This is a list of wars that Kurds rebels and subsequently the autonomous Kurdistan Region has been involved in, since the establishment of Iraq in 1932.
Conflict | Combatant 1 | Combatant 2 | Results | King (1922–1924) President (1992–) |
---|---|---|---|---|
Battle of Dvin (1040) | Kurdistan | Byzantine Empire | Victory
| |
Mahmud Barzanji Revolts (1919–1924) | Kingdom of Kurdistan | United Kingdom Mandatory Iraq | Defeat
| |
First Barzani Revolt (1931–1932) | Barzani Kurds | United Kingdom Mandatory Iraq | Defeat
| Not applicable |
Second Barzani Revolt (1943–1945) | Barzani Kurds | Iraq | Defeat
| |
First Iraqi–Kurdish War (1961–1970) | KDP | Iraq Syria | Kurdish Victory | |
Second Iraqi–Kurdish War (1974–1975) | KDP Iran | Iraq | Defeat
| |
Kurdish Rebellion of 1983 (1983–1989) | KDP PUK Iran | Iraq | Defeat | |
Kurdistan Region–PKK conflict (1983–present) | Kurdistan Region | PUK (sometimes) | Ongoing
| |
Battle of Sulaymaniyah (1991) | Kurdistan Region | Victory
| ||
Kurdish National Uprising (1991) | KDP PUK | Iraq | Victory
| |
Iraqi Kurdish Civil War (1994–1997) | KDP Iraq Turkey PDKI | PUK Iran PKK Badr Brigades | Ceasefire
| |
Kurdistan Islamist Conflict (2001–2004) | Kurdistan Region | Ansar al-Islam al-Qaeda | Victory
| |
Iraq War (2003–2011) | Iraq Kurdistan Region MNF–I | SCJL Naqshbandi Army Free Iraqi Army al-Qaeda ISI Ansar al-Islam IAI Mahdi Army Badr Brigades Kata'ib Hezbollah | Victory
| |
Iraqi Civil War (2014–2017) | Iraq Kurdistan Region CJTF–OIR | ISIL Ansar al-Islam SCJL Naqshbandi Army Mujahideen Army | Victory
| |
Kirkuk Crisis (2017) | Kurdistan Region | Iraq | Deafeat
| |
Baghdad is the capital of Iraq and the second-largest city in the Arab world after Cairo. It is located on the Tigris river. In 762 AD, Baghdad was chosen as the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate, and became its most notable major development project. Within a short time, the city evolved into a significant cultural, commercial, and intellectual center of the Muslim world. This, in addition to housing several key academic institutions, including the House of Wisdom, as well as a multiethnic and multi-religious environment, garnered it a worldwide reputation as the "Center of Learning".
The Iran–Iraq War, also known as the First Gulf War, was an armed conflict between Iran and Iraq that lasted from September 1980 to August 1988. Active hostilities began with the Iraqi invasion of Iran and lasted for eight years, until the acceptance of United Nations Security Council Resolution 598 by both sides. Iraq's primary rationale for the attack against Iran cited the need to prevent Ruhollah Khomeini—who had spearheaded the Iranian Revolution in 1979—from exporting the new Iranian ideology to Iraq. There were also fears among the Iraqi leadership of Saddam Hussein that Iran, a theocratic state with a population predominantly composed of Shia Muslims, would exploit sectarian tensions in Iraq by rallying Iraq's Shia majority against the Baʽathist government, which was officially secular and dominated by Sunni Muslims. Iraq also wished to replace Iran as the power player in the Persian Gulf, which was not seen as an achievable objective prior to the Islamic Revolution because of Pahlavi Iran's economic and military superiority as well as its close relationships with the United States and Israel.
Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti was an Iraqi politician and revolutionary who served as the fifth president of Iraq from 1979 to 2003. He also served as prime minister of Iraq from 1979 to 1991 and later from 1994 to 2003. He was a leading member of the revolutionary Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party and later the Baghdad-based Ba'ath Party and its regional organization, the Iraqi Ba'ath Party, which espoused Ba'athism, a mix of Arab nationalism and Arab socialism.
