Related Research Articles
Iraq is a country in West Asia that largely corresponds with the territory of ancient Mesopotamia. The history of Mesopotamia extends from the Lower Paleolithic period until the establishment of the Caliphate in the late 7th century AD, after which the region came to be known as Iraq. Encompassed within Iraqi territory is the ancient land of Sumer, which came into being between 6000 and 5000 BC during the Neolithic Ubaid period of Mesopotamian history, and is widely considered the oldest civilization in recorded history. It is also the historic center of the Akkadian, Neo-Sumerian, Babylonian, Neo-Assyrian, and Neo-Babylonian empires, a succession of local ruling dynasties that reigned over Mesopotamia and various other regions of the Ancient Near East during the Bronze and Iron Ages.
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.
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.
This article describes the positions of world governments before the actual initiation of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and not their current positions as they may have changed since then.
Iraq under the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party saw severe violations of human rights. Secret police, state terrorism, torture, mass murder, genocide, ethnic cleansing, rape, deportations, extrajudicial killings, forced disappearances, assassinations, chemical warfare, and the destruction of the Mesopotamian marshes were some of the methods Saddam Hussein and the country's Ba'athist government used to maintain control. Saddam committed crimes of aggression during the Iran–Iraq War and the Gulf War, which violated the Charter of the United Nations. The total number of deaths and disappearances related to repression during this period is unknown, but is estimated to be at least 250,000 to 290,000 according to Human Rights Watch, with the great majority of those occurring as a result of the Anfal genocide in 1988 and the suppression of the uprisings in Iraq in 1991. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International issued regular reports of widespread imprisonment and torture.
The Iraqi no-fly zones conflict was a low-level conflict in the two no-fly zones (NFZs) in Iraq that were proclaimed by the United States, United Kingdom, and France after the Gulf War of 1991. The United States stated that the NFZs were intended to protect the ethnic Kurdish minority in northern Iraq and Shiite Muslims in the south. Iraqi aircraft were forbidden from flying inside the zones. The policy was enforced by the United States and the United Kingdom until 2003, when it was rendered obsolete by the 2003 invasion of Iraq. French aircraft patrols also participated until France withdrew in 1996.
The United States Central Command is one of the eleven unified combatant commands of the U.S. Department of Defense. It was established in 1983, taking over the previous responsibilities of the Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force (RDJTF).
In political science, rollback is the strategy of forcing a change in the major policies of a state, usually by replacing its ruling regime. It contrasts with containment, which means preventing the expansion of that state; and with détente, which means developing a working relationship with that state. Most of the discussions of rollback in the scholarly literature deal with United States foreign policy toward communist countries during the Cold War. The rollback strategy was tried and was not successful in Korea in 1950 and in Cuba in 1961, but it was successful in Grenada in 1983. The United States discussed the use of rollback during the East German uprising of 1953 and the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, which were ultimately crushed by the Soviet Army, but decided against it to avoid the risk of a major war.
The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait began on 2 August 1990 and marked the beginning of the Gulf War. After defeating the State of Kuwait on 4 August 1990, Iraq went on to militarily occupy the country for the next seven months. The invasion was condemned internationally, and the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) adopted numerous resolutions urging Iraq to withdraw from Kuwaiti territory. The Iraqi military, however, continued to occupy Kuwait and defied all orders by the UNSC. After initially establishing the "Republic of Kuwait" as a puppet state, Iraq annexed the entire country on 28 August 1990; northern Kuwait became the Saddamiyat al-Mitla' District and was merged into the existing Basra Governorate, while southern Kuwait was carved out as the all-new Kuwait Governorate. By November 1990, the adoption of UNSC Resolution 678 officially issued Iraq an ultimatum to withdraw unconditionally by 15 January 1991 or else be removed by "all necessary means" from Kuwaiti territory. In anticipation of a war with Iraq, the UNSC authorized the assembly of an American-led military coalition.
On 6 August 1990, four days after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) placed a comprehensive embargo on Iraq. The sanctions stayed largely in force until 22 May 2003, and persisted in part, including reparations to Kuwait. The original stated purposes of the sanctions were to compel Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait, to pay reparations, and to disclose and eliminate any weapons of mass destruction (WMD).
American support for Ba'athist Iraq during the Iran–Iraq War, in which it fought against post-revolutionary Iran, included several billion dollars' worth of economic aid, the sale of dual-use technology, military intelligence, and special operations training. The U.S. refused to sell arms to Iraq directly due to Iraq's ties to terrorist groups, but several sales of "dual-use" technology have been documented; notably, Iraq purchased 45 Bell helicopters for $200 million in 1985. Of particular interest for contemporary Iran–United States relations are accusations that the U.S. government actively encouraged Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein to invade Iran, supported by a considerable amount of circumstantial evidence and generally regarded as the conventional wisdom in the Arab world, but several scholars and former U.S. government officials deny that any such collusion occurred, and no direct documentary proof of it has been found.
