ital, Hulagu demanded surrender but the caliph refused. This angered Hulagu, and, consistent with Mongol strategy of discouraging resistance, Baghdad was decimated. Estimates of the number of dead range from 200,000 to a million. The Mongols destroyed the Abbasid Caliphate and The Grand Library of Baghdad (Arabic ??? ?????? Bayt al-Hikma, lit., House of Wisdom), which contained countless, precious, historical documents. The city would never regain its status as major center of culture and influence. In 1401, warlord of Turco-Mongol descent Tamerlane (Timur Lenk) invaded Iraq. After the capture of Bagdad, 20,000 of its citizens were massacred. Timur ordered that every soldier should return with at least two severed human heads to show him (many warriors were so scared they killed prisoners captured earlier in the campaign just to ensure they had heads to present to Timur).[8] Ottoman Empire Main articles: Ottoman Empire, Mamluk rule in Iraq, Mesopotamian campaign, and Partitioning of the Ottoman Empire Later, the Ottoman Turks took Baghdad from the Persians in 1535. The Ottomans lost Baghdad to the Iranian Safavids in 1609, and took it back in 1632. From 1747 to 1831, Iraq was ruled, with short intermissions, by the Mamluk officers of Georgian origin who enjoyed local autonomy from the Sublime Porte.[9] In 1831, the direct Ottoman rule was imposed and lasted until World War I, during which the Ottomans sided with Germany and the Central Powers. During World War I the Ottomans were driven from much of the area by the United Kingdom during the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. The British lost 92,000 soldiers in the Mesopotamian campaign. Ottoman losses are unknown but the British captured a total of 45,000 prisoners of war. By the end of 1918 the British had deployed 410,000 men in the area, though only 112,000 were combat troops. During World War I the British and French divided Western Asia in the Sykes-Picot Agreement. The Treaty of Sčvres, which was ratified in the Treaty of Lausanne, led to the advent of modern Western Asia and Republic of Turkey. The League of Nations granted France mandates over Syria and Lebanon and granted the United Kingdom mandates over Iraq and Palestine (which then consisted of two autonomous regions: Palestine and Transjordan). Parts of the Ottoman Empire on the Arabian Peninsula became parts of what are today Saudi Arabia and Yemen. British Mandate of Mesopotamia Main articles: British Mandate of Mesopotamia and Assyrian independence British troops entering Baghdad. At the end of World War I, the League of Nations granted the area to the United Kingdom as a mandate. It initially formed two former Ottoman vilayets (regions): Baghdad, and Basra into a single country in August 1921. Five years later, in 1926, the northern vilayet of Mosul was added, forming the territorial boundaries of the modern Iraqi state. For three out of four centuries of Ottoman rule, Baghdad was the seat of administration for the vilayets of Baghdad, Mosul, and Basra. During the mandate, British colonial administrators ruled the country, and through the use of British armed forces, suppressed Arab and Kurdish rebellions against the occupation. They established the Hashemite king, Faisal, who had been forced out of Syria by the French, as their client ruler. Likewise, British authorities selected Sunni Arab elites from the region for appointments to government and ministry offices.[specify][10] Hashemite monarchy Main article: Hashemite Britain granted independence to Iraq in 1932, on the urging of King Faisal, though the British retained military bases and transit rights for their forces. King Ghazi of Iraq ruled as a figurehead after King Faisal's death in 1933, while undermined by attempted military coups, until his death in 1939. The United Kingdom invaded Iraq in 1941, for fear that the government of Rashid Ali al-Gaylani might cut oil supplies to Western nations, and because of his strong ideological leanings to Nazi Germany. A military occupation followed the restoration of the Hashemite monarchy, and the occupation ended on October 26, 1947. The rulers during the occupation and the remainder of the Hashemite monarchy were Nuri al-Said, the autocratic prime minister, who also ruled from 1930–1932, and 'Abd al-Ilah, an advisor to the king Faisal II. Republic of Iraq The reinstated Hashemite monarchy lasted until 1958, when it was overthrown by a coup d'etat of the Iraqi Army, known as the 14 July Revolution. The coup brought Brigadier General Abdul Karim Qassim to power. He withdrew from the Baghdad Pact and established friendly relations with the Soviet Union, but his government lasted only until 1963, when it was overthrown by Colonel Abdul Salam Arif. Salam Arif died in 1966 and his brother, Abdul Rahman Arif, assumed the presidency. In 1968, Rahman Arif was overthrown by the Arab Socialist Baath Party. This movement gradually came under the control of Saddam Hussein 'Abd al-Majid al Tikriti, who acceded to the presidency and control of the Revolutionary Command Council (RCC), then Iraq's supreme executive body, in July 1979, while killing many of his opponents. Saddam Hussein Main article: Saddam Hussein Saddam Hussein 'Abd al-Majid al Tikriti, President of Iraq, 1979-2003. In 1979, Saddam Hussein took power as Iraqi President, after killing and arresting his leadership rivals. Shortly after taking power, the political situation in Iraq's neighbour Iran changed drastically after the success of the Islamic Revolution of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, which resulted in a Shi'ite Muslim theocratic state being established. This was seen as a