundant and may reach 1,000 mm a year in some places, but the terrain precludes extensive cultivation. Cultivation on nonirrigated land is limited essentially to the mountain valleys, foothills, and steppes, which have 300 mm or more of rainfall annually. Even in this zone, however, only one crop a year can be grown, and shortages of rain have often led to crop failures.

Mean minimum temperatures in the winter range from near freezing (just before dawn) in the northern and northeastern foothills and the western desert to 2 and 4 to in the alluvial plains of southern Iraq. They rise to a mean maximum of about 16 °C in the western desert and the northeast, and 17 °C in the south. In the summer mean minimum temperatures range from about 27 to 31 C and rise to maxima between roughly 41 and 45 C. Temperatures sometimes fall below freezing and have fallen as low as -14 °C at Ar Rutbah in the western desert. Such summer heat, even in a hot desert, is high and this can be easily explained by the very low elevations of deserts regions which experience these exceptionally searing high temperatures. In fact, the elevations of cities such as Baghdad or Basra are near the sea level (0 m) because deserts are located predominantly along the Persian Gulf. That is why some Gulf's countries like Iraq, Iran and Kuwait experience extreme heat during summer, even more extreme than the normal level. The searing summer heat only exists in low elevations in these countries while mountains and higher elevations know much more moderated summer temperatures.

The summer months are marked by two kinds of wind phenomena. The southern and southeasterly sharqi, a dry, dusty wind with occasional gusts of 80 km/h, occurs from April to early June and again from late September through November. It may last for a day at the beginning and end of the season but for several days at other times. This wind is often accompanied by violent duststorms that may rise to heights of several thousand meters and close airports for brief periods. From mid-June to mid-September the prevailing wind, called the shamal, is from the north and northwest. It is a steady wind, absent only occasionally during this period. The very dry air brought by this shamal permits intensive sun heating of the land surface, but the breeze has some cooling effect.

The combination of rain shortage and extreme heat makes much of Iraq a desert. Because of very high rates of evaporation, soil and plants rapidly lose the little moisture obtained from the rain, and vegetation could not survive without extensive irrigation. Some areas, however, although arid, do have natural vegetation in contrast to the desert. For example, in the Zagros Mountains in northeastern Iraq there is permanent vegetation, such as oak trees, and date palms are found in the south.

Area and boundaries
In 1922 British officials concluded the Treaty of Mohammara with Abd al Aziz ibn Abd ar Rahman Al Saud, who in 1932 formed the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The treaty provided the basic agreement for the boundary between the eventually independent nations. Also in 1922 the two parties agreed to the creation of the diamond-shaped Neutral Zone of approximately 7500 km2 adjacent to the western tip of Kuwait in which neither Iraq nor Saudi Arabia would build dwellings or installations. Bedouins from either country could utilize the limited water and seasonal grazing resources of the zone. In April 1975, an agreement signed in Baghdad fixed the borders of the countries.

Through Algerian mediation, Iran and Iraq agreed in March 1975 to normalize their relations, and three months later they signed a treaty known as the Algiers Accord. The document defined the common border all along the Khawr Abd Allah (Shatt) River estuary as the thalweg. To compensate Iraq for the loss of what formerly had been regarded as its territory, pockets of territory along the mountain border in the central sector of its common boundary with Iran were assigned to it. Nonetheless, in September 1980 Iraq went to war with Iran, citing among other complaints the fact that Iran had not turned over to it the land specified in the Algiers Accord. This problem has subsequently proved to be a stumbling block to a negotiated settlement of the ongoing conflict.

In 1988 the boundary with Kuwait was another outstanding problem. It was fixed in a 1913 treaty between the Ottoman Empire and British officials acting on behalf of Kuwait's ruling family, which in 1899 had ceded control over foreign affairs to Britain. The boundary was accepted by Iraq when it became independent in 1932, but in the 1960s and again in the mid-1970s, the Iraqi government advanced a claim to parts of Kuwait. Kuwait made several representations to the Iraqis during the war to fix the border once and for all but Baghdad repeatedly demurred, claiming that the issue is a potentially divisive one that could inflame nationalist sentiment inside Iraq. Hence in 1988 it was likely that a solution would have to wait until the war ended.

Area: total: 438317 km2 land: 437367 km2 water: 950 km2

Land boundaries: total: 3809 km border countries: Iran 1599 km, Saudi Arabia 811 km, Syria 599 km, Turkey 367 km, Kuwait 254 km, Jordan 179 km

Coastline: 58 km

Maritime claims: territorial sea: 12 nmi continental shelf: not specified

Terrain: mostly broad plains; reedy marshes along Iranian border in south with large flooded areas; mountains along borders with Iran and Turkey

Elevation extremes: lowest point: Persian Gulf 0 m highest point: Cheekah Dar 3611 m

Resources and land use
Natural resources: petroleum, natural gas, phosphates, sulfur

Land use: arable land: 7.89% permanent crops: 0.53% other: 91.58% (2012)

Irrigated land: 35250 km2 (2003)

Total renewable water resources: 89.86 km3 (2011)

Freshwater withdrawal (domestic/industrial/agricultural): total: 66 km3/yr (7%/15%/79%) per capita: 2,616 m3/yr (2000)

While its proven oil reserves of 112 Goilbbl ranks Iraq fifth in the world behind Iran, the United States Department of Energy estimates that up to 90 percent of the country remains unexplored. Unexplored regions of Iraq could yield an additional 100 Goilbbl. Iraq's oil production costs are among the lowest in the world. However, only about 2,000 oil wells have been drilled in Iraq, compared to about 1 million wells in Texas alone.

Environmental concerns
Natural hazards: dust storms, sandstorms, floods

Environment - current issues: government water control projects have drained most of the inhabited marsh areas east of An Kshatriya by drying up or diverting the feeder streams and rivers; a once sizable population of Shi'a Muslims, who have inhabited these areas for thousands of years, has been displaced; furthermore, the destruction of the natural habitat poses serious threats to the area's wildlife populations; inadequate supplies of potable water; development of Tigris-Euphrates Rivers system contingent upon agreements with upstream riparian Turkey; air and water pollution; soil degradation (desalination) and erosion; and desertification.

Environment - international agreements: party to: Biodiversity, Law of the Sea, Ozone Layer Protection signed, but not ratified: Environmental Modification

 * Major regressions:
 * Arabian Desert and East Sahero-Arabian xeric shrublands (PA1303)
 * Mesopotamian shrub desert (PA1320)
 * Minor ecoregions:
 * Zagros Mountains forest steppe (PA0446)
 * Middle East steppe (PA0812)
 * Eastern Mediterranean conifer-sclerophyllous broadleaf forests (PA1207)
 * South Iran Nubo-Sindian desert and semi-desert (PA1328)
 * Tigris-Euphrates alluvial salt marsh (PA0906)
 * Red Sea Nubo-Sindian tropical desert and semi-desert (PA1325)
 * Persian Gulf desert and semi-desert (PA1323)

title: Geography of Iraq


text:
Demographics of Iraq

The Iraqi people (العراقيون; گه‌لی عیراق; Syriac: ܥܡܐ ܥܝܪܩܝܐ; Turkish: Iraklılar) are people originating from the country of Iraq.

Iraqi Arabs are the largest ethnic group in Iraq, followed by Iraqi Kurds, then Iraqi Turkmen as the third largest ethnic group in the country. Studies indicate that Mesopotamian Arabs, who make up the overwhelming majority of Iraq's population, are genetically distinct from other Arab populations in the Arabs of the Arabian peninsula.

