History of Iraq

For the better part of a year, the Currahees have lived and worked in what was once called the "Cradle of Civilization," although you would be hard pressed to convince some Currahees that this title is very accurate. Where exactly did this title come from? How old is Iraq anyway? What exactly is Mesopotamia? Unfortunately, most Americans don't fully understand their own historical origins, much less the history of ancient, faraway countries. Let us look together into Iraq's past -- for it is in the past where we can find the answers to the questions of Iraq's future...

It was approximately 3,700 years BC that the land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers first became known as Mesopotamia. The land would soon earn the moniker "The Fertile Crescent" due to the rich soil deposits along its riverbanks. A highly developed, advanced civilization flourished in this region long before that of Egypt, Greece, and Rome and it was here that Sumerian culture thrived. The civilized life that emerged was shaped by two conflicting factors: the unpredictability of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, (which at any time could unleash devastating floods that wiped out entire peoples) and the extreme richness of the river valleys, caused by the centuries-old deposits of soil. And so, while the river valleys of southern Mesopotamia attracted neighboring people and made possible the growing of surplus food, the volatility of the rivers necessitated a form of collective management to protect the marshy, low-lying land from flooding.

As surplus production increased and as collective management became more advanced, a process of urbanization evolved and Sumerian civilization took root. The Sumerians, using the fertile land and the abundant water supply of the area, developed sophisticated irrigation systems and created what was probably the first cereal based agriculture as well as cuneiform, the earliest form of writing, which was a way of arranging impressions stamped by the wedge-like section of a chopped-off reed stylus into wet clay. It was the Sumerians who invented the wheel and the first plow. Sumerians also developed a math system based on the number 60, which interestingly, is the basis of time in the modern world. Sumerian society was matriarchal -- that is, women had a highly respected place in society. Banking originated in Mesopotamia (also known as Babylonia) out of the activities of the temples and palaces, which provided safe places for the storage of valuables. Initially, deposits of grain were accepted and later other goods including cattle, agricultural implements, and finally precious metals. The Code of Hammurabi is a collection of the laws and edicts of the Babylonian King Hammurabi, and is considered one of the earliest known legal codes in history. A copy of the code was engraved on a block of black diorite nearly 8 ft high and a team of French archaeologists unearthed this block at Susa, Iraq during the winter of 1901-02. The block, broken into three pieces, was restored and is now in the Louvre Museum in Paris.

In about the 7th century BC, the Assyrians came to control Babylonia and the land would remain under Assyrian rule for about two centuries. Due to the Assyrian influence, the Babylonian culture showed a dramatic growth in science and mathematics and among the great mathematical inventions of the Assyrians was the division of the circle into 360 degrees. They were also among the first to invent longitude and latitude in geographical navigation. The Assyrians developed a sophisticated medical science, which greatly influenced medicine as far away as Greece. It was not until the reign of King Naboplassar (625-605 BC) however, that the Mesopotamian civilization reached its ultimate distinction. In 626 BC, the Chaldeans helped Nabopolassar take power in Babylonia. At that time, Assyria was under considerable pressure from an Iranian people, the Medes. Nabopolassar allied Babylonia with the Medes. Assyria could not withstand this added pressure, and in 612 BC, Nineveh, the capital of Assyria, fell. The entire city, once the capital of a great empire, was burned and sacked. In 586 BC, King Nebuchadnezzar conquered Judea (Judah) and destroyed Jerusalem. Nebuchadnezzar carried away an estimated 15,000 captives and sent most of its population into exile in Babylonia. His son, Nebuchadnezzar II is credited for building the legendary Hanging Gardens, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.

