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The Republic of Iraq ( , Kurdish: عيَراق), is a country in Southwest Asia encompassing most of Mesopotamia as well as the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range and the eastern part of the Syrian Desert. It shares borders with Kuwait and Saudi Arabia to the south, Jordan to the west, Syria to the northwest, Turkey to the north, and Iran to the east. It has a very narrow section of coastline at Umm Qasr on the Persian Gulf.
Name There are several suggestions for the origin of the name of Iraq; - one dates back to the Sumerian city of Uruk (or Erech). Another suggestion is that Iraq comes from the Aramaic language, meaning "the land along the banks of the rivers." Another suggestion is Iraq is a reference to the root of a palm tree, as they are numerous in the country. Under the Persian Sassanid dynasty, there was a region called "Erak Arabi" referring to part of the south western region of the Persian Empire, which now is part of southern Iraq. Al-Iraq was the name used by the Arabs themselves for the land since the 6th century. Pronunciation of Iraq - (1) ɪ.ˈɹɑ(ː)k, (2) ɪ.ˈɹæk, (3) aɪ.ˈɹæk (1) is the preferred pronunciation in most dictionaries, and the only pronunciation listed in the Oxford English Dictionary. MQD lists (2) first. (3) is considered uneducated or unacceptable to some. It is the pronunciation which is least like the original Arabic pronunciation ʕiˈɾɑːq. History Ancient history Iraq was historically known as Mesopotamia, which literally means "between the rivers" in Greek. This land was home to the world's first civilization, the Sumerian culture, followed by the Akkadian, Babylonian, and Assyrian cultures, whose influence extended into neighboring regions as early as 5000 BC. These civilizations produced the earliest writing and some of the first sciences, mathematics, laws and philosophies in the world, making the region the center of what is commonly called the "Cradle of Civilization". Ancient Mesopotamian civilization dominated other civilizations of its time. In the sixth century BC, the region became a part of the Persian Empire under Cyrus the Great, before it was conquered by Alexander the Great and remained under Greek rule for nearly two centuries. A Central Asian tribe of Iranian peoples called Parthians then annexed the region, followed by the Sassanid Persians until the 7th century. Beginning in the seventh century AD, Islam spread to what is now Iraq. The prophet Mohammed's cousin and son-in-law moved his capital to Kufa "fi al-Iraq" when he became the fourth caliph. The Umayyads ruling from Damascus in the 7th century ruled the province of Iraq. Baghdad, the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate, was the leading city of the Arab and Muslim world for five centuries. In 1258, Baghdad was devastated by the Mongols and was later occupied by the Ottoman Turks. Ottoman rule over Iraq lasted until the Great War (World War I) when the Ottomans sided with Germany and the Central Powers. During World War I, the Ottomans were driven from much of the area by the United Kingdom during the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. British occupation During World War I, the British and French divided the Middle East in the Sykes-Picot Agreement. The British would control Mesopotamia. At the end of World War I, the League of Nations granted the area to the United Kingdom as a mandate. It was formed out of three former Ottoman vilayets (regions): Mosul, Baghdad and Basra. However, for three out of four centuries of Ottoman Turkish rule, the vilayets of Baghdad, Mosul, and Basra were administered from Baghdad. During the British mandate, the country was ruled by British colonial administrators who used the British armed forces to put down rebellions against the government. They selected the Hashemite king, Faisal, who had been forced out of Syria by the French, to be their client ruler. Iraq was granted independence in 1932 by the urging of King Faisal, though the British retained military bases and transit rights for their forces in the country. King Ghazi of Iraq ruled as a figurehead after King Faisal died in 1932, while Iraq suffered from military coups (dictatorships) until he died in 1939. Iraq was invaded by the United Kingdom in 1941, for fears that the government of Rashid Ali might cut oil supplies to Western nations and because of his strong leanings to Nazi Germany. A military occupation followed after the restoration of the Hashemite monarchy, and the occupation ended on October 26, 1947. The rulers of the country during the occupation and the remainder of the Hashemite monarchy period were the autocratic prime minister Nuri al-Said who also ruled from 1930-1932 and the advisor 'Abd al-Ilah to the king Faisal II. Hashemite monarchy The reinstalled Hashemite monarchy lasted until 1958, when it was overthrown through a coup d'etat by the Iraqi Army, known as the 14 July Revolution. The coup brought Brigadier General Abdul Karim Qassim to power. He withdrew from the Baghdad Pact and established friendly relations with the Soviet Union but his government lasted only until 1963, when it was overthrown by Colonel Abdul Salam Arif. Salam Arif died in 1966 and his brother, Abdul Rahman Arif, assumed the presidency. In 1968, Rahman Arif was overthrown by the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party. This movement gradually came under the control of Saddam Hussein al-Majid al Tikriti who acceded to the presidency and control of the Revolutionary Command Council (RCC), then Iraq's supreme executive body, in July 1979, killing off many of his opponents in the process. Saddam Hussein
Occupation by Coalition Forces Iraq was invaded in March 2003 by a US-organized coalition with the stated reasons that Iraq had not abandoned its nuclear and chemical weapons development program according to United Nations resolutions. The justifications given for invasion included purported Iraqi government links to Al Qaeda, claims that Iraq had Weapons of Mass Destruction, the opportunity to remove an oppressive dictator from power, and the bringing of democracy to Iraq. A range of other possible motives include control over Iraqi oil fields, a desire to make amends for failing to overthrow Saddam during the Gulf war, revenge for Saddam's effort to assassinate former President George Bush, and creating a counterbalance to a nuclear-armed Iranian theocracy. Subsequent post-invasion investigation did not uncover any evidence that the WMD programs were active; some chemical shells were found that were left over from the Iran-Iraq War. Likewise, al-Qaeda had no presence in Iraq, where it had been suppressed by the secular Iraqi government, until after the invasion, when it exploited the insurgency to establish its organization in the country. The US established the Coalition Provisional Authority to govern Iraq. Government authority was transferred to an Iraqi Interim Government in 2004 and a permanent government was elected in January 2006. Over 140,000 Coalition troops remain in Iraq in order to assist the government in countering a Sunni-led insurgency, frequent terrorist attacks, and sectarian violence, which now plague the country. In 2006, Foreign Policy Magazine named Iraq as the fourth most unstable nation in the world. In October 2006 former US Secretary of State James Baker referred to the situation in Iraq as being 'a helluva mess'. According to a recent epidemiologic study by Burnham et al in The Lancet medical journal , 655,000 Iraqis have died directly or indirectly as a result of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. The 95% confidence interval of this estimate spans from 393,000 to 943,000 dead. These numbers have been controversial and were immediately denounced both politically and within the statistical analysis community. The methodology used by Burham et al, known as cross-sectional population-based cluster sampling, is respected among epidemiologists for estimating mortality rates in war-torn countries. However, questions have arisen regarding the sufficiency of the sample size for the extrapolations made in the Lancet survey. The Lancet estimate is significantly higher than estimates from other organizations. In 2004, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) used 2,200 cluster points of 10 interviews each for a total sample of 21,688, to arrive at their estimate of between 18,000 and 29,000 civilian deaths from the war. The Lancet survey used 47 cluster points, and a total of 1,849 interviews, to arrive at their estimate of 655,000 civilian deaths. Iraq Body Count , as of October 19 2006, reports a range of between 43,937 and 48,783 deaths as a result of the US invasion. Iraq Body Count relies solely upon passive surveillance of officially reported deaths in generating this number. The authors of The Lancet study criticize this methodology , writing "Aside from Bosnia , we can find no conflict situation where passive surveillance recorded more than 20% of the deaths measured by population-based methods. In several outbreaks, disease and death recorded by facility-based methods underestimated events by a factor of ten or more when compared with population-based estimates. " Such a tenfold gap between the findings of active versus passive reporting is in line with the findings of The Lancet study. Contrarily, in an opinion piece published in the Wall Street Journal on October 18, 2006, Steven E. Moore, of Gorton Moore International, wrote "What happens when you don't use enough cluster points in a survey? You get crazy results when compared to a known quantity, or a survey with more cluster points. There was a perfect example of this two years ago. The UNDP's survey, in April and May 2004, estimated between 18,000 and 29,000 Iraqi civilian deaths due to the war. This survey was conducted four months prior to another, earlier study by the Johns Hopkins team, which used 33 cluster points and estimated between 69,000 and 155,000 civilian deaths--four to five times as high as the UNDP survey, which used 66 times the cluster points." Politics Iraq was under Ba'ath Party rule from 1968 to 2003; in 1979 Saddam Hussein took control and remained president until 2003 after which he was unseated by a controversial US-led invasion. On October 15, 2005, more than 63% of eligible Iraqis came out across the country to vote on whether to accept or reject the new constitution. On October 25, the vote was certified and the constitution passed with a 78% overall majority, with the percentage of support varying widely between the country's territories. The new constitution had overwhelming backing among the Shia and Ķurdish communities, but was overwhelmingly rejected by Sunnis. Three majority-Sunni provinces rejected it (Salah ad Din with 82% against, Ninawa with 55% against, and Al Anbar with 97% against). Under the terms of the constitution, the country conducted fresh nationwide parliamentary elections on December 15 to elect a new government. The overwhelming majority of all three major ethnic groups in Iraq voted along ethnic lines, turning this vote into more of an ethnic census than a competitive election, and setting the stage for the division of the country along ethnic lines. Iraqi politicians have been under significant threat by the various factions that have promoted violence as a political weapon. The ongoing violence in Iraq has been incited by an amalgam of religious extremists that believe an Islamic Caliphate should rule, old sectarian regime members that had ruled under Saddam that want back the power they had, and Iraqi nationalists that are fighting against what they view as a foreign occupation. Minority politics There are a number of ethnic minority groups in Iraq: Kurds, Assyrians, Mandeans, Iraqi Turkmen, Shabaks and Roma. These groups have not enjoyed equal status with the majority Arab populations throughout Iraq's eighty-five year history. Since the establishment of the "no-fly zones" following the First Gulf War, the situation of the Kurds has changed as they have established their own autonomous region. The remainder of these ethnic groups continue to suffer discrimination on religious or ethnic grounds. Administrative divisions Iraq is divided into eighteen governorates (or provinces) (Arabic: muhafadhat, singular - muhafadhah, Kurdish: پاریزگه Pârizgah). The governorates are subdivided into qadhas (or districts). 03 Geography At 168,743 sq.mi (437,072 sq.km), Iraq is the 58th-largest country in the world, after Morocco. It is comparable in size to the US state of California, and somewhat larger than Paraguay. Large parts of Iraq consist of desert, but the area between the two major rivers (Euphrates and Tigris) is fertile, with the rivers carrying about 60 million cubic metres (78 million cu. yd) of silt annually to the delta. The north of the country is largely mountainous, with the highest point being a 3,611 metres (11,847 ft) point, unnamed on the map opposite, but known locally as Cheekah Dar (black tent). Iraq has a small coastline with the Persian Gulf. Close to the coast and along the Shatt al-Arab (known as arvandrūd: اروندرود among Iranians) there used to be marshlands, but many of these were drained in the 1990s. The local climate is mostly desert with mild to cool winters and dry, hot, cloudless summers. The northern mountainous regions experience cold winters with occasional heavy snows, sometimes causing extensive flooding. The capital of Baghdad is situated in the centre of the country, on the banks of the Tigris. Other major cities include Basra in the south and Mosul in the north. Economy
Reconstruction Reconstruction in Iraq has been difficult, due to the amount of damage done to the basic infrastructure of the region; the influx of US invasion and the strife among factions within the native populace. Large-scale reconstruction efforts have had, at best, limited success. Demographics A July, 2005 estimate of the total Iraqi population is 26,074,906. Seventy-five to eighty percent of Iraq's population are Arabs; the other major ethnic groups are the Kurds at 15-20%, Assyrians, Iraqi Turkmen and others (5%), who mostly live in the north and northeast of the country. The Kurds, Assyrians, and Turkmen differ from Arabs in many ways, including culture, history, clothing, and language. Other distinct groups are Persians and Armenians (possible descendants of the ancient Mesopotamian culture). About 20,000–50,000 Marsh Arabs live in southern Iraq. Arabic and Kurdish are official languages. Assyrian and Turkmen are official languages in areas where the Assyrians and Iraqi Turkmen are located respectively. Armenian and Persian are also spoken but to a lesser extent. English is the most commonly spoken Western language. There are more Arab Iraqi Muslim members of the Shiite sect than there are Arab Iraqi Muslims of the Sunni sect; but there is a large Sunni population as well, made up of mostly Arabs and Kurds. (Shiites: 65% of total population made up of mostly Arabs). Ethnic Assyrians (of the Chaldean rite) account for most of Iraq's sizable Christian population along with the Armenians. Bahá'ís, Mandaeans, Shabaks, and Yezidis also exist. Most Kurds are Sunni Muslims, although the Faili (Feyli) Kurds are largely Shi'a. Ethnic Composition: Culture In the most recent millennium, what is now Iraq has been made up of five cultural areas: Kurdish in the north centered on Arbil, Sunni Islamic Arabs in the center around Baghdad, Shi'a Islamic Arabs in the south centered on Basra, the Assyrians, a Christian people, living in various cities in the north, and the Marsh Arabs, a nomadic people, who live on the marshlands of the central river. Markets and bartering are the common form of trade. Music Iraq is known primarily for an instrument called the oud (similar to a lute) and a rebab (similar to a fiddle); its stars include Ahmed Mukhtar and the Assyrian Munir Bashir. Until the fall of Saddam Hussein, the most popular radio station was the Voice of Youth. It played a mix of western rock, hip hop and pop music, all of which had to be imported via Jordan due to international economic sanctions. Iraq has also produced a major pan-Arab pop star-in-exile in Kazem al Saher, whose songs include Ladghat E-Hayya, which was banned for its racy lyrics. Gallery Image:Tigris river Mosul.jpg|Tigris River near Mosul Image:Ihstar Gate RB.JPG|Ishtar Gate (Bab Ishtar) 604 to 562 B.C. Ancient Babylon Image:Minaret Samarra Iraq.jpg|The Malwiya Minaret in Samarra Image:Hatra ruins.jpg|Hatra ruins Image:Meshed ali usnavy (PD).jpg|Shrine of Imam Ali in Najaf Image:Boat on Euphrates.jpg|Boat on the Euphrates River Image:IRAQ map black nad white.jpg|Printable map See also Further reading | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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