Iraq A country known in the ancient world as Mesopotamia, it became part of the
Ottoman Empire in 1638. After World War I, it became a British
League of Nations Mandate in 1920. In an effort to create a viable state structure, the British installed the
Hashemite dynasty under
Faisal I to rule the country. With the help of his chief minister,
Nuri al-Said, he managed to establish a strong state, in which he was aided by his good relations with the British, who granted effective independence in 1932. Iraq tried to remain neutral during World War II, but after the abortive pro-German coup by
Rashid, under
Faisal II and
Abd al-Ilah it came under greater British control again.
In 1958 Faisal responded to the foundation of the
United Arab Republic by linking up with Jordan in the
Arab Federation. This broke up a few months later, as Faisal was deposed in a military coup and a republic proclaimed by the new leader,
Qassem. Qassem's attempts to deflect domestic attention away from current economic difficulties to his attempt at occupying Kuwait was foiled by British and international guarantees for Kuwait, as well as the outbreak of a large-scale Kurdish rebellion in the north. In 1963 Qassem was deposed by a rival army faction.
After Iraq's failure in the
Six Day War, another coup brought to power the
Ba'ath Party in 1968. The new secular, nationalist regime sought to reform society, for example through the emancipation of women. The country's profits from oil revenues were used to build up a modern infrastructure, industry was diversified, and oil production was nationalized. This led to an economic boycott by most Western countries in 1972, and induced the leadership under Ahmad Hasan Al Bakr to seek even closer cooperation with the USSR. Through his control of the Ba'ath Party, during the 1970s power shifted gradually to Saddam
Hussein.
Hussein established a personal dictatorship, based on the loyalty of the elite revolutionary guards, the extensive secret police machinery, and the control of his own family over state, economy, and society. The repressive nature of Hussein's regime emphasized the fundamental problem of any Iraqi regime. Its economy, and hence his ability to maintain his position through extensive patronage, depended on the country's oil reserves, estimated to be the second largest in the world. However, most of these lay in rebellious
Kurdistan in the north, as well as in the territory inhabitated largely by the country's
Shi'ite minority in the southern wetlands. The increasing demands of both Kurds and Shi'ites for greater autonomy thus posed a fundamental challenge to the subsistence of the regime. The large Shi'ite minority (of around 40 per cent) posed an existential threat at the time of the Iranian Revolution in 1979, which established a Shi'ite theocracy there under
Ayatollah Khomeini. To forestall a spillover into Iraq, and to satisfy Hussein's own thirst for greater power at a time of Iranian weakness, Iraqi forces attacked Iran, and precipitated the
Iran–Iraq War (1980–8). It ended in a stalemate between the two countries, though its effect on the morale of the decimated population, and the destroyed economy and infrastructure, was enormous.
Faced with a high foreign debt and rapid inflation, Iraq was especially hard-hit by a low world price for oil, caused by generous production quotas among other
OPEC countries. Hussein's occupation of Kuwait in 1990, which precipitated the
Gulf War, was thus an attempt to play to nationalist feelings which had always looked upon Kuwait as an Iraqi province, and to gain control over the world's third-largest oil reserves, which would have given Iraq much power in the world market for oil. However, Hussein's attempted annexation failed, largely due to US resolve under
Bush. Hussein's second defeat in 1991 was almost more catastrophic than the destruction caused by the Iran–Iraq War. He managed to hang on to power, but not without brutally repressing a rebellion of the Shi'ite population in the South, in which an estimated 300,000 Shi'ites were murdered. Hussein also killed thousands of rebellious Kurds, but in 1993 he was forced to accept Kurdish autonomy in the north. Throughout the 1990s, the
UN supervised a system of international sanctions. These appeared to be ineffective at limiting his power, and they increased the hardship for the population. The UN initiated an ‘oil-for-food’ programme, which allowed Iraq to export oil products for foodstuffs and medical supplies. Until 1998, the UN also destroyed large quantities of chemical and biological weapons amassed by Hussein. Following the
September 11 attacks, the US worked towards a policy of ‘regime change’, as Iraq became part of what it considered an ‘Axis of Evil’ (along with North Korea and Iran). On 20 March 2003, the US and the UK began the
Iraq War, and by 9 April they had toppled Hussein. After the war, the full scale of Hussein's
human rights atrocities were revealed, as a host of mass graves containing up to 15,000 bodies each were discovered. UN Resolution 1483, passed in May 2003, authorized the US to control Iraq's process of democratization. Under overall US control, Iraq was divided into a British zone in the south, a larger northern section including Baghdad administered by the US, and a smaller central section run by a coalition of troops headed by Poland. Led by Paul Bremer from May 2003, the US administration in Iraq found it difficult to establish security for US troops and for the civilian population at large. The US was largely frustrated in its attempts to spread the burden of reconstruction. In October 2003, the US did manage to secure international assistance of $33bn, but $20bn of this money was provided by the US itself. Saddam Hussein was captured by US troops on 13 December 2003. They planned to hand him over to a public domestic war-crimes tribunal. The US administration aimed at organizing elections by July 2004, though US and UK troops were destined to stay in Iraq for years more.
Kurdistan