The following centuries saw a series of wars and conquests. Various invaders conquered the land after Nebuchadnezzar's death, including Cyrus the Great in 539 BC and Alexander the Great in 331 BC (who later died there in 323 BC). Babylon would decline after the founding of Seleucia, the New Greek capital. In the second century BC, Babylon became part of the Persian Empire and remained so until the 7th century AD, when Arab Muslims captured it in 636 AD. In 762 AD the capital city of Baghdad was founded. Baghdad became a center of power in the world, where Arab and Persian cultures mingled to produce a blaze of philosophical, scientific, and literary glory. It is this era that would come to be remembered throughout the Arab world, and by the Iraqis in particular, as the pinnacle of the Islamic past. In the early years of the thirteenth century, a powerful Mongol leader named Temujin (later called Genghis Khan, or "World Conqueror") brought together a band of Mongol tribes and led them on a devastating sweep through China. In 1219 he turned his force of 700,000 west and quickly devastated Samarkand (in Uzbekistan), Balkh (in Afghanistan) and Neyshabur in present-day Iran. Before his death in 1227, Genghis Khan had reached western Azarbaijan in Iran. After Genghis's death, the area enjoyed a brief respite that would end with the arrival of Hulagu Khan (1217-65), Genghis's grandson. The Mongols under the leadership of Hulagu marched on Baghdad with two hundred thousand Tartars. The residents and army of Baghdad stood no chance against the Mongol Horde and Baghdad fell in 1258.

Iraq became a neglected frontier province ruled from the Mongol capital of Tabriz in Iran. After the death in 1335 of the last great Mongol khan, a period of political confusion ensued in Iraq until a local dynasty seized power, ruling until the beginning of the fifteenth century. In 1401, Baghdad was sacked and many of its inhabitants massacred. In Iraq, political chaos, severe economic depression, and social disintegration followed in the wake of the Mongol invasions. Once again, Baghdad, long a center of trade, rapidly lost its commercial importance.

From the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries, the course of Iraqi history was affected by the continuing conflicts between the Safavid Empire in Iran and the Ottoman Turks. The Safavids, who were the first to declare Shi'a Islam the official religion of Iran, sought to control Iraq both because of the Shi'a holy places at An Najaf and Karbala and because Baghdad, the seat of the old Abbasid Empire, had great symbolic value. The Ottomans, however, fearing that Shi'a Islam would spread to Anatolia (modern day Turkey), sought to maintain Iraq as a Sunni-controlled buffer state. The 16th-century conquest of Mesopotamia, Syria, Egypt, and the Hejaz brought the holiest cities of Islam, the most important of the pilgrimage routes, and all the former seats of the caliphate under Ottoman rule. In Mesopotamia, Ottoman rule represented the victory of Sunnism. Although the Shi'ite notables of southern Mesopotamia continued to enjoy considerable local influence and prestige, they were inclined to identify with Shi'ite Iran and to resent the Sunnite-dominated Ottoman administration. Absorbed piecemeal by the Ottoman sultans Selim I and Suleyman I, Mesopotamia became the battleground in recurrent struggles between the Sunnite Ottomans and the Shi'ite rulers of Iran and was subject to frequent Arab and Kurdish tribal disturbances. It was never as thoroughly integrated into the empire or as directly administered by the Ottomans as was the western half of the Fertile Crescent. Nevertheless, bearing in mind the destruction, chaos, and fragmentation that had beset the region in the preceding centuries, the expansion of the vast Ottoman political and economic sphere to include Iraq brought with it certain advantages.

Under the watchful eye of Suleyman I's government, local administration was reorganized, trade increased, the economic and living conditions of most of the inhabitants improved, and the towns (especially Baghdad) experienced some growth and new building. The Ottomans at first attempted to rule the Iraqi provinces directly, but in the 17th and 18th centuries a weakened government in Istanbul was obliged to concede extensive autonomy to the governors, and some areas were beyond the reach of Ottoman authority for extended periods. But, even though the Ottomans brought the Arab Middle East under a strong central rule, the powerful sheikhs basically ignored the Ottoman governor of Baghdad.

The vicious cycle of tribal warfare and of deteriorating urban life that began in the thirteenth century with the Mongol invasions was temporarily reversed with the reemergence of the Mamluks. In the early eighteenth century, the Mamluks began asserting authority apart from the Ottomans. Extending their rule first over Basrah, the Mamluks eventually controlled the Tigris and Euphrates river valleys from the Arabian (Persian) Gulf to the foothills of Kurdistan. For the most part, the Mamluks were able administrators, and their rule was marked by political stability and by economic revival. The greatest of the Mamluk leaders, Suleyman the II (1780-1802), made great strides in imposing the rule of law. The last Mamluk leader, Daud (1816-31), initiated important modernization programs that included clearing canals, establishing industries, training a 20,000-man army, and starting a printing press.