The population was estimated to be 43,533,592 in 2021 Turkmen (4.5-6 million), Assyrians (0.5 million), Yazidis (500,000), Armenians, Marsh Arabs, and Shabaks (250,000). Other minorities include Mandaeans (3,000), Roma (50,000) and Circassians (2,000). The most spoken languages are Mesopotamian Arabic, Kurdish, Assyrian Syriac and Iraqi Turkmen dialects. The percentages of different ethno-religious groups residing in Iraq vary from source to source due to the last Iraqi census having taken place over 30 years ago. A new census of Iraq was planned to take place in 2020, but this was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It was rescheduled to November 2022 but was postponed again with an "electronic national population census" planned in the last quarter of 2023.

Population
39,650,145 (2021 estimate), ( estimate), up from 31,234,000 (April 2009 IMF estimate)

Life expectancy at birth
Average life expectancy at age 0 of the total population.

Structure of the population
Structure of the population (1 July 2013) (Estimates):

Population Estimates by Sex and Age Group (01.VII.2020):

Ethnicity
Iraq's dominant ethnic group are Arabs, who account for more than three-quarters of the population.

According to the CIA World Factbook, citing a 1987 Iraqi government estimate, the population of Iraq is formed of 70-80% Arabs followed by 15-20% Kurds. and also Marsh Arabs.

in addition, the estimate claims that other minorities form 5% of the country's population, including the Turkmen, Kaka'i, Bedouins, Roma, Assyrians/Chaldeans/Syriacs, Circassians, Mandaeans, and Persians. However, the International Crisis Group points out that figures from the 1987 census, as well as the 1967, 1977, and 1997 censuses, "are all considered highly problematic, due to suspicions of regime manipulation" because Iraqi citizens were only allowed to indicate belonging to either the Arab or Kurdish ethnic groups; consequently, this skewed the number of other ethnic minorities, such as Iraq's third largest ethnic group – the Turkmen.

Languages
Arabic and Kurdish are the two official languages of Iraq. Arabic is taught across all schools in Iraq, however in the north the Kurdish language is the most spoken. Eastern Aramaic languages, such as Syriac and Mandaic are spoken, as well as the Iraqi Turkmen language, and various other indigenous languages.

Kurdish, including several dialects, is the second largest language and has regional language status in the north of the country. Aramaic, in antiquity spoken throughout the whole country, is now only spoken by the Assyrian Chaldean minority. The Iraqi Turkmen dialect is spoken in parts of northern iraq, numerous languages of the Caucasus are also spoken by minorities, notably the Chechen community.

Religions
The CIA World Factbook estimated in 2015 that between 95-98% of Iraqis followed Islam, with 61-64% being Shia and 29-34% being Sunni. Christianity accounted for 1%, and the rest (1-4%) practiced Yazidism, Mandaeism, and other religions.

While there has been voluntary relocation of many Christian families to northern Iraq, recent reporting indicates that the overall Christian population may have dropped by as much as 50 percent since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003, with many fleeing to Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon (2010 estimate). The percentage of Christians has fallen from 6% in 1991 or 1.5 million to about one third of this. Estimates say there are 500,000 Christians in Iraq.

Nearly all Iraqi Kurds identify as Sunni Muslims. A 2014 survey in Iraq concluded that "98% of Kurds in Iraq identified themselves as Sunnis and only 2% identified as Shias". The religious differences between Sunni Arabs and Sunni Kurds are small. While 98 percent of Shia Arabs believe that visiting the shrines of saints is acceptable, 71 percent of Sunni Arabs did and 59 percent of Sunni Kurds support this practice. About 94 percent of the population in Iraqi Kurdistan is Muslim.

Demographic statistics
The following demographic statistics are from the CIA World Factbook, unless otherwise indicated.

Age structure
(2018 est.)

Ethnic groups

 * Arab: 70-80%
 * Kurd: 15-25%
 * Turkoman: 9-13%
 * Assyrian/Chaldean and Other: 2%

Languages

 * Arabic (official)
 * Kurdish (official)
 * Iraqi Turkmen dialect (official only in majority speaking area)
 * Assyrian dialect (Neo-Aramaic) (official only in majority speaking area)

Median age

 * total: 20.2 years
 * male: 20 years
 * female: 20.5 years (2019 est.)

