Portal:Iraq/Intro

Flag of Iraq	Coat of Arms of Iraq

Iraq, officially the Republic of Iraq, is a country in the Middle East and West Asia. It is bordered by Turkey to the north, Saudi Arabia to the south, Iran to the east, Syria to the west, the Persian Gulf and Kuwait to the southeast, and Jordan to the southwest. With a population exceeding 45 million, it is the 35th-most populous country, with the largest city being Baghdad, its capital, and consists of 18 governorates. Iraqi people are diverse; mostly Arabs, as well as Kurds, Turkmen, Yazidis, Assyrians, Armenians, Mandaeans, Persians and Shabakis with similarly diverse geography and wildlife. Most Iraqis are Muslims – minority faiths include Christianity, Yazidism, Zoroastrianism, Mandaeism, Yarsanism and Judaism. The official languages of Iraq are Arabic and Kurdish; others also recognized in specific regions are Assyrian, Turkish, and Armenian.

Since its independence, Iraq has experienced spells of significant economic and military growth alongside periods of instability and conflict. It was a part of the Ottoman Empire until the end of World War I, after which Mandatory Iraq was established by the British Empire in 1921, followed by independent Kingdom of Iraq in 1932. Following a coup d'état in 1958, it became a republic, led by Abdul Karim Qasim followed by Abdul Salam Arif and then Abdul Rahman Arif. The Ba'ath Party came to power in 1968 and ruled as one-party state, under the leadership of Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr and then by Saddam Hussein, who started major wars against Iran and Kuwait. In 2003, the Iraq War started after the United States-led coalition invaded Iraq and overthrew the Ba'ath Party. The war subsequently turned into an insurgency and sectarian civil war, with American troops withdrawing in 2011. Between 2013 and 2017, Iraq was once more in a state of war, with the rise and subsequent fall of Islamic State. Today post-war conflict in Iraq continues at a lower scale, which has been an obstacle to the country's stability alongside the rising influence of Iran. (Full article...)