Past

Early History

Contemporary Iraq occupies territory that historians regard as the site of the earliest civilizations of the Middle East. Because of its lush vegetation and ample water supply, ancient Mesopotamia (the land between the rivers, so named because the Oxus and Jaxartes rivers, now the Tigris and Euphrates, flowed through it) attracted settlers before 6000 B.C. In Sumer, or southern Mesopotamia, elements of early urban culture developed in response to the unpredictable natural rhythm of the rivers. The Sumerians introduced writing, literature, the wheel, astronomy, irrigation, and a highly developed sense of religion. Because the Sumerians worshiped the number 60, hours, minutes, and circles were divided into 60 units.  

The Sumerians dominated southern Mesopotamia from 3360 B.C. until about 2000 B.C., when they were conquered by the Amorites. In the early eighteenth century B.C., the Babylonian king Hammurabi (whose dynasty took its name from the capital city of the Amorites, Babylon) established a complex law code upon which later civilizations based their laws. In the early sixteenth century B.C., the Hittite tribe destroyed Babylon and established a new kingdom, which collapsed around 1200 B.C. After a period of disunity, Mesopotamia was occupied by the Semitic Assyrians in the ninth century B.C. Hated for their cruel military rule, the Assyrians were overthrown by local tribes in 612 B.C. The Chaldeans, who succeeded the Assyrians, reestablished Babylon under King Nebuchadnezzar (ruled 605–562 B.C.). In 539 B.C., Cyrus the Great incorporated Mesopotamia into the Persian Empire. The conquest of Persian Babylon by Alexander the Great in the early 330s B.C. began a period of political disruption and brought substantial Greek influence into the region.

Iraq was conquered by the Parthians in 126 B.C. and by the Iranian Sassanians in 227 A.D. By 650 Arab tribes gained full control of the region from the Iranians, introducing Islam to what had been a mainly Christian group of tribes ruled by the Iranians in Iraq. The first great Arab dynasty, the Abbasid Caliphate, ruled the region from Baghdad between 750 and 1258. The fundamental schism of Islam, between the Shia and Sunni branches, which had occurred in the late 600s, stood in the background of the Abbasid and ensuing Islamic dynasties. A great Arab cultural flowering occurred under Al Mamun (ruled 813–33), but in the ninth and tenth centuries Turkish warriors, the Mamluks, achieved substantial influence under the Abbasids. The Mamluks’ successors, the Seljuks, built a de facto empire around Baghdad before being conquered by the Mongols in the early thirteenth century. Under the leaders Chinggis Khan and, later, Timur, the Mongols destroyed much of urban Iraqi culture.

The Ottoman Period

Beginning in the early sixteenth century, the Sunni Turkish Ottoman Empire struggled against the Shia Persian Safavi Empire for control of Iraq. The Ottoman Empire controlled Iraq for most of the ensuing four centuries. However, the Safavis made substantial inroads, and Iraq was under the de facto authority of tribal confederations beginning in the seventeenth century. This trend was reversed in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries as the Mamluks took control of most of modern-day Iraq. After Mamluk rule ended in 1831, the tanzimat administrative and educational reforms of the Ottoman ruler Midhat Pasha increased the influence of urban culture in Iraq. In the same period, Western Europe established commercial outposts and brought technological advances to Iraq. Beginning in 1908, the influence of the pro-Western Young Turk faction in the Ottoman government introduced democratic concepts while alienating Arab parts of the empire by a campaign to centralize and “Turkify” Ottoman holdings.

By the early twentieth century, the decrepit Ottoman Empire was an area of conflict among the European powers. In World War I, British and Ottoman forces fought on Iraqi territory. After leading a revolt by Arab tribes in Iraq, Transjordan, and Syria, in 1917 the British occupied most of modern-day Iraq. Disappointing Arab ambitions for independence after the war, the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 made Iraq a British territory under a League of Nations mandate. The postwar British government faced nationalist sentiment that evolved into terrorist activity by secret societies. The Great Iraqi Revolution of 1920 united Shias and Sunnis and brought about an Arab provisional government headed by King Faisal, son of a Saudi royal line. Faisal never established legitimacy or stability in Iraq because he was not an Iraqi by birth; he remained under British control, and his government was predominantly Sunni.

Independent Iraq

Throughout the 1920s, nationalist Iraqis pressed the British for independence. Iraq became fully independent in 1932, retaining a special relationship with Britain. However, Iraq’s formation into a state was hindered by the ongoing Shia–Sunni split, the ambitions of many factions to gain power in the new state, and the fragmenting effect of arbitrary borders and tribalism. Ethnic groups such as the Kurds and the Assyrians strongly resisted inclusion. In 1933 Assyrian resistance was marked by the massacre of several hundred Assyrian villagers by the Iraqi army. The death of Faisal in 1933 led to a successful coup against the destabilized government by General Bakr Sidqi, a Kurd, in 1936. In 1939 the death of Faisal’s son Ghazi ended a period of Iraqi pan-Arabism and increased nationalism and anti-British sentiment. Subsequent decades would be marked by nationalism at home and quickly changing relations with Iraq’s neighbors.

World War II brought new changes. In 1941 radical nationalist Rashid Ali overthrew the pro-British government of Nuri as Sad, precipitating a British invasion, restoration of the monarchy, and further alienation of the powerful nationalist factions from the Iraqi government. Beginning in 1943, Iraq was a base of Allied operations in the Middle East. The international stress of World War II exacerbated Iraq’s economic and ethnic fragmentation and set the stage for two events of importance in 1948. An uprising, known as the “Wathbah,” forced Iraq to renounce the Treaty of Portsmouth, which called for cooperation with Britain, and Iraq subsequently sent troops to fight in the first Arab-Israeli War. In the early 1950s, economic hardship increased sentiment against the government. Major protests occurred in 1952 and 1956. A new Arab secular party, the Baathists, grew from the intellectual community and gained support among the military. Inspired by Egypt’s opposition to Iraq’s membership in the British-led Baghdad Pact and by long-standing public unrest, in 1958 a revolt led by General Abdul Karim Qasim overthrew the monarchy and established a republic. Qasim’s government failed to consolidate Iraq, however, and its overthrow by the Baath Party in 1963 began a period of coups, instability, and military domination in the mid-1960s. Following Iraq’s controversial role in the Arab-Israeli War of 1967, the Baathists returned to power in 1968. In the ensuing decade, the Baath Party consolidated power under Ahmad Hasan al Bakr and Saddam Hussein. By 1970 the latter was the dominant force in Iraqi politics.

Iraq under Saddam Hussein

In the 1970s, Saddam Hussein was able to patch relations with most Arab states, substantially improve economic conditions, and in 1979 replace al Bakr as president of Iraq. Internally, he began a pattern of ruthless manipulation and extermination of enemies that would continue throughout his regime. In 1980 long-standing territorial disputes and the perception of Iran’s weakness following its 1979 fundamentalist revolution led Iraq to invade Iran. Despite international mediation efforts, the ensuing war lasted until 1988 and killed between 500,000 and 1 million people. In the same period, Kurdish insurgents in northeastern Iraq took advantage of the war to press militarily and diplomatically for Kurdish autonomy. Iraq’s invasion of neighboring Kuwait precipitated the Gulf War of early 1991 in which a United Nations (UN) force led by the United States defeated Iraq decisively. Withdrawal of that force from Iraq was followed by long-term arms restrictions, protected autonomous status for Iraq’s Kurds, and economic sanctions. Iraq’s observance of arms restrictions became the subject of international controversy in the 1990s and early 2000s.

The 1990s were marked by new moves toward autonomy by the Kurds, periodic Iraqi resistance to arms inspections and “no-fly” restrictions in northern and southern Iraq, and progressive deterioration of living standards in Iraq because of international sanctions. A UN Oil-for-Food Program, established in 1997, did not relieve the domestic crisis. The terrorist attacks on the United States in 2001 brought a reassessment of U.S. policy toward Iraq as a threat to international stability. Although Iraq agreed to unconditional arms inspections in 2002, in March 2003 a coalition force led by the United States invaded Iraq on the grounds that the regime was concealing weapons of mass destruction and had supported the attacks of 2001. The invasion quickly toppled Saddam Hussein from power.

Post–Saddam Hussein

In mid-2003, the Coalition Provisional Authority established by the United States named an interim Coalition Governing Council of Iraqis, which was empowered only to facilitate the next stage of government formation. From 2003 through early 2005, insurgent and terrorist activities blocked the normalization of government and services, primarily in Sunni-dominated central Iraq. A provisional Iraqi government assumed nominal control in mid-2004, but U.S. and coalition forces remained in place without substantial reduction in 2006. In January 2005, a national election chose members of an interim parliament charged with electing an interim president and writing a constitution. Two months after a national referendum approved a new constitution in October 2005, a permanent parliament was elected. In June 2006, the approval of a full, permanent government under Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki followed months of harsh debate about power distribution among Iraq’s major sects. The effectiveness of the new coalition government remained in doubt, however, and reconstruction of the economy and civil society remained slow. Meanwhile, the death of insurgent leader Abu Musab al Zarqawi in May 2006 was followed by an escalation of militia activity and terrorist attacks, especially on civilian targets close to Baghdad. In the early months of his administration, Maliki made sectarian reconciliation a top priority.

Source: Library of Congress – Federal Research Division Country Profile