United States foreign policy in the Middle East has its roots in the early 19th-century Tripolitan War that occurred shortly after the 1776 establishment of the United States as an independent sovereign state, but became much more expansive in the aftermath of World War II. With the goal of preventing the Soviet Union from gaining influence in the region during the Cold War, American foreign policy saw the deliverance of extensive support in various forms to anti-communist and anti-Soviet regimes; among the top priorities for the U.S. with regards to this goal was its support for the State of Israel against its Soviet-backed neighbouring Arab countries during the peak of the Arab–Israeli conflict. The U.S. also came to replace the United Kingdom as the main security patron for Saudi Arabia as well as the other Arab states of the Persian Gulf in the 1960s and 1970s in order to ensure, among other goals, a stable flow of oil from the Persian Gulf. As of 2023, the U.S. has diplomatic relations with every country in the Middle East except for Iran, with whom relations were severed after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, and Syria, with whom relations were suspended in 2012 following the outbreak of the Syrian Civil War.
Iraq–Israel relations refer to the bilateral ties between the State of Israel and the Republic of Iraq. Due to Iraq's non-recognition of Israel as a legitimate state since the latter's establishment in 1948, the two countries have not had any formal diplomatic relations. The Hashemite Kingdom of Iraq was a part of the Arab coalition that declared war on and invaded Israel shortly after its establishment, sparking the First–Arab Israeli War, and the two states have since then been in a continuous state of hostilities. Iraqi forces also participated in the Third Arab–Israeli War and the Fourth Arab–Israeli War in 1967 and 1973, respectively.
After World War I, Iraq passed from the failing Ottoman Empire to British control. Kingdom of Iraq was established under the British Mandate in 1932. In the 14 July Revolution of 1958, the king was deposed and the Republic of Iraq was declared. In 1963, the Ba'ath Party staged a coup d'état and was in turn toppled by another coup in the same year, but managed to retake power in 1968. Saddam Hussein took power in 1979 and ruled Iraq for the remainder of the century, during the Iran–Iraq War of the 1980s, the Invasion of Kuwait and the Gulf War of 1990 to 1991 and the UN sanction during the 1990s. Saddam was removed from power in the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
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.
The Iraqi–Kurdish conflict consists of a series of wars, rebellions and disputes by the Kurds against the central authority of Iraq starting in the 20th century shortly after the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I. Some put the marking point of the conflict beginning to the attempt by Mahmud Barzanji to establish an independent Kingdom of Kurdistan, while others relate to the conflict as only the post-1961 insurrection by the Barzanis. Since the US-led invasion of Iraq and the subsequent recognition of the Kurdistan Region (KRI) in the new Iraqi constitution, the number and scope of armed clashes between the central government of Iraq and the Kurds have significantly decreased. In spite of that, however, there are still outstanding issues that continue to cause strife such as the disputed territories of northern Iraq and rights to oil and gas, leading to occasional armed clashes. In September 2023, Masrour Barzani sent a letter to the President of the United States expressing concerns about a possible collapse of the Kurdistan Region and calling for the United States to intervene.
The timeline of the Gulf War details the dates of the major events of the 1990–1991 war. It began with the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait on 2 August 1990 and ended with the Liberation of Kuwait by Coalition forces. Iraq subsequently agreed to the United Nations' demands on 28 February 1991. The ground war officially concluded with the signing of the armistice on 11 April 1991. However, the official end to Operation Desert Storm did not occur until sometime between 1996 - 1998. Major events in the aftermath include anti-Saddam Hussein uprisings in Iraq, massacres against the Kurds by the regime, Iraq formally recognizing the sovereignty of Kuwait in 1994, and eventually ending its cooperation with the United Nations Special Commission in 1998.
The Gulf War began on the 2 August 1990, when Iraq invaded Kuwait. The war was fought between the international coalition led by the United States of America against Iraq. Saddam Hussein's rationale behind the invasion is disputed and largely unknown. No Iraqi document has ever been discovered explicitly listing these.
References
- ↑ Meierding, Emily (2020-05-15). The Oil Wars Myth: Petroleum and the Causes of International Conflict. Cornell University Press. ISBN 978-1-5017-4895-0.
- ↑ Meierding, Emily (2016-04-02). "Dismantling the Oil Wars Myth". Security Studies. 25 (2): 258–288. doi:10.1080/09636412.2016.1171968. ISSN 0963-6412. S2CID 147849960.
- ↑ Timothy C. Winegard (2016). The First World Oil War. Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto Press.
- ↑ "Oil led to Pearl Harbor". Salon. 5 December 2013.
- ↑ Brogan, Patrick (1998). World Conflicts: A Comprehensive Guide to World Strife Since 1945. London: Bloomsbury. ISBN 9780810835511.
- ↑ "Iraq Sanctions: Humanitarian Implications and Options for the Future". Global Policy Forum. August 6, 2002.
The United States and the United Kingdom, who use their veto power to prolong the sanctions, bear special responsibility for the UN action. No-fly zones, periodic military attacks, and threats of regime-change block peaceful outcomes, as do vilification of Saddam Hussein, pro-sanctions propaganda, and other politicization of the crisis. Though real concerns about Iraq's security threat undoubtedly are legitimate, commercial interests, especially control over Iraq's oil resources, appear to be a driving force behind much of the policy making.
- ↑ Juhasz, Antonia (15 April 2013). "Why the war in Iraq was fought for Big Oil". CNN.
 | This military-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |