🇮🇶 Iraq

Sumer emerged in southern Mesopotamia between 6000 and 5000 BC, marking the beginning of urban development, written language and monumental architecture. It also developed advanced canal systems. Iraq's territory subsequently held the heartlands of the Akkadian, Neo-Sumerian, Babylonian, Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian empires.

After the Achaemenid conquest, Mesopotamia remained a core imperial region with local institutions preserved. Cyrus the Great adopted Mesopotamian royal titles including King of Babylon and King of Sumer and Akkad, and Babylon became an imperial capital, while Aramaic became the empire's administrative lingua franca.

Alexander's campaign of 331 BC placed Mesopotamia under Macedonian rule, and he intended to make Babylon his imperial capital. The plan was abandoned after his death in 323 BC and Seleucia was founded as the imperial capital in Mesopotamia, with Babylon's population resettled there.

Following Alexander's death in 323 BC, Seleucia became the imperial capital in Mesopotamia and administrative and economic power remained centred there. Babylonian economic traditions persisted, including use of the silver shekel, alongside temple authorities, scholarly traditions and cuneiform writing.

The loss of the Mesopotamian capital at Ctesiphon during the Arab conquests brought Sasanian rule to an end, the Iranic state having become dependent on the Iraqi Sawad for revenue. After the conquest Iraq emerged as politically and culturally distinct from Syria, a division noted by Byzantine authors such as Theophanes.

The Rashidun caliph Ali moved the caliphal seat into Iraq, greatly strengthening the region's political importance. Under the subsequent Umayyads the governor of Iraq frequently exercised authority over much of the empire's eastern provinces.

After Karbala in 680, Iraq became the primary locus of Alid political opposition. This legacy was later mobilised by the Abbasid Caliphate when establishing its rule from Iraq.

During the Abbasid period Iraq produced large quantities of opaque glazed pottery traded as commercial goods across the Indian Ocean. Pottery, calligraphy and illuminated manuscripts reached a high level of sophistication, and a stylistic movement in manuscript illustration emerged in the late 12th century.

With Baghdad's founding in 762, Iraq became the political, economic and intellectual core of the Islamic world during the Islamic Golden Age, housing institutions such as the House of Wisdom. Abbasid Iraq generated the highest state revenues of the caliphate, four times those of Egypt, drawing on the agricultural productivity of the south; rulers invested heavily in canal restoration and land cultivation.

From the tenth century effective power shifted from the Abbasid caliphs to local dynasties including the Hamdanids, Buyids, Uqaylids and Mazyadids, which competed for control of Iraqi cities while receiving formal caliphal recognition. This decentralised order shaped Iraqi politics for roughly a century.

The Seljuk capture of Baghdad in 1055 ended the era of decentralised local rule and Buyid dominance in Iraq. The Abbasid caliphs were reduced to largely ceremonial figures under Seljuk authority.

In 1258 the Mongols captured and sacked Baghdad, causing widespread destruction and ending Abbasid political rule in Iraq. Iraq was incorporated into the Ilkhanate as a territorial province, though agriculture and urban life gradually recovered under Ilkhanid rule.

Following the collapse of Mongol rule in the fourteenth century, the Jalayirids, a dynasty of Mongol origin, governed Iraq from Baghdad. Their authority was later replaced by the Qara Qoyunlu Turkoman confederation.

The Qara Qoyunlu Turkoman confederation took Baghdad in the early fifteenth century and ruled much of Iraq. In the later fifteenth century the Aq Qoyunlu defeated them and controlled Iraq as part of a wider regional empire.

Ismail I's conquest of Baghdad in 1508 ended the period of Turkmen rule in Iraq. It brought the region into the Safavid Empire and set the stage for prolonged Ottoman–Safavid contestation.

Suleiman I's conquest in 1534 brought Iraq into the Ottoman Empire, where it remained until the First World War. Iraq became a major frontier of the Ottoman–Safavid wars during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, with Baghdad changing hands several times.

The 1639 Treaty of Zuhab ended the repeated exchange of Baghdad and confirmed Ottoman sovereignty over Iraq. Iraq was thereafter organised into the provinces of Baghdad, Basra, Mosul and Shahrizor, collectively termed Hıtta-i Irakiyye.

From 1749 to 1831 Georgian-origin Mamluks governed Iraq with substantial independence while acknowledging the Ottoman sultan. Their overthrow in 1831 began the centralisation of Iraq under Baghdad.

After the Mamluk dynasty's overthrow in 1831, Viceroy Namık Pasha extended Baghdad's authority via military and administrative reform. Midhat Pasha introduced further reforms in taxation, land registration, infrastructure, education and communications, often seen as laying the groundwork for modern Iraq.

The site of Nineveh had lain buried for centuries until excavations by Botta and Layard in 1845. The discoveries recovered Mesopotamia's ancient Assyrian heritage for scholarship.

The British launched the Mesopotamian campaign against Ottoman Iraq during the First World War and occupied Baghdad in 1917. The campaign ended Ottoman military control and set the stage for British administration.

In 1920 Ottoman Iraq was formally dissolved and the British Mandate of Mesopotamia established under a League of Nations mandate, unifying the former Ottoman provinces of Mosul, Baghdad and Basra into what became Iraq. Britain had occupied the territory during the First World War. Faisal, son of Sharif Hussein, had briefly declared a Kingdom of Syria the same year, but it was crushed by France.

Resistance to foreign control produced a nationwide anti-British rebellion beginning in Baghdad. The British military responded with air bombing of the capital, killing thousands of residents and prompting a rethink of imperial strategy.

The 1921 Cairo Conference, led by figures including Winston Churchill and T. E. Lawrence, selected the exiled Faisal as monarch. The decision was intended to preserve British influence while satisfying local demands for leadership.

Faisal I was crowned on 23 August 1921, timed to coincide with Eid al-Ghadeer to court the Shi'a community, and the country's official English name changed from Mesopotamia to Iraq. Faisal built state institutions, fostered national identity, founded Ahl al-Bayt University, encouraged Syrian exiles to serve as doctors and educators, and planned rail and pipeline links to the Mediterranean.

The 1930 treaty gave Iraq a measure of political independence while preserving British control over key areas including military presence and oil rights. It marked the transition from mandate to nominal sovereignty.

The end of the British Mandate in October made Iraq the first Arab state to gain League of Nations membership. The Hashemite monarchy, installed by Britain in 1921, continued to rule until 1958.

Faisal I died of a heart attack on 8 September 1933 after a reign devoted to balancing external influence against demands for sovereignty. His son Ghazi succeeded him and reigned briefly and turbulently amid numerous coup attempts, dying in a motor accident in 1939.

Iraq Radio was founded in 1936 with a musical ensemble made up entirely of Jews except for the percussionist. Iraq also hosted the second television station in the Middle East, beginning in the 1950s.

Ghazi's death in 1939 brought the three-year-old Faisal II to the throne. His uncle, Crown Prince Abdullah, assumed the regency until the king came of age.

On 1 April 1941 al-Gaylani and Golden Square officers seized power and installed a pro-German and pro-Italian government. Britain, fearing an oil cut-off, invaded on 2 May; British forces with loyal Assyrian Levies defeated al-Gaylani and imposed an armistice on 31 May.

The Jewish population, estimated at 200,000 in 1948, fell sharply as Jews fled persecution following Israel's establishment, with 100,000 remaining. Numbers had reached 15,000 by the time Saddam came to power and around 400 remain today, though Iraq retains over 250 Jewish sites.

The regency ended on 2 May 1953, Faisal II's eighteenth birthday. Hopes for the reign were high, but the Sunni-dominated monarchy struggled to reconcile Shiite, Assyrian, Jewish and Kurdish populations who felt marginalised.

The 14 July 1958 military coup, anti-imperial and anti-monarchical with strong socialist elements, overthrew the Hashemite monarchy and established a republic. King Faisal II, Prince Abd al-Ilah and Nuri al-Sa'id were killed along with much of the royal family. Qasim ruled through the military and began forcibly redistributing surplus land held by a small elite, until he was himself overthrown and killed in 1963.