The Mamluk period ended in 1831, when a severe flood and plague devastated Baghdad, enabling the Ottoman sultan, Mahmud II, to reassert Ottoman sovereignty over Iraq. The resulting social unrest, however, would make Ottoman rule unstable and ineffective. Baghdad, for example, had more than ten governors between 1831 and 1869. The Ottomans failed to control Iraq's rebellious tribal domains and even in the cities their authority was tenuous. The Ottomans' inability to provide security would lead to the growth of autonomous, self-contained communities. As a result, Iraq entered the twentieth century beset by a complex web of social conflicts that seriously impeded the process of building a modern nation-state. Turkish rule would continue until the collapse of the Ottoman Empire at the end of the World War I. British forces invaded Mesopotamia in 1916 and, after a hard-fought campaign, occupied Baghdad in 1917. An armistice was signed with Turkey in 1918.

In 1920 the international League of Nations assigned pieces of the Ottoman Empire to the victors, putting Mesopotamia under British administration. This arrangement, called a mandate, meant that Britain would establish a responsible Arab government in the territory according to a league-approved timetable. For ease of administration, the British authorities drew an arbitrary line around three former Ottoman colonies or Vilyets: Basra, Baghdad and Mosul – and, for the first time in history, called the land within the new administrative boundary Iraq. After becoming the first of the former Ottoman colonies to join the League of Nations in October of 1927, Iraq was also officially recognized as an independent sovereign state that same year. Full independence would not be achieved however, until 1932, when the British Mandate was officially terminated. In 1936 Iraq experienced its first military coup d'etat, led by General Bakr Sidqi. The Sidqi coup, on the 29th of October, 1936, marked a tragic turning point in Iraqi history; it made a crucial breach in the constitution and would open the door to further military involvement in politics.

Iraq would remain firmly, if not tenuously, in British hands throughout World War II, despite a revolt in April 1941 by Nazi sympathizers in the Iraqi government, led by four Iraqi army colonels and the Iraqi prime minister, Rashid Ali Ghailani. After surrounding and laying siege to the Habbaniya air station in early May, the Iraqi rebels were routed and the subsequent British campaign would see a British expeditionary force drive from Habbaniya to Baghdad, restoring the Iraqi monarchical government on 31 May, 1941. As the War drew to a close, in March 1945, Iraq became a founding member of the League of Arab States (Arab League), which included Egypt, Transjordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Yemen, and in December 1945, Iraq joined the United Nations (UN). War with Israel followed in 1948, in which Iraqi forces were allied with those of Transjordan, in accordance with a treaty signed by the two countries during the previous year. Fighting continued until the signing of a cease-fire agreement in May 1949. The war would have a substantial, negative impact on the Iraqi economy, as the government allocated some 40 percent of available funds for the army and for Palestinian refugees. Additionally, oil royalties paid to Iraq were halved when the pipeline to Haifa was cut off in 1948.

In the mid-1950's, the Iraqi monarchy found itself embroiled in a series of foreign policy blunders that ultimately contributed to its overthrow. Following a 1949 military coup in Syria that brought to power Adib Shishakli, a military strongman who opposed union with Iraq, a split developed between Abd al Ilah, who had called for a Syrian-Iraqi union, and Nuri as-Said, who opposed the union plan. In 1957, the new Iraqi Prime Minister would survive two assassination attempts. In 1959, the Mosul garrison, disillusioned with the new government, organized a revolt. The revolt was ruthlessly suppressed, with the massacre of many hundreds of disaffected Arab nationalists and Ba'athists. After the revolt, the Ba'ath party organized still another assassination attempt on the Iraqi Prime Minister, again failing. Among the assassination squad was a young revolutionary, Saddam Hussein.