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Kurdistan, or Greater Kurdistan, is a roughly defined geo-cultural region in West Asia wherein the Kurds form a prominent majority population and the Kurdish culture, languages, and national identity have historically been based. Geographically, Kurdistan roughly encompasses the northwestern Zagros and the eastern Taurus mountain ranges.
The Gulf War was an armed conflict between Iraq and a 42-country coalition led by the United States. The coalition's efforts against Iraq were carried out in two key phases: Operation Desert Shield, which marked the military buildup from August 1990 to January 1991; and Operation Desert Storm, which began with the aerial bombing campaign against Iraq on 17 January 1991 and came to a close with the American-led liberation of Kuwait on 28 February 1991.
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The Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force is the aviation branch of the Islamic Republic of Iran Army. The present air force came into being when the Imperial Iranian Air Force was renamed in 1979 following the Iranian Revolution. The IRIAF was heavily involved in the Iran–Iraq War, carrying out major operations like Operation Kaman 99, Operation Sultan 10, the H-3 airstrike, and the first attack on a nuclear reactor in history, Operation Scorch Sword. As a result of eight years of aerial combat in that conflict, the IRIAF has the second highest claimed number of fighter aces in the region, exceeded only by the Israeli Air Force; as many as seven IRIAF pilots claimed more than six kills, mostly achieved in the F-14 Tomcat. Veterans of the Iran–Iraq War would go on to form the core of the IRIAF command.
During the early stages of the Iraq War, members of the United States Army and the Central Intelligence Agency committed a series of human rights violations and war crimes against detainees in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, including physical abuse, sexual humiliation, physical and psychological torture, and rape, as well the killing of Manadel al-Jamadi and the desecration of his body. The abuses came to public attention with the publication of photographs of the abuse by CBS News in April 2004. The incidents caused shock and outrage, receiving widespread condemnation within the United States and internationally.
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Kurdistan Region is an autonomous administrative entity within the Republic of Iraq. It comprises four Kurdish-majority divisions of Arab-majority Iraq: the Erbil Governorate, the Sulaymaniyah Governorate, the Duhok Governorate, and Halabja Governorate. The KRI is bordered by Iran to the east, by Turkey to the north, and by Syria to the west. It does not govern all of Iraqi Kurdistan, and lays claim to the disputed territories of northern Iraq; these territories have a predominantly non-Arab population and were subject to the Ba'athist Arabization campaigns throughout the late 20th century. Though the KRI's autonomy was realized in 1992, one year after Iraq's defeat in the Gulf War, these northern territories remain contested between the Kurdistan Regional Government and the Government of Iraq to the present day. In light of the dispute, the KRI's constitution declares the city of Kirkuk as the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan. However, the KRI does not control Kirkuk, and the Kurdistan Region Parliament is based in Erbil. In 2014, when the Syria-based Islamic State began their Northern Iraq offensive and invaded the country, the Iraqi Armed Forces retreated from most of the disputed territories. The KRI's Peshmerga then entered and took control of them for the duration of the War in Iraq (2013–2017). In October 2017, following the defeat of the Islamic State, the Iraqi Armed Forces attacked the Peshmerga and reasserted control over the disputed territories.
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Ba'athist Iraq, officially the Iraqi Republic (1968–1992) and later the Republic of Iraq (1992–2003), was the Iraqi state between 1968 and 2003 under the rule of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party. This period began with high economic growth, but ended with the country facing severe levels of socio-political isolation and economic stagnation. By the late 1990s, the average annual income had decreased drastically due to a combination of external and internal factors. UNSC sanctions against Iraq, in particular, were widely criticized for negatively impacting the country's quality of life, prompting the establishment of the Oil-for-Food Programme. The Ba'athist period formally came to an end with the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and the Ba'ath Party has since been indefinitely banned across the country.
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On 3 January 2020, an attack drone, launched by the United States struck an area near the Baghdad Airport Road, a stretch of highway linking the Green Zone to the Bagdad International Airport. The attack killed ten people.