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.
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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, re-established 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 Sassanids 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 the 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 Safavid Empire for control of Iraq. The Ottoman Empire controlled Iraq for most of the ensuing four centuries. However, the Safavids 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 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, 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 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 Husayn. By 1970 the latter was the dominant force in Iraqi politics.
Iraq under Saddam Husayn: In the 1970s, Saddam Husayn 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 U.S.-
Topography: Iraq has four main topographical regions. The desert zone of Iraq’s west and southwest is part of the Syrian Desert, dominated by wide, flat, sandy expanses. The uplands region occupies most of Iraq’s northern part, beginning about 120 kilometers north of Baghdad and including the watersheds of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers to the Syrian border. Primarily desert, the region is characterized by deep river valleys. The third region is the northern highlands, which includes all of Iraq’s northeasternmost territory and extends into neighboring Turkey and Iran. A series of elevation rises, interspersed with steppes, gives way to mountains as high as 4,000 meters near the Iranian and Turkish borders. The fourth region is the alluvial plain that extends from north of Baghdad southward to the Persian Gulf, following the lower Tigris and Euphrates rivers. The area, which is a large delta, includes lakes and marshlands. The extent of marshland in the alluvial plain varies according to the volume of water carried by the rivers in flood season. In their lower reaches, the two rivers break into several channels.
Principal Rivers: The Tigris and Euphrates, which rise in Turkey, form the dominant river system of Iraq. About 150 kilometers north of the Persian Gulf, the rivers join at Al Qurnah to form the Shatt al Arab, which then flows into the gulf. Several major tributaries of the Tigris flow through Iraq. The Khabur, the Great Zab, the Little Zab, the Uzaym, and the Diyala all flow into the Tigris from the northeastern highlands.
Climate: Most of Iraq has a desert climate, with mild winters and dry, hot summers. The northeastern uplands have cold winters with occasionally heavy snowfalls. In the western desert and the northeastern foothills, average winter temperatures range from a low of 0° C to a high of 15° C, and average summer temperatures range from a low of 22° C to a high of 38° C. In the alluvial plain, the winter range is 4° C to 17° C, and the summer range is 29° C to 43° C. About 90 percent of Iraq’s rainfall occurs between November and April. Except in the northern uplands and the northeastern highlands, average annual rainfall is 100 to 170 millimeters. In the uplands, the range is 320 to 570 millimeters, and in the mountains the annual total may reach 1,000 millimeters.
Natural Resources: Iraq’s arable land has been rich and productive, particularly in the lower alluvial plain. The substantial amounts of arable land in the northwestern uplands region require irrigation. Because of its river systems, Iraq has the most abundant water reserves in its region. Hydrocarbons are Iraq’s most important natural resource. Depending on the estimate, Iraq has the second or third largest oil deposits in the world. Confirmed reserves total 112.5 billion barrels. Natural gas deposits are estimated at 3.1 trillion cubic meters, about 2 percent of total world reserves. Other mineral resources include phosphates, estimated to total 10 billion tons, and sulfur deposits located near Mosul.
Land Use: About 13 percent of Iraq’s land surface is classified as arable; some 0.78 percent of the total land is planted to permanent crops. In 1998 some 35,250 square kilometers of cropland were irrigated.
Environmental Factors: Events of 1980–2005 have created environmental crises of emergency proportions. Military operations in three wars (1980–88, 1991, and 2003 to present) have left unexploded ordnance and land mines in exposed positions, killing or wounding an estimated 100,000 people in the early 2000s. Because of infrastructure damage, significant parts of the population do not have adequate water supply or sanitation systems, and sites where municipal and medical wastes have accumulated carry the risk of disease epidemics. The wartime destruction of military and industrial infrastructure has released heavy metals and other hazardous substances into the air, soil, and groundwater. Numerous spills have resulted from damage to Iraq’s oil infrastructure, and the lack of water treatment facilities at Iraqi refineries has led to pollution from those installations. In the alluvial plain, soil quality has been damaged by the deposit of large amounts of salts, borne by irrigation overflows and wind and promoted by poor soil drainage. Desertification and erosion also have reduced arable land. Transboundary pollution and a lack of river basin management by the government have led to the degradation of Iraq's major waterways. Under Saddam Husayn, the government drained the extensive marshes in the lower reaches of the alluvial plain, changing water circulation and wildlife patterns over a wide area; beginning in 2004, some restoration has occurred. Flooding danger in the alluvial plain has decreased since construction of dams upstream on the Euphrates. Although the interim government appointed in 2004 included a Ministry of Environment, long-term environmental crises such as the depletion of marshland in the Shatt al Arab have a low priority.
Time Zone: Iraq’s one time zone is three hours ahead of Greenwich Mean Time.