Population growth rate

 * 2.5% (2018 est.)

Crude birth rate

 * 30 births/1,000 population (2018 est.)

Crude death rate

 * 3.8 deaths/1,000 population (2018 est.)

Total fertility rate

 * 3.94 children born/woman (2018 est.)

Net migration rate

 * −1.1 migrant(s)/1,000 population (2018 est.)

Urbanization

 * urban population: 70.5% of total population (2018)
 * rate of urbanization: 3.06% annual rate of change (2015–20 est.)

Sex ratio

 * at birth: 1.04 male(s)/female
 * 0–14 years: 1.04 male(s)/female
 * 15-24 years: 1.04 male(s)/female
 * 25-54 years: 1.02 male(s)/female
 * 55–64 years: 0.91 male(s)/female
 * 65 years and over: 0.8 male(s)/female
 * total population: 1.02 male(s)/female (2017 est.)

Maternal mortality rate

 * 50 deaths/100,000 live births (2015 est.)

Infant mortality rate

 * total population: 37.5 deaths/1,000 live births
 * male: 40.6 deaths/1,000 live births
 * female: 34.2 deaths/1,000 live births (2018 est.)

Life expectancy at birth

 * total population: 74.9 years
 * male: 72.6 years
 * female: 77.2 years (2018 est.)

Contraceptive prevalence rate

 * 51.5% (2011)

Health expenditures

 * 5.5% of GDP (2011)

Physicians density

 * 0.85 physicians/1,000 population (2014)

Hospital bed density

 * 1.4 beds/1,000 population (2014)

Obesity – adult prevalence rate

 * 30.4% (2016)

Children under the age of 5 years underweight

 * 8.5% (2011)

Nationality

 * noun: Iraqi(s)
 * adjective: Iraqi

Literacy

 * definition: age 15 and over can read and write
 * total population: 79.7%
 * male: 85.7%
 * female: 73.7% (2015 est.)

title: Demographics of Iraq


text:
Politics of Iraq

Iraq is a federal parliamentary representative democratic republic. It is a multi-party system whereby the executive power is exercised by the Prime Minister of the Council of Ministers as the head of government, the President of Iraq as the head of state, and legislative power is vested in the Council of Representatives.

The current President of Iraq is Abdul Latif Rashid, who holds most of the executive authority and appointed the Council of Ministers, which acts as a cabinet and/or government.

The northern autonomous provinces, Kurdistan Region emerged in 1992 as an autonomous entity inside Iraq with its own local government and parliament.

Federal government

The federal government of Iraq is defined under the current constitution as an Islamic, democratic, federal parliamentary republic. The federal government is composed of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches, as well as numerous independent commissions.

The legislative branch is composed of the Council of Representatives and a Federation Council. The executive branch is composed of the president, the prime minister, and the Council of Ministers. The federal judiciary is composed of the Higher Judicial Council, the Supreme Court, the Court of Cassation, the Public Prosecution Department, the Judiciary Oversight Commission, and other federal courts that are regulated by law. One such court is the Central Criminal Court.

The Independent High Commission for Human Rights, the Independent High Electoral Commission, and the Commission on Integrity are independent commissions subject to monitoring by the Council of Representatives. The Central Bank of Iraq, the Board of Supreme Audit, the Communications and Media Commission, and the Endowment Commission are financially and administratively independent institutions. The Foundation of Martyrs is attached to the Council of Ministers. The Federal Public Service Council regulates the affairs of the federal public service, including appointment and promotion.

Local government
The basic subdivisions of the country are the regions and the governorates. Both regions and governorates are given broad autonomy with regions given additional powers such as control of internal security forces for the region such as police, security forces, and guards. The last local elections for the governorates were held in the 2009 Iraqi governorate elections on 31 January 2009.

Regions
The constitution requires that the Council of Representatives enact a law which provides the procedures for forming a new region 6 months from the start of its first session. A law was passed 11 October 2006 by a unanimous vote with only 138 of 275 representatives present, with the remaining representatives boycotting the vote. Legislators from the Iraqi Accord Front, Sadrist Movement and Islamic Virtue Party all opposed the bill.

Under the law, a region can be created out of one or more existing governorates or two or more existing regions, and a governorate can also join an existing region to create a new region. A new region can be proposed by one third or more of the council members in each affected governorate plus 500 voters or by one tenth or more voters in each affected governorate. A referendum must then be held within three months, which requires a simple majority in favour to pass. In the event of competing proposals, the multiple proposals are put to a ballot and the proposal with the most supporters is put to the referendum. In the event of an affirmative referendum a Transitional Legislative Assembly is elected for one year, which has the task of writing a constitution for the Region, which is then put to a referendum requiring a simple majority to pass. The President, Prime Minister and Ministers of the region are elected by simple majority, in contrast to the Iraqi Council of Representatives which requires two thirds support.

Provinces
Iraq is divided into 18 governorates, which are further divided into districts:

• # Baghdād (بغداد)

• # Salāh ad-Dīn (صلاح الدين)

• # Diyālā (ديالى)

• # Wāsit (واسط)

• # Maysān (ميسان)

• # Basra (البصرة)

• # Dhī Qār (ذي قار)

• # Al-Muthannā (المثنى)

• # Al-Qādisiyyah (القادسية)

• # Bābylon (بابل)

• # Karbalā' (كربلاء)

• # Najaf (النجف)

• # Al-Anbar (الأنبار)

• # Nineveh (نينوى)

• # Dohūk (دهوك)

• # Arbīl (أربيل)

• # Kirkuk (كركوك)

• # Sulaymāniyah (السليمانية)

Parliamentary alliances and parties

 * National Iraqi Alliance (mainly Shi'a Islamist)
 * Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (al-Majlis al-alalith-thaura l-islamiyya fil-Iraq) – led by Ammar al-Hakim
 * Sadrist Movement – led by Muqtada al-Sadr
 * Islamic Dawa Party – Iraq Organisation (Hizb al-Da'wa al-Islami Tendeem al-Iraq) – led by Kasim Muhammad Taqi al-Sahlani
 * Islamic Dawa Party (Hizb al-Da'wa al-Islamiyya) – led by Nouri al-Maliki
 * Tribes of Iraq Coalition – led by Hamid al-Hais
 * Islamic Fayli Grouping in Iraq – led by Muqdad Al-Baghdadi
 * Democratic Patriotic Alliance of Kurdistan
 * Kurdistan Democratic Party (Partiya Demokrat a Kurdistanê) – led by Massoud Barzani
 * Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (Yaketi Nishtimani Kurdistan) – led by Jalal Talabani
 * Kurdistan Islamic Union (Yekîtiya Islamiya Kurdistan)
 * Movement for Change (Bizutnaway Gorran) – led by Nawshirwan Mustafa
 * Kurdistan Toilers' Party (Parti Zahmatkeshan Kurdistan)
 * Kurdistan Communist Party (Partiya Komunîst Kurdistan)
 * Feyli Kurd Democratic Union (Yeketîa Demokrata Kurden Feylî)
 * Assyrian Patriotic Party
 * Civil Democratic Alliance (secular, nonsectarian)
 * People's Party led by Faiq Al Sheikh Ali.
 * Iraqi Ummah Party led by Mithal Al-Alusi.
 * Iraqi Liberal Party
 * National Democratic Action Party
 * Iraqi List (al-Qayimaal Iraqia) (mainly secular Shia)
 * Iraqi National Accord – led by Iyad Allawi
 * The Iraqis – led by Ghazi al-Yawer (allegedly Sunni)
 * Iraqi Turkmen Front (Irak Türkmen Cephesi)) (same as Alliance of the Turkomen Front of Iraq?) (ethnic group of Iraqi Turkmen)
 * National Independent Cadres and Elites (Shia)
 * People's Union (Ittihad Al Shaab)
 * Iraqi Communist Party – led by Hamid Majid Mousa
 * Islamic Kurdish Society – led by Ali Abd-al Aziz
 * Islamic Labour Movement in Iraq
 * National Democratic Party (Hizb al Dimuqratiyah al Wataniyah) – led by Samir al-Sumaidai
 * National Rafidain List
 * Assyrian Democratic Movement (Zowaa Dimuqrataya Aturaya) – led by Yonadam Kanna
 * Reconciliation and Liberation Bloc
 * The Upholders of the Message (Al-Risaliyun)
 * Mithal al-Alusi List
 * Yazidi Movement for Reform and Progress