dangerous change in the eyes of the Iraqi government, as Iraq too had a Shi'ite majority and was ruled by Hussein's government which, apart from having numerous Sunnis occupying leading positions, had a pan-Arab but non-religious ideology. This left the country's Shiite population split between the members and supporters of the Ba'ath Party, and those who sympathised with the Iranian position. In 1980, Hussein claimed that Iranian forces were trying to topple his government[citation needed] and declared war on Iran. Saddam Hussein supported the Iranian Islamic socialist organization called the People's Mujahedin of Iran which opposed the Iranian government. During the Iran-Iraq War Iraqi forces attacked Iranian soldiers and civilians with chemical weapons. Hussein's regime was notorious for its human rights abuses; a well-known example is the Al-Anfal campaign[11][12][13] as well as attacks on Kurd civilians inside Iraq, such as the Halabja massacre, as punishment for elements of Kurdish support of Iran. The war ended in stalemate in 1988, largely due to American and Western support for Iraq. This was part of the US policy of "dual containment" of Iraq and Iran. Dead Iraqi Kurds of Halabja in 1988 after they were attacked by Iraqi armed forces which used poison gas to massacre the civilian population. Under Saddam Hussein's rule, a number of cultural projects were undertaken. The ruins of Babylon were rebuilt to represent the ancient city as seen here. In 1977, the Iraqi government ordered the construction of Osirak (also spelled Osiraq) at the Al Tuwaitha Nuclear Research Center, 18 km (11 miles) south-east of Baghdad. It was a 40 MW light-water nuclear materials testing reactor (MTR). In 1981, Israeli aircraft bombed the facility, in order to prevent the country from using the reactor for creation of nuclear weapons. Main article: Gulf War In 1990, faced with economic disaster following the end of the Iran-Iraq War, Saddam Hussein looked to the oil-rich neighbour of Kuwait as a target to invade to use its resources and money to rebuild Iraq's economy. The Iraqi government claimed that Kuwait was illegally slant drilling its oil pipelines into Iraqi territory which it demanded be stopped, Kuwait rejected the notion that it was slant drilling and Iraq followed this in August 1990 with the invasion of Kuwait. Upon successfully occupying Kuwait, Hussein declared that Kuwait had ceased to exist and it was to be part of Iraq, against heavy objections from many countries and the United Nations. The UN agreed to pass sanctions against Iraq and demanded its immediate withdrawal from Kuwait. Iraq refused and the UN Security Council in 1991 unanimously voted for military action against Iraq. The United States, which had enormous vested interests in the oil supplies of the Western Asia led an international coalition into Kuwait and Iraq. The coalition forces entered the war with more advanced weaponry than that of Iraq, though Iraq's army was one of the largest armed force in Western Asia at the time. Despite a large arsenal of military forces, the Iraqi army stood no match to the advanced weaponry of the coalition forces and the air superiority which the U.S. Air Force provided. Iraq responded to the invasion by launching SCUD missile attacks against Israel and Saudi Arabia. Hussein hoped that by attacking Israel, the Israeli military would be drawn into the war, which he believed would rally anti-Israeli sentiment in neighbouring Arab countries to support Iraq. However Hussein's gamble failed as Israel reluctantly accepted U.S. demand for Israel to remain out of the conflict to avoid inflaming tensions. Iraqi armed forces were quickly destroyed and Hussein eventually accepted the inevitable and ordered a withdrawal of Iraqi forces from Kuwait, but before they were to do so, he ordered them to sabotage Kuwait's oil wells, which resulted in hundreds of wells being set ablaze causing an economic and ecological disaster in Kuwait. The aftermath of the war saw the Iraqi military, especially its air force, destroyed. In turn for peace, Iraq was forced to accept "no-fly zones", the dismantlement of all chemical and biological weapons it possessed, and end any attempt to create or purchase nuclear weapons, to be insured by the allowance of UN weapons inspectors to evaluate the dismantlement of such weapons. And finally, Iraq would face sanctions if it disobeyed any of the demands. Shortly after the war ended in 1991, Shia Muslim Iraqis engaged in protests against Hussein's regime, but Hussein responded with violent repression against Shia Muslims and the protests came to an end. After the war, Iraq on a number of occasions through the 1990s was accused of breaking its obligations including the discovery in 1993, of a plan to assassinate former President George H. W. Bush, and the removal of UN weapon inspectors in 1998 (the Iraqi government claimed that it suspected that some inspectors were spies for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency), in which sanctions were imposed and military action was taken by U.S. forces against Iraq. Critics estimate that more than 500,000 Iraqi children died as a result of the sanctions.[14] Other critics, especially neoconservatives in the United States after 1998 claimed that containment of Iraq through sanctions without weapons inspectors in the area, was not capable of avoiding a rebuilding of "weapons of mass destruction" and demanded a hardline approach to Iraq, demanding compliance on inspections or face war. In January 2002, Saddam Hussein's Iraq was declared part of the so-called "Axis of Evil" by U.S. President George W. Bush - a loose term defining key enