This article needs to be updated.(March 2017) |
History of Iraq |
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Iraqportal |
The departure of US troops from Iraq in 2011 ended the period of occupation that had begun with the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003. The time since U.S. withdrawal has been marked by a renewed Iraqi insurgency and by a spillover of the Syrian civil war into Iraq. By 2013, the insurgency escalated into a renewed war, the central government of Iraq being opposed by ISIL and various factions, primarily radical Sunni forces during the early phase of the conflict. The war ended in 2017 with an Iraqi government and allied victory, however ISIL continues a low-intensity insurgency in remote parts of the country.
ISIL forces seized the majority of Al Anbar Governorate, [1] including the cities of Fallujah, [2] Al Qaim, [3] Abu Ghraib [4] and (in May 2015) Ramadi, [5] leaving them in control of 90% of Anbar. [6] [7] Tikrit, Mosul and most of the Nineveh Governorate, along with parts of Salahuddin, Kirkuk and Diyala Governorates, were seized by insurgent forces in the June 2014 offensive. [8] [9] ISIL captured Sinjar and a number of other towns in the August 2014 offensive, but Sinjar became a contested city in December 2014.
Sectarian violence continued in the first half of 2013 with at least 56 people killed in April when a Sunni protest in Hawija was interrupted by a government-supported helicopter raid. On 20 May 2013, at least 95 people died in a wave of car bomb attacks that was preceded by a car bombing on 15 May that led to 33 deaths; also, on 18 May, 76 people were killed in the Sunni areas of Baghdad. [10] [11] On 22 July 2013, at least five hundred convicts, most of whom were senior members of al-Qaida who had received death sentences, broke out of Iraq's Abu Ghraib jail when comrades launched a military-style assault to free them. The attack began when a suicide bomber drove a car packed with explosives into prison gates. [12] James F. Jeffrey, the United States ambassador in Baghdad when the last American troops exited, said the assault and resulting escape "will provide seasoned leadership and a morale boost to Al Qaeda and its allies in both Iraq and Syria ... it is likely to have an electrifying impact on the Sunni population in Iraq, which has been sitting on the fence." [13]
By mid-2014 the country was in chaos with a new government yet to be formed following national elections, and the insurgency reaching new heights. In early June 2014 the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) took over the cities of Mosul and Tikrit and said it was ready to march on Baghdad, while Iraqi Kurdish forces took control of key military installations in the major oil city of Kirkuk. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki asked his parliament to declare a state of emergency that would give him increased powers, but the lawmakers refused. [14]
In summer 2014 U.S. President Obama announced a renewed military intervention in the form of aerial support, with the aim of halting the advance of ISIS forces and rendering humanitarian aid to stranded refugees and stabilize the political situation. [15]
Since June 2014, al-Maliki had faced growing pressure to resign, including from the United States. [16] In July 2014, the Kurdistan Region demanded his resignation, [17] and his own party (the Islamic Dawa Party) began looking for a new leader. [18]
On 14 August 2014, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki succumbed to the pressure at home and abroad to step down. Iraq's new president, Fuad Masum, appointed a new prime minister, Haider al-Abadi on 19 August 2014. [19] However, for the appointment to take effect, al-Abadi needed to form a government and be confirmed by Parliament, within 30 days. [20] After initially expressing opposition to al-Abadi's selection, al-Maliki endorsed al-Abadi and said he would not stand in the way. [21]
In what was claimed to be revenge for the aerial bombing ordered by President Obama, ISIL, which by this time had changed their name to the Islamic State, beheaded an American journalist, James Foley, who had been kidnapped two years previously. Despite U.S. bombings and breakthroughs on the political front, Iraq remained in chaos with the Islamic State consolidating its gains, and sectarian violence continuing unabated. On 22 August 2014, suspected Shia militants opened fire on a Sunni mosque during Friday prayers, killing 70 worshipers. Separately, Iraqi forces in helicopters killed 30 Sunni fighters in the town of Dhuluiya. [22] A day later, apparently in retaliation for the attack on the mosque, three bombings across Iraq killed 35 people. [23]
Kurdistan Region has participated in fighting ISIL, while also taking other territory (such as Kirkuk). [24] Since August 2014, the U.S. has also been bombing ISIL positions. [25] In late January 2015, Iraqi forces recaptured the entire province of Diyala from the Islamic State. [26] On 2 March, Second Battle of Tikrit began. [27] and after more than a month of hard fighting, Iranians, Iraqis and Shiite militia overcame ISIL fighters and took Tikrit. This success was off-set in late May, by ISIL's capture of the provincial capital of Ramadi in Anbar Governorate.