Law no. 188 of 1959 made polygamy extremely difficult, granted child custody to the mother in divorce cases, prohibited repudiation and banned marriage under the age of 16. It represented a significant extension of women's legal protections.

The 1959 Mosul uprising challenged Qasim's rule and was crushed by government forces. It illustrated the instability of the early republic.

When Kuwait gained independence in 1961 Qasim asserted an Iraqi claim to it. Britain deployed troops to the Iraq–Kuwait border, forcing Qasim to back down; the claim resurfaced decades later.

Qasim was toppled by the Ba'ath Party in February 1963. Internal division among Ba'athist factions produced a second coup in November that brought Colonel Abdul Salam Arif to power; the new regime recognised Kuwait's independence.

Under Abdul Rahman Arif, who succeeded his brother in 1966, Iraq participated in the 1967 Six-Day War. The episode tied Iraq into the wider Arab–Israeli confrontation.

The 17 July Revolution of 1968 overthrew Abdul Rahman Arif and installed a one-party Ba'athist state, bringing Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr to the presidency with Saddam Hussein as his deputy and effective internal security chief. Power gradually shifted to Saddam, who sought stability among Iraq's ethnic and religious groups, and Ba'athist rule continued until the 2003 US-led invasion.

The first Iraqi–Kurdish war ended in 1970 with a treaty between Saddam and Barzani that granted Kurdish autonomy. During the 1970s the leadership also offered peace initiatives to Assyrians and invited exiled Iraqi Jews to return.

In the 1970s Iraq developed a centralised, hospital-based free health care system reliant on large-scale imports of medicines, equipment and nurses paid for with oil income. By 1990, 97% of urban dwellers and 71% of the rural population had access to free primary health care, with only 2% of hospital beds privately managed.

Oil was nationalised in 1972 and revenues were directed to government development projects. The state introduced free healthcare and education, promoted women's rights and built infrastructure; during the 1970s Iraq produced up to 3.5 million barrels of oil per day.

Iraq joined Syria and Egypt in the 1973 war against Israel. The commitment reinforced Iraq's role in Arab collective military action.

The second Kurdish war began in 1974 alongside clashes with Iran on the Shatt al-Arab, with Iran backing Kurdish militants. The conflict exposed Iraq's vulnerability to external support for internal insurgency.

The 1975 Algiers Agreement resolved the border dispute with Iran, which withdrew support for Kurdish militants. The Kurdish rebellion was consequently defeated.

The 1977 attempt to ban the annual pilgrimage to Karbala provoked an uprising by Shia Muslims across Iraq. A further Shia uprising followed from 1979 to 1980 in the wake of the Islamic Revolution in Iran.

On 16 July 1979 Saddam Hussein took the presidency and the chairmanship of the Revolutionary Command Council, Iraq's supreme executive body, following al-Bakr's resignation. Having already accumulated significant control over the security apparatus, he consolidated personal rule over the one-party state and purged dozens of rivals within the party in the days after taking office.

Iraq invaded Iran in September 1980 after months of cross-border raids, Saddam Hussein aiming to exploit post-revolutionary instability, and captured territory in the southwest before Iran recaptured it and went on the offensive for six years. Sunni-led Arab states and the United States backed Iraq, and Saddam used chemical weapons extensively. The war ended in stalemate in 1988 with a UN-brokered ceasefire, having killed between half a million and 1.5 million people, with estimates of around one million on both sides combined.

In 1981 Israel struck and destroyed a nuclear reactor in Iraq. The attack set back Iraq's nuclear ambitions during the Iran–Iraq War.

Kurdish rebellion between 1983 and 1986 was met by the government-coordinated Anfal campaign, which killed an estimated 50,000 to 100,000 civilians. The genocidal campaign left a lasting rupture between Baghdad and the Kurdish population.

Sanctions imposed following the invasion of Kuwait caused sharp economic decline and crippled the oil sector, barring exports until 1996 and cutting output by 85%. They were lifted in 2003 after the US-led invasion.

The 2 June announcement by the two Iran-aligned militia factions came amid pressure to formalise the status of armed groups following the regional war. It fell short of full disarmament and left implementation details unclear.