Iraq's general policy during the 1960's and 70's was one of Arab nationalism. Iraq would supply many of the Arab troops during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, and gave material aid to Syria in the war of 1973. Iraq was heavily opposed to the cease-fire which ended the conflict. Additionally, relations with Iran were deteriorating fast in the early 70's. Problems were compounded by border disputes with Iran, but these were partially settled in Algiers on March 6, 1975. Saddam Hussein signed an agreement with the Shah of Iran that recognized the boundary in the Shatt el-Arab, legalized the Shah's abrogation of the 1937 treaty in 1969, and dropped all Iraqi claims to Khuzestan and to the islands at the foot of the Gulf. In return, the Shah agreed to prevent subversive elements from crossing the border, whereupon Iran withdrew aid from the ongoing Kurdish revolt and effectively halted it. By the end of 1977, the Kurdish people had been granted greater autonomy and Kurdish was recognized as an official language. Politically, Iraq seemed to be stabilizing, and the oil boom of the late 70's contributed dramatically to an upsurge in the economy.

In July 1979, the Iraqi president, Ahmed Hasan Al-Bakr, was replaced by Saddam Hussein, his vice president. Saddam then assumed both of the vacated offices and purged political rivals in order to assure his position. Once more the political situation flared into hostilities with Iran. On September 17, 1980 Saddam declared that the Iraqi/Iranian border agreement (known as the "Algiers Agreement") was null and void, claiming the whole of the Shatt el-Arab belonged to Iraq. The Iran-Iraq War, which began 5 days later on September 22, 1980, lasted for eight years and had a crippling effect on the economy of both countries. After eight years of war, no territory had been gained by either side and an estimated one million lives had been lost.

When the Iran-Iraq War was in its eighth year, on Wednesday, 16 March 1988, Saddam's cousin, Ali Hassan al-Majid, orchestrated a genocide and attacked Halabja, a predominantly Iraqi Kurdish village in northeastern Iraq near the front lines with Iran, with mustard gas and nerve agents. Estimates vary, but according to Human Rights Watch, up to 5,000 people were killed. The raid was over in minutes. Saddam Hussein had authorized the use of chemical weapons against his own people. In July 1988, Iran accepted the terms of UN Resolution 598, and the cease-fire came into force on 20 August 1988.

Before Iraq had a chance to recover economically, it was once more plunged into war, this time with its invasion of Kuwait in August, 1990. Over the ensuing months, the United Nations Security Council passed a series of resolutions condemning the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait and implementing total mandatory economic sanctions against Iraq. Many other countries subsequently provided support for a huge, multi-national defense of Saudi Arabia known as "Operation Desert Shield." In November 1990, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 678, permitting member states to use all necessary means, authorizing military action against the Iraqi forces occupying Kuwait, and demanded a complete withdrawal by 15 January 1991. When Saddam Hussein failed to comply with this demand, the Gulf War (Operation "Desert Storm") ensued on 17 January 1991, starting with a massive US aerial campaign and involving the Soldiers, Sailors, and Airmen of more than 29 other nations. After 39 days of bombing, the ground war was a spectacular success. It lasted about 100 hours. 340 allied troops were killed, compared to about 100,000 Iraqis. Saddam Hussein's soldiers surrendered by the thousands, and those who didn't surrender left Kuwait.

The rest of the 90's would see Saddam Hussein constantly testing the limits of the UN mandate and restrictions placed upon his military. Iraq generally took a rebellious approach to politics and forced the UN to authorize the use of force against Iraq on numerous occasions due to treaty violations, including the Iraqi government's forceful expulsion of mandated UN weapons inspectors. Interestingly, despite the connections between Saddam's government and the 1993 World Trade Center bombers, nothing was done to thwart Saddam's aggressive posturing and backing of terrorists throughout the world. At most, a few selected airstrikes and some well-placed cruise missiles seemed to be the punishment of choice throughout the 90's. The final straw, however, would come on September 11th, 2001 when the terrorist attacks on the United States forced President Bush to take proactive measures to defend the United States and nullify the state-sponsors of terror, of which Iraq was clearly one.