Iraqi Prime Minister, Haider al-Abadi officially announced the liberation of the city of Mosul from the control of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant on 10 July 2017. [28]
Parliamentary elections were held on 12 May 2018. [29] Kurdish politician, Barham Salih was elected as president by parliament in October 2018. [30] Former Finance Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi was selected to form a new government. The new government was approved by the Council of Representatives on 24 October 2018. [29] [31]
Protests over deteriorating economic conditions and state corruption started in July 2018 in Baghdad and other major Iraqi cities, mainly in the central and southern provinces. The latest nationwide protests, erupting in October 2019, had a death toll of at least 93 people, including police. [32]
On 3 January 2020, a U.S. drone strike killed Qasem Soleimani, leader of Iran's Quds Force, and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, deputy commander of the Popular Mobilization Forces, as their convoy left Baghdad International Airport. [33]
In November 2021, Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi survived a failed assassination attempt. [34]
Cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s Sadrist Movement was the biggest winner in the 2021 parliamentary elections. [35] Governmental stalemate lead to the 2022 Iraqi political crisis. [36]
In October 2022, Abdul Latif Rashid was elected as the new President of Iraq after winning the parliamentary election against incumbent Barham Salih, who was running for a second term. The presidency is largely ceremonial and is traditionally held by a Kurd. [37]
On 27 October 2022, Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, close ally of former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, took the office to succeed Mustafa al-Kadhimi as new Prime Minister of Iraq, the most powerful post in the country. [38]
Hawija is the central town of Al-Hawija District in the Kirkuk Province of Iraq, 45 km (28 mi) west of Kirkuk, and north of Baghdad. The town has a population of about 480,000 inhabitants.
The 2012–2013 Iraqi protests started on 21 December 2012 following a raid on the home of Sunni Finance Minister Rafi al-Issawi and the arrest of 10 of his bodyguards. Beginning in Fallujah, the protests afterwards spread throughout Sunni Arab parts of Iraq. The protests centered on the issue of the alleged sectarianism of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Pro-Maliki protests also took place throughout central and southern Iraq, where there is a Shia Arab majority. In April 2013, sectarian violence escalated after the 2013 Hawija clashes. The protests continued throughout 2013, and in December Maliki used security forces to forcefully close down the main protest camp in Ramadi, leaving at least ten gunmen and three policemen dead in the process.
The 2013 Hawija clashes relate to a series of violent attacks within Iraq, as part of the 2012–2013 Iraqi protests and Iraqi insurgency post-U.S. withdrawal. On 23 April, an army raid against a protest encampment in the city of Hawija, west of Kirkuk, led to dozens of civilian deaths and the involvement of several insurgent groups in organized action against the government, leading to fears of a return to a wide-scale Sunni–Shia conflict within the country. By 27 April, more than 300 people were reported killed and scores more injured in one of the worst outbreaks of violence since the U.S. withdrawal in December 2011.
Beginning in December 2012, Sunnis in Iraq protested against the Maliki government. On 28 December 2013, a Sunni MP named Ahmed al-Alwani was arrested in a raid on his home in Ramadi. Alwani was a prominent supporter of the anti-government protests. This incident led to violence in Al Anbar Governorate between the Iraqi Army and a loose alliance of tribal militias and other groups fighting alongside the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).
The Northern Iraq offensive began on 4 June 2014, when the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant, assisted by various insurgent groups in the region, began a major offensive from its territory in Syria into Iraq against Iraqi and Kurdish forces, following earlier clashes that had begun in December 2013 involving guerillas.
The General Military Council for Iraqi Revolutionaries abbreviated as GMCIR or MCIR, is a Ba'athist militant group active in Iraq headed by Saddam Hussein-era military and political leaders. It has been described by Al Jazeera as "one of the main groups" in the Iraqi insurgency.