The 28 June operation targeted current and former officials over financial corruption allegations. It came under the newly installed government of prime minister Ali al-Zaidi.

The 14 May vote approved 14 of his proposed cabinet positions, leaving the government only partially formed. Al-Zaidi succeeded Mohammed Shia' al-Sudani, whose Reconstruction and Development Coalition had won a plurality in November's election.

The team beat Bolivia 2-1 in an intercontinental play-off in Mexico on 1 April to secure its place. Iraq had last appeared at the tournament in 1986.

The 11 April vote followed weeks of delay caused by disagreement among Kurdish blocs over a candidate. Under Iraq's power-sharing convention the presidency is reserved for a Kurdish politician.

Iran-aligned militias repeatedly attacked US positions, including the Baghdad embassy and bases near Mosul and Erbil, while US and unidentified forces struck Popular Mobilization Forces sites, killing dozens of fighters. Iraqi airspace was closed for around 40 days from 28 February.

The 18 March agreement restored a route for northern Iraqi crude to reach Turkey's Mediterranean coast, months after flows had briefly resumed in September 2025 following a two-and-a-half-year halt over a dispute with the Kurdistan Region.

The 11 November vote passed relatively calmly, with prime minister Mohammed Shia' al-Sudani's Reconstruction and Development Coalition winning a plurality of seats. Coalition negotiations over the next government continued for months afterwards.

The 13 October summit in Egypt brought together regional and world leaders to endorse the ceasefire and postwar plan for Gaza. Iraq had positioned itself as a supporter of Palestinian statehood throughout the war.

The 27 September resumption ended a two-and-a-half-year halt caused by a dispute over unauthorised exports by Kurdistan Region authorities. Flows were later disrupted again during the regional war in early 2026.

In 2025 the UNDP announced Iraq's Human Development Index score of 0.712, surpassing the Arab states average. With reform and human capital investment Iraq could reach the very high human development band by 2035.

According to the Ministry of Water Resources, exceptional rainfall in 2024 boosted Iraq's strategic water reserves by 10% and significantly eased the drought crisis. Sudani had announced an "Iraqi vision for climate action" in 2023 and contracts for renewable plants to supply a third of electricity demand by 2030.

In 2024 the government opened 790 schools as part of a 2021 agreement with China to build 1,000 schools. The Iraq Development Fund was to work with the private sector on 400 more, against a shortage of over 8,000 schools.

The 246-bed facility opened in 2024 under a collaborative management model with advanced medical equipment and a full range of services. The Health Ministry also reported building 13 new hospitals, three specialised centres, two burn units and 25 kidney treatment centres over two years, with 16 more hospitals planned.

During Turkish President Erdogan's visit to Baghdad in 2024 a quadrilateral memorandum of understanding was signed on the development road project. The 1,200-km rail and motorway scheme will connect the Grand Faw Port, intended to be the largest in the Middle East.

The fund was created in August 2023 to strengthen the private sector and finance projects of social and environmental value. By February 2025 it had attracted $7bn in foreign direct investment and signed memoranda of understanding with countries including the United Kingdom and Japan.

In late 2023 the government announced plans for fifteen new cities across Iraq to tackle a persistent housing shortage, beginning with Al-Jawahiri city west of Baghdad, hosting 30,000 units at a cost of $2 billion. Iraq had faced a housing crisis at the end of 2013, when it was on course to build only 5% of the 2.5 million homes needed by 2016.

Since 2022 officials have cited increased regional diplomacy, improved international relations and diversification projects such as the Iraq–Europe Development Road as indicators of recovery. Unemployment fell from 17% in 2022 to 13% by May 2025 according to the Ministry of Planning.

In 2022, more than thirty years after the commission's creation, the reparations body announced Iraq had completed payments totalling $52.4 billion to Kuwait for the 1990 invasion. The settlement closed a major legacy liability of the Gulf War.

In 2021 Iraq announced the return of roughly 17,000 looted antiquities, described as the biggest such repatriation. Cultural institutions including the National Theatre had been looted during the 2003 invasion.

In December 2020 the second phase of the Grand Faw Port was launched, with Daewoo winning the head contractor bid at $2.7 billion. The port is intended to anchor Iraq's role as a transit corridor to Europe.

On 5 January 2020 parliament passed a resolution pressing the government to remove US forces, specifically calling for an end to the 2014 agreement on assistance against Islamic State. It signalled deepening friction over the American presence.

Iraq has been in prolonged drought since 2020 and recorded its second-driest season in four decades in 2021. Tigris and Euphrates flows were down 30–40% by 2023, half the farmland is at risk of desertification and nearly 40% of the country has been overtaken by desert sands.

Abdul Mahdi stepped down in 2020 in response to the protest movement's demands and was succeeded by Mustafa al-Kadhimi. Al-Kadhimi's tenure coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic, whose macroeconomic shock collapsed oil prices and severely hit Iraq's oil-dependent economy.

Mass protests erupted in October 2019, centred on Baghdad's Tahrir Square, over electricity and water failures, corruption, unemployment and the sectarian quota system, and also demanded disarmament of non-state militias and an end to foreign interference. Known as the Tishreen movement, the demonstrations met a violent security response that killed several hundred people according to human rights groups, yet held together around calls for institutional reform and accountability; they led to the resignation of prime minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi.

Iraqi forces, with the US-led coalition, Popular Mobilisation Forces, Peshmerga and allied militias, retook all Islamic State-held territory by December 2017, when prime minister Haider al-Abadi announced the group's defeat. Victory came months after Mosul was retaken following a nine-month battle that devastated much of the city, with estimates of civilian deaths during the campaign varying widely and remaining disputed. A UN report of 24 July 2025 assessed ISIS as at its weakest in Iraq since its emergence.

Sistani's June 2014 fatwa instructed able-bodied men to join the official armed forces to fight ISIS, but in practice led to the creation of the Popular Mobilisation Forces. Haider al-Abadi's government simultaneously sought international help, producing the American-led Coalition against ISIS, while Khomeinist militias drew in Iranian intervention.

In 2014 the Islamic State seized Mosul, Tikrit and Fallujah and large swathes of territory, its rapid June advance collapsing Iraqi security forces across much of the north and west, and declared a caliphate. Hundreds of thousands were displaced, including an estimated 500,000 civilians driven from Mosul, and around 5,000 Yazidis were killed in the group's genocide; Kurdistan Regional Government forces seized the Bai Hassan and Kirkuk oilfields from Baghdad's control on 14 July 2014. The group controlled roughly a third of Iraqi territory at its peak before a three-year campaign drove it out.

Iraq's population, estimated at 2 million in 1878, reached 35 million in 2013 during a post-war boom and was estimated at 43.5 million in 2021. The tenfold rise between 1890 and 2010 intensifies water scarcity under rising temperatures and reduced rainfall.

In 2013 Ba'athist, Al Qaida and ISIS militants exploited chaos and popular discontent to attack the government in the Anbar campaign. A large-scale ISIS offensive in Mosul followed, beginning the group's rapid territorial expansion and full-scale war.

Over 252,000 Syrian refugees of varying ethnicities have entered Iraq since 2012. Many Iraqis living in Syria also returned home after the war began in 2011.

US military operations in Iraq concluded in mid-December 2011, nearly nine years after the start of the war, ending the occupation and formally concluding a conflict that had killed between 151,000 and 1.2 million Iraqis. US forces had remained under a UN Security Council mandate through 2009 and a bilateral security agreement thereafter, helping to provide security and to train and mentor Iraqi security forces. Reconstruction continued amid sectarian violence and discontent with Nouri al-Maliki's government.

Iraq held a national legislative election in March 2010, choosing 325 legislators in an expanded Council of Representatives, and after nine months of deadlock the new government was approved in December 2010.

On 12 February 2009 Iraq formally joined the Chemical Weapons Convention. The accession marked a break with the chemical warfare record of the Ba'athist era.

Elections for provincial councils were held in January 2009 and April 2013 in all governorates except the three comprising the Kurdistan Regional Government and Kirkuk Governorate.