Other parties

 * Communist Party of Iraq
 * Worker-Communist Party of Iraq
 * Leftist Worker-Communist Party of Iraq
 * Alliance of Independent Democrats – led by Adnan Pachachi
 * National Democratic Party – Naseer al-Chaderchi
 * Green Party of Iraq
 * Iraqi Democratic Union
 * Iraqi National Accord
 * Constitutional Monarchy Movement – led by Sharif Ali Bin al-Hussein
 * Assyrian Patriotic Party – on the Democratic Patriotic Alliance of Kurdistan list
 * Assyria Liberation Party
 * Kurdistan Conservative Party
 * Turkmen People's Party
 * Iraqi Islamic Party – led by Ayad al-Samarrai
 * Al Neshoor Party

Illegal parties

 * Hizb ut-Tahrir
 * Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party (Regional Command· National Command)

Iraqi parliamentary election, January 2005
Elections for the National Assembly of Iraq were held on January 30, 2005, in Iraq. The 275-member National Assembly was a parliament created under the Transitional Law during the Occupation of Iraq. The newly elected transitional Assembly was given a mandate to write the new and permanent Constitution of Iraq and exercised legislative functions until the new Constitution came into effect, and resulted in the formation of the Iraqi Transitional Government.

The United Iraqi Alliance, tacitly backed by Shia Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, led with some 48% of the vote. The Democratic Patriotic Alliance of Kurdistan was in second place with some 26% of the vote. Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's party, the Iraqi List, came third with some 14%. In total, twelve parties received enough votes to win a seat in the assembly.

Low Arab Sunni turnout threatened the legitimacy of the election, which was as low as 2% in Anbar province. More than 100 armed attacks on polling places took place, killing at least 44 people (including nine suicide bombers) across Iraq, including at least 20 in Baghdad.

Iraqi parliamentary election, December 2005
Following the ratification of the Constitution of Iraq on 15 October 2005, a general election was held on 15 December to elect the permanent 275-member Iraqi Council of Representatives.

The elections took place under a list system, whereby voters chose from a list of parties and coalitions. 230 seats were apportioned among Iraq's 18 governorates based on the number of registered voters in each as of the January 2005 elections, including 59 seats for Baghdad Governorate. The seats within each governorate were allocated to lists through a system of Proportional Representation. An additional 45 "compensatory" seats were allocated to those parties whose percentage of the national vote total (including out of country votes) exceeds the percentage of the 275 total seats that they have been allocated. Women were required to occupy 25% of the 275 seats. The change in the voting system gave more weight to Arab Sunni voters, who make up most of the voters in several provinces. It was expected that these provinces would thus return mostly Sunni Arab representatives, after most Sunnis boycotted the last election.

Turnout was high (79.6%). The White House was encouraged by the relatively low levels of violence during polling, with one insurgent group making good on a promised election day moratorium on attacks, even going so far as to guard the voters from attack. President Bush frequently pointed to the election as a sign of progress in rebuilding Iraq. However, post-election violence threatened to plunge the nation into civil war, before the situation began to calm in 2007. The election results themselves produced a shaky coalition government headed by Nouri al-Maliki.

Iraqi parliamentary election, 2010
A parliamentary election was held in Iraq on 7 March 2010. The election decided the 325 members of the Council of Representatives of Iraq who will elect the Iraqi Prime Minister and President. The election resulted in a partial victory for the Iraqi National Movement, led by former Interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, which won a total of 91 seats, making it the largest alliance in the council. The State of Law Coalition, led by incumbent Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki, was the second largest grouping with 89 seats.

The election was rife with controversy. Prior to the election, the Supreme Court in Iraq ruled that the existing electoral law/rule was unconstitutional, and a new elections law made changes in the electoral system. On 15 January 2010, the Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC) banned 499 candidates from the election due to alleged links with the Ba'ath Party. Before the start of the campaign on 12 February 2010, IHEC confirmed that most of the appeals by banned candidates had been rejected and 456 of the initially banned candidates would not be allowed to run for the election. There were numerous allegations of fraud, and a recount of the votes in Baghdad was ordered on 19 April 2010. On May 14, IHEC announced that after 11,298 ballot boxes had been recounted, there was no sign of fraud or violations.

The new parliament opened on 14 June 2010. After months of fraught negotiations, an agreement was reached on the formation of a new government on November 11. Talabani would continue as president, Al-Maliki would stay on as prime minister and Allawi would head a new security council.

Iraqi parliamentary election, 2014
Parliamentary elections were held in Iraq on 30 April 2014. The elections decided the 328 members of the Council of Representatives who will in turn elect the Iraqi President and Prime Minister.

Iraqi parliamentary election, 2021
On 30 November 2021, the political bloc led by Shia leader Muqtada al-Sadr was confirmed the winner of the October parliamentary election. His Sadrist Movement, won a total of 73 out of the 329 seats in the parliament. The Taqadum, or Progress Party-led by Parliament Speaker Mohammed al-Halbousi, a Sunni – secured 37 seats. Former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s State of Law party got 33 seats in parliament. Al-Fatah alliance, whose main components are militia groups affiliated with the Iran-backed Popular Mobilisation Forces, sustained its crushing loss and snatched 17 seats. The Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) received 31 seats, and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) gained 18.

After the election 2022-
In June 2022, 73 members of parliament from the Sadrist movement, resigned. On 27 October 2022, Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, close ally of former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, took the office to succeed Mustafa al-Kadhimi as new Prime Minister of Iraq.

Corruption
According to Transparency International, Iraq's is the most corrupt government in the Middle East, and is described as a "hybrid regime" (between a "flawed democracy" and an "authoritarian regime"). The 2011 report "Costs of War" from Brown University's Watson Institute for International Studies concluded that U.S. military presence in Iraq has not been able to prevent this corruption, noting that as early as 2006, "there were clear signs that post-Saddam Iraq was not going to be the linchpin for a new democratic Middle East."

Elite cartel ruling Iraq by muhasasa
During the regime of Saddam Hussein (1979–2003), several Iraqi opposition groups created a quota system by which Sunni Islamic, Shia Islamic, Kurdish and other religious or ethnic groups would be proportionally represented in a future new government. The U.S. in July 2003 selected the members of the Iraqi Governing Council, the forerunner of the first post–Hussein sovereign Iraqi (interim) government, according to that ethno-sectarian quota system.

Also in 2003, a "pact" (muhasasa ta’ifa) was struck by "the elite", holding that after a national election, the winning parties divide the ministerial positions in direct relationship to their success at the ballot box. After 2003, a second agreement (muhasasa) was made, holding that ministries and their budgets and other political positions must be proportionally placed under the "control" of "religious [or sectarian or ethnic] groups", "depending mostly on a group’s size", presuming such "groups" to be fully represented by one or several parties or lists taking part in the elections, or that national governments should "represent the different ethnic, religious and sectarian identities that make up the Iraqi society", presuming that such "identities" are expressed or represented by existing political parties. Such agreements between members of the elite to collude in order to avoid competition, improve their own profits, and dominate the market (of voters in a democracy), have been labeled "elite cartel". The political parties themselves, once they win any ministry through the muhasasa system, benefit financially from state contracts awarded by them to companies run by their party members (see below, section Clientelism, patronage) what makes it even harder for them to step out of the muhasasa arrangements. Or, as a researcher phrased it in 2020: "Such elite pacts are notoriously resistant to reform, particularly if any proposed change is perceived to undermine elite interests (…)".

Although the system functions informally, a group of Norwegian researchers in late 2020 asserted—while citing other researchers but not a basic source—that 54% of the ministry posts would 'normally' go to the Shia, 24% to the Sunni, 18% to the Kurds, and 4% to minorities including the Christians. They suggested that the muhasasa system leads to "a closed system of elite rule… recycling the political elites irrespective of their performance", not urging or inciting the Iraqi politicians to act transparently or accountably or to respond to citizen demands and deliver benefits to the Iraqi population as a whole, but instead making them easily susceptible to corruption, nepotism, clientelism and patronage while focusing on their own (group's) interests and (elite's) survival and consolidation.

This muhasasa elite cartel (and connected problems) led to massive protests in Iraq in 2011, 2012–2013, 2015, 2016, 2018 and 2019–2021. Analysts have seen this muhasasa system to exist until at least late 2020. The Abdul Mahdi Government of 2018 broke with elements of muhasasa. Although his anti-muhasasa Sadrist Movement retained plurality in the 2021 election, inability to form a government eventually led to the party's withdrawal from Parliament, allowing the rival parties to form another muhasasa-based government.

Incompetent government
Those two muhasasa agreements in and after 2003 (see above) had the effect that, starting with the first post–2003 Iraqi government after elections in 2006, if a party "controlled" a ministry, it appointed also the top positions in their civil services to their party followers and faction members; also the positions for senior public service were distributed on the basis of "ethnic, religious and/or party affiliation" rather than merit, professional competence or experience. This incompetence caused mismanagement in the successive Iraqi governments of Al-Maliki (2006–2014), Al-Abadi (2014–2018), and also Abdul-Mahdi (2018–2020), leading to hundreds of billions of dollars being wasted on failed projects and the neglect of electricity networks, the transportation sector, economic legislation, and other infrastructure, as well as citizen demands not being responded to. Such incompetence – next to other forms of political turmoil like corruption (see next subsection) and instability – is considered by many analysts to have also fostered the rise of ISIL, in 2014. (During the formation of the Abdul Mahdi Government in 2018, this new prime minister attempted to break through the traditional muhasasa procedures, but there's no clear information as to how far he succeeded in that, or whether the Iraqi governments since 2018 worked more competently or less corruptly.)

Clientelism, patronage
Civil services being staffed – under these muhasasa agreements (see above) – according to party loyalty had the effect that state contracts would only be awarded by them to "party-affiliated companies and businesspeople", who would be paid handsomely for their contracted services; even if they hardly, or not at all, actually delivered those services. Such manner of spending state finances has been labeled governmental contracting fraud and structural political corruption: not the general public but privileged companies were being served by the government. This culture of clientelism and "systemic political patronage" produced a new class of entrepreneurs, getting rich through close relations with government officials and their lush government contracts. Meanwhile, politicians themselves lived in wealth, self-enrichment and massive personal protection.

Stagnant economy
The infrastructure not being maintained or modernized due to governmental incompetence and mismanagement (see above) severely hampered the development of private economic activity, therefore meaning the private sector could not absorb the half million of young people entering the job market every year. This muhasasa-style 'cartel' government, due to its lack of accountability – politicians being "recycled ... irrespective of their performance" – provided too little incentives for those politicians to build a diversified and competitive economy or "deliver benefits to the population".

title: Politics of Iraq