The War in Iraq was an armed conflict between Iraq and its allies and the Islamic State. Following December 2013, the insurgency escalated into full-scale guerrilla warfare following clashes in the cities of Ramadi and Fallujah in parts of western Iraq, and culminated in the Islamic State offensive into Iraq in June 2014, which lead to the capture of the cities of Mosul, Tikrit and other cities in western and northern Iraq by the Islamic State. Between 4–9 June 2014, the city of Mosul was attacked and later fell; following this, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki called for a national state of emergency on 10 June. However, despite the security crisis, Iraq's parliament did not allow Maliki to declare a state of emergency; many legislators boycotted the session because they opposed expanding the prime minister's powers. Ali Ghaidan, a former military commander in Mosul, accused al-Maliki of being the one who issued the order to withdraw from the city of Mosul. At its height, ISIL held 56,000 square kilometers of Iraqi territory, containing 4.5 million citizens.
The following lists events that happened during 2014 in Iraq.
The Battle of Ramadi, also called the Fall of Ramadi, was part of an ISIL offensive to capture all of the Anbar Province. Ramadi was one of the Iraqi government's last strongholds in Anbar, after ISIL's success in a previous campaign. The battle began in November 2014, and drew to a close on 14 May 2015, as Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) insurgents seized hold of government buildings. On 17 May, the Iraqi Army and special forces fled the city, with 500 civilians and security personnel dead.
This is a timeline of events during the War in Iraq in 2015.
The fall of Mosul occurred between 4 and 10 June 2014, when Islamic State (IS) insurgents, initially led by Abu Abdulrahman al-Bilawi, captured Mosul from the Iraqi Army, led by Lieutenant General Mahdi Al-Gharrawi.
The following lists events that happened in 2015 in Iraq.
The Second Battle of Tikrit was a battle in which Iraqi Security Forces recaptured the city of Tikrit from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). Iraqi forces consisted of the Iraqi Army and the Popular Mobilization Forces, receiving assistance from Iran's Quds Force officers on the ground, and air support from the American, British, and French air forces.
The Al-Karmah offensive, codenamed Fajr al-Karma, was an offensive launched by the Iraqi Army and anti-ISIL Sunni tribal fighters to recapture the Al-Karmah district taken by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant in Iraq. The offensive began on 14 April 2015. During the offensive the anti-ISIL forces captured part of the city of Al-Karmah, and the old road of Al-Karmah.
The Timeline of the War in Iraq covers the War in Iraq, a war which erupted that lasted in Iraq from 2013 to 2017, during the first year of armed conflict.
In early 2014, the jihadist group Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant captured extensive territory in Western Iraq in the Anbar campaign, while counter-offensives against it were mounted in Syria. Raqqa in Syria became its headquarters. The Wall Street Journal estimated that eight million people lived under its control in the two countries.
The Battle of Ramadi was a battle launched by the forces of Iraq to successfully recapture the city of Ramadi from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), which had taken the city earlier in 2015 in a previous battle. Air power was a major component of the battle, with the United States and other nations conducting over 850 airstrikes in the Ramadi area from July 2015 to late February 2016, and the US crediting airstrikes with 80% of the reason why the city was recaptured. By February 2016, Iraqi forces successfully recaptured the city after two and a half months of fighting. It was predicted that it would take several months to clear the city of the bombs ISIL left behind, with at least 9 months needed to clear the city's Tamim District. At the time, Ramadi had suffered more damage than any other city or town in Iraq.
The Anbar campaign (2015–2016) was a military campaign launched by the Iraqi Armed Forces and their allies aimed at recapturing areas of the Anbar Governorate held by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), including the city of Ramadi, which ISIL seized earlier in 2015. The United States and other nations aided Iraq with airstrikes.
This is a timeline of events during the War in Iraq in 2016.
The 2017 Western Iraq campaign was the final major military operation of the 2013–2017 war in Iraq, in the western province of Anbar, and on the border with Syria, with the goal of completely expelling ISIL forces from their last strongholds in Iraq.