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The Republic of Iraq (officially: Arabic جمهورية العراق, DMG
Ǧumhūriyyat al-'Irāq , Kurdish كۆماری عێراق Komarî Êraq), or Iraq
for short, is a state in the Middle East. Iraq is bordered by
Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, Turkey, Iran and the Persian
Gulf, and includes most of the Mesopotamia "Mesopotamia"
located between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, where the earliest
advanced civilizations of the Near East emerged, as well as parts
the adjacent desert and mountain regions. The northern part of the country is formed
by the Kurdistan Autonomous Region, which has its own parliament,
its own armed forces and its own official language Kurdish.
With about 38 million inhabitants, Iraq is one of the five largest
countries in the Arab world. Its capital and largest city is the
metropolis of Baghdad, other megacities are Basra, Mosul,
Erbil, Sulaimaniya, Najaf, Kirkuk and Kerbela. Refugee movements
in the 20th and 21st centuries led to rapid urbanization in the
country. Iraq ranks fourth in the world ranking of most
resource-rich countries, and its economy is based primarily on oil
exports and to a lesser extent on agriculture.
Today's Iraq
emerged in 1920 from the three Ottoman provinces of Baghdad, Mosul
and Basra. From 1921 to 1958, consisted Kingdom of Iraq, in 1958
the king was a military coup deposed and proclaimed a republic. From
1979 to 2003, the country was ruled by Saddam Hussein dictatorial,
the country waged war against its neighbors Iran and Kuwait. The
Irankrieg was supported by the Soviet Union and the USA. A
multinational invasion force ("Coalition of the Willing ") led by
the United States overthrew regime of Saddam Hussein in 2003, but
failed to build stable structures for the post-war era. The
infrastructure of the country was largely destroyed.
After
the declared end of the war, during the occupation of Iraq in
2003-2011, there were civil war-like conditions, thousands of
terrorist attacks, acts of war and violent crime, both of different
Iraqi groups against each other and against the Western occupation
forces. Above all, they demanded an unknown number of casualties and
casualties among Iraqi civilians. In 2010, most of the foreign
troops were withdrawn after a relative stabilization of the country
had been achieved. The deduction was completed on 18 December 2011.
In June 2014, Islamic ISIS militants conquered parts of the national
territory as part of the 2014 Iraq crisis. According to the
Pentagon, about 55,000 square kilometers were under IS control in
January 2015, which corresponds to about 13% of the national
territory. In December 2017, the Iraqi government announced that the
Iraqi forces had taken complete control of the Syrian-Iraqi border
and that the war against ISIS was over.