The 2003 invasion of Iraq was a United States-led invasion of the Republic of Iraq and the first stage of the Iraq War. The invasion phase began on 19 March 2003 (air) and 20 March 2003 (ground) and lasted just over one month, including 26 days of major combat operations, in which a combined force of troops from the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and Poland invaded Iraq. Twenty-two days after the first day of the invasion, the capital city of Baghdad was captured by Coalition forces on 9 April 2003 after the six-day-long Battle of Baghdad. This early stage of the war formally ended on 1 May 2003 when U.S. President George W. Bush declared the "end of major combat operations" in his Mission Accomplished speech, after which the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) was established as the first of several successive transitional governments leading up to the first Iraqi parliamentary election in January 2005. U.S. military forces later remained in Iraq until the withdrawal in 2011.
Jamaat Ansar al-Sunnah, also known as Jaish Ansar al-Sunna, Ali ibn Abi Talib Battalion or simply as Ansar al-Sunnah was an Iraqi Sunni insurgent group that fought against US troops and their local allies during the Iraq War. The group was primarily based in northern and central Iraq, and included mostly Iraqi fighters. In 2007, it split; with its Kurdish members pledging allegiance to Ansar al-Islam, and its Arab members creating a group called Ansar al-Sunnah Shariah Committee, before changing its name to Ansar al-Ahlu Sunnah in 2011.
Joint Task Force 2 is an elite special operations force of the Canadian Armed Forces, serving under the Canadian Special Operations Forces Command. JTF 2 is known to work with other special operations forces such as Delta Force, Seal Team Six the British Special Air Service and Special Boat Service and the Australian Special Air Service Regiment and 2nd Commando Regiment, and has distinguished itself as a world-class Tier 1 special operations unit.
The Highway of Death is a six-lane highway between Kuwait and Iraq, officially known as Highway 80. It runs from Kuwait City to the border town of Safwan in Iraq and then on to the Iraqi city of Basra. The road was used by Iraqi armored divisions for the 1990 invasion of Kuwait. It was repaired after the Gulf War and used by U.S. and British forces in the initial stages of the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
The Islamic Army in Iraq (IAI) was one of a number of underground Islamist militant organizations formed in Iraq following the 2003 invasion of Iraq by U.S.-led Coalition forces, and the subsequent collapse of the Ba'athist regime headed by Saddam Hussein.
Seif Adnan Kanaan was an Iraqi citizen who was abducted in Iraq and beheaded on 22 October 2004. The reason given by the kidnappers, the Army of Ansar Al-Sunna, was that he was employed by the United States Army.
The Iraq War began with the US-led 2003 invasion of Iraq. The Government of Canada did not at any time formally declare war against Iraq, and the level and nature of this participation, which changed over time, was controversial. Canada's intelligence services repeatedly assessed that Iraq did not have an active WMD program.
Corporal Daniel Gunther was a Canadian soldier serving with the Royal 22e Régiment as part of the UN Protection Force in Bosnia.
Members of the Iraqi insurgency began taking foreign hostages in Iraq beginning in April 2004. Since then, in a dramatic instance of Islamist kidnapping they have taken captive more than 200 foreigners and thousands of Iraqis; among them, dozens of hostages were killed and others rescued or freed. In 2004, executions of captives were often filmed, and many were beheaded. However, the number of the recorded killings decreased significantly. Many hostages remain missing with no clue as to their whereabouts. The United States Department of State Hostage Working Group was organized by the U.S. Embassy, Baghdad, in the summer of 2004 to monitor foreign hostages in Iraq.
Minorities in Iraq include various ethnic and religious groups.
The Hood event was an incident on July 4, 2003, following the 2003 American invasion of Iraq where a group of Turkish military personnel operating in northern Iraq were captured, led away with hoods over their heads, and interrogated by the United States military. American soldiers seized 15 kg of explosives, sniper rifles, grenades and maps of Kirkuk, with circles drawn around positions near the governor's building when they raided Turkish offices in Sulaimaniya. The soldiers were released after sixty hours, after Turkey protested to the United States. A Kurdish intelligence official claimed that the Turkish soldiers had been linked to a plot to assassinate the newly elected governor of Kirkuk to destabilise the region so that Turkish forces would be needed to restore order.
The Canadian Forces Exchange System, or CANEX, is a commercial service of the Canadian Forces Morale and Welfare Services. First established in 1968. It is tasked with supporting the Canadian Forces operational effectiveness, contributing to morale, esprit de corps and unit cohesion. CANEX operates merchandising operations and provides CF members with Advantage Programs at CF bases, wings and units throughout Canada. In Europe, similar facilities are operated in Germany for NATO.
The Iraqi Turkmens, also referred to as Iraqi Turks, Turkish-Iraqis, the Turkish minority in Iraq, and the Iraqi-Turkish minority are Iraq's third largest ethnic group.
Esprit de Corps is a Canadian military magazine operating out of Ottawa, Ontario, by publisher and former soldier Scott Taylor. The magazine reports on Canada and international military issues, politics, military history and current events. Esprit de Corps was originally designed to be an in-flight reading magazine in 1988 for passengers on Canadian Forces aircraft. Each issue features "On Target", an article written by Scott Taylor about current events. The magazine features a letter to the editor section where readers may comment on earlier issues, as well as a "hit and miss" page of short articles on current events. The magazine also features sections on military history such as "The Fight for Canada" and Les Peate's "The Old Guard."
Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force – North (CJSOTF–N), also known as Task Force Viking, was the U.S. joint task force responsible for the northern front during the initial period of the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. It secured Kirkuk, Mosul, and the northern oil fields; prevented 13 Iraqi Army divisions from defending Baghdad or reinforcing defensive operations against American and British troops advancing in the south, and thwarted Turkish efforts to subvert Kurdistan.
The Turkish communities in the former Ottoman Empire refers to ethnic Turks, who are the descendants of Ottoman-Turkish settlers from Anatolia and Eastern Thrace, living outside of the modern borders of the Republic of Turkey and in the independent states which were formerly part of the Ottoman Empire. Thus, they are not considered part of Turkey's modern diaspora, rather, due to living for centuries in their respective regions, they are now considered "natives" or "locals" as they have been living in these countries prior to the independence and establishment of the modern-nation states.
The Turks in the Arab world refers to ethnic Turkish people who live in the Arab World. There are significant Turkish populations scattered throughout North Africa, the Levant, and the Arabian Peninsula.
If I Should Fall is a Canadian documentary film about Marc Diab, a Canadian soldier of Lebanese origin serving in Afghanistan.
A Turkish Air Force F-16 fighter jet shot down a Russian Sukhoi Su-24M attack aircraft near the Syria–Turkey border on 24 November 2015. According to Turkey, the aircraft was fired upon while in Turkish airspace because it violated the border up to a depth of 2.19 kilometres for about 17 seconds after being warned to change its heading ten times over a period of five minutes before entering the airspace. The Russia Defence Ministry denied that the aircraft ever left Syrian airspace, claiming that their satellite data showed that the Sukhoi was about 1,000 metres (1,100 yd) inside Syrian airspace when it was shot down.
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.
