History

Recent History

Though its people continued to suffer, Iraq dropped out of the Western media's gaze until the terrorist attacks in the US on September 11, 2001. The US-led war on terror initially focused on Afghanistan, but it wasn't long before Iraq was once more enemy number one on the White House hit-list. Though UN inspection teams found little to indicate a weapons of mass destruction program, Washington deemed that Iraq had run out of time. In the face of strong international condemnation, the 'coalition of the willing' invaded Iraq on 20 March 2003.

The Iraqi forces more or less capitulated. On April 9 2003, US forces took central Baghdad, Saddam's statue was toppled and with it went his regime. The resultant power-vacuum saw the country tip over into chaos. The transition to a new Iraqi government was slow, costly and often violent, with numerous Shia militia insurgencies, car bombings, ambush attacks on coalition troops and kidnappings of foreign civilians taking a high toll on all and sundry.

An interim government took charge in June 2004, but Iraq was a long way from stabilising. The country's future remained very much in the balance.

Two elections, a new constitution and a new government all made an appearance in 2005, but Iraq is a long way from stabilising. The country's future remains very much in the balance.

Modern Day History

Britain took control of Iraq following the collapse of the Ottoman empire, and the country became independent in 1932. On 14 July 1958, the monarchy was overthrown in a military coup and Iraq became a republic, ushering in a period of instability characterised by a series of coups and countercoups that continued throughout the 1960s.

The Arab-Israeli conflict of 1967 caused Iraq to turn to the Soviet Union for support, accusing the USA and UK of supporting Israel. On 17 July 1968, a bloodless coup by the Ba'ath Party, a secular socialist party founded in Syria in 1942, put General Ahmad Hassan al-Bakr in power. The 1970s represented a period of relative stability. In 1975, Iraq and Iran decided to settle their differences, and a boundary line was drawn down the middle of the Shatt al-Arab waterway.

The period also saw a rapprochement between the Kurds and Iraqi authorities, conflict between whom had been simmering since 1961. Iraq became a more stable country, and the economy improved on the back of growing oil revenues.

In 1979 Saddam Hussein replaced Al-Bakr as president, the revolution in Iran took place and relations between the two countries quickly sank to an all-time low. Iraq reignited the Shatt al-Arab waterway dispute. The Sunni-dominated Iraqi government was increasingly concerned about the threat of an Iran-style Shia-majority revolution in his own country.

Clashes took place along the border during 1980 and full-scale war broke out on 22 September when Iraqi forces entered Iran. The eight years of war that followed were brutal and bloody, all for little territorial gain. On the waters of the Guld, oil and other supply ships were destroyed. In March 1988 Kurdish guerrillas occupied government-controlled territory in Iraqi Kurdistan; in response, the Iraqi government killed thousands of civilians, forcing many more to escape to Iran and Turkey, and allegedly used chemical weapons.

Hostilities ceased in August 1988. In the eight years of war, a million lives had been lost on both sides, and Iraq's economic burden was estimated at more than US$100 billion. As Iraq started to emerge from the ravages of the war, relations with neighbouring Kuwait began to sour. In July 1990, Hussein accused the Kuwaitis (with some justification) of waging 'economic warfare' against Iraq by attempting to artificially hold down the price of oil, and of stealing oil from the Iraqi portion of an oilfield straddling the border.

Arab attempts to mediate a peaceful end to the dispute failed and on 2 August 1990 Iraq invaded Kuwait, thinking it enjoyed tacit US approval. Though the UN condemned the move, Iraq annexed the emirate as its 19th province.

Western countries, led by the USA, imposed a trade embargo and more than half a million troops from 27 countries flooded into Saudi Arabia as the diplomatic stand-off over Kuwait deepened.

Despite frantic last-minute attempts by international leaders to broker a deal, the UN's 15 January deadline for withdrawal passed, the Iraqis did not budge. A barrage of Tomahawk cruise missiles signalled the start of the Gulf War. Allied (mostly US) aircraft began a five week bombing campaign over Iraq and Kuwait. In contrast, the subsequent ground offensive lasted only 100 hours. While there were relatively few casualties on the Allied side, estimates of civilian and military deaths on the Iraqi side range from 10,000 to more than 100,000.

A ceasefire was announced on 28 February 1991. The Security Council demanded the eradication of all weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and WMD-development programs before UN sanctions would be lifted.

The elite remnants of the Iraqi army turned their guns on Kurdish and Shiite uprisings in the north and south, leading the Allied forces to impose two 'no-fly' zones. As malnutrition increased and medical care became inadequate throughout Iraq, the oil-for-food plan was introduced in 1996. Meanwhile, the US and UK used the no-fly zones to launch regular bombing raids into Iraqi territory.

Pre 20th Century History

Iraq's mantle as the 'cradle of civilisation' is more than well-deserved. The region once known as Mesopotamia gave birth to the Sumerian, Akkadian, Aramean Babylonian and Aramean Assyrian civilisations, and thus played crucial roles in the development of agrarian society, codes of writing, religion and art.

The region subsequently fell into a decline and came under the tutelage of various Persian and Seleucid dynasties for some centuries. The region rose in importance for a second time however with the rise of Islam. Muslim Arabs stormed Mesopotamia in AD 656 as part of their rampage throughout the region. The strategic importance of the region's waterways played a key part in the political consolidation of the vigorous new monotheistic parvenu. By 762, the Abassid Caliphate had moved to Baghdad, which - as the descendant of nearby Babylon - soon came to rival its progenitor's historical fame as one of the world's great centres of power, religion, art and learning. Baghdad remained a site of contestation for some time. In 1258 a grandson of the feared Mongol ruler Genghis Khan laid waste to Baghdad, and killed the last Abbasid caliph. Political power in the Muslim World shifted elsewhere. Finally the Ottomans established suzerainty over the region and incorporated it into their Istanbul-centric empire in 1534.