On 30 June and 11 December 2009 Iraq awarded service contracts for a number of its oil fields to international companies. Production later reached 3.4 million barrels per day by December 2012 and 3.6 million by February 2014, the highest since 1979.

On 17 November 2008 the two governments concluded a Status of Forces Agreement as part of a broader Strategic Framework Agreement. It set the legal terms for the remaining US military presence.

Iraq's Shia–Sunni civil war ran from 2006 to 2008 amid the wider insurgency. Coalition forces were accused of war crimes including the Abu Ghraib torture, the Fallujah massacre and the Mahmudiyah rape and killings.

A national referendum approved the new Constitution of Iraq in October 2005 with a 78% overall majority, though support varied widely by region. The constitution recognised Arabic and Kurdish as official languages and Turkmen, Syriac and Armenian as minority languages, and allowed a role for sharia after US concessions to Shia clerics. A 275-member Council of Representatives was elected that December, and the Council approved most cabinet ministers in May 2006, marking the transition to Iraq's first constitutional government in nearly half a century.

The college was established at Ar Rustamiyah on 27 September 2005 as part of rebuilding the post-invasion armed forces, whose divisions each comprise four brigades and 14,000 soldiers. Having been equipped mostly with Soviet-made materiel before 2003, Iraq turned to Western suppliers; Australian and New Zealand trainers later prepared over 45,000 Iraqi security personnel.

On 20 November 2004 Paris Club creditors cancelled $33 billion of Iraq's $42 billion debt to members. Iraq's total external debt had been around $120 billion at the time of the invasion and grew a further $5 billion by 2004.

On 20 March 2003 a US-led coalition invaded Iraq as part of the global war on terror, following a US Congressional authorisation and UN Security Council resolution 1441 of November 2002, and justified by disputed claims about weapons of mass destruction. Within weeks much of Iraq was occupied and Baghdad fell in early April, removing the Ba'athist government and ending Saddam's rule; the US-created Coalition Provisional Authority introduced the country's current political system. Saddam was captured in December and executed in 2006, while an insurgency and sectarian conflict followed for years.

With the end of full state control in 2003 Iraqi media expanded quickly. A BBC report counted 20 radio stations, 17 Iraqi-owned television stations and 200 Iraqi newspapers by that year.

After the 2003 invasion violence against Christians rose sharply, with abductions, torture, bombings and killings. Much of the remaining Christian community, over 1.4 million strong in 1987, was displaced from its homeland by religious persecution; Baghdad's Armenian population fell from 150,000 in 2003 to about 1,500.

The UNHCR estimated that almost two million Iraqis left after the 2003 invasion, and the UN said in 2007 that about 40% of the middle class had fled. By 2011 nearly three million were displaced, 1.3 million internally and 1.6 million abroad, mainly in Jordan and Syria.

The CPA dissolved the armed forces and barred Ba'athists from the new government, and issued binding orders privatising the economy and opening it to foreign investment. An insurgency against coalition forces and the new government followed, and Saddam was captured and executed.

In 1995 Iraq adopted Sharia penalties for some categories of crime. The move marked a shift in the legal character of the Ba'athist state.

Internal Kurdish conflict from 1994 to 1997 killed around 40,000 fighters and civilians. Further conflict between the Kurdistan Regional Government and Ansar al-Islam ran from 2001 to 2003 and merged into the coming war.

Since January 1992 the state's official name has been the Republic of Iraq. The designation was reaffirmed in the 2005 Constitution.

After the Gulf War ended in 1991, uprisings in northern and southern Iraq were crushed, with as many as 100,000 people killed including many civilians. The US, UK, Turkey and France then established no-fly zones citing UNSC authority, and Kurdish autonomy was granted.

On 2 August 1990 Iraq invaded and annexed Kuwait as its 19th governorate, provoked by Kuwait's refusal to waive Iraqi debt and its lowering of oil prices. A coalition authorised by the UN Security Council expelled Iraqi forces in a war lasting six weeks in early 1991, comprising a US-led bombing campaign and a 100-hour ground assault; Iraq also attacked Israel and attempted to invade Saudi Arabia, and its armed forces were devastated. The war was followed by more than a decade of international sanctions on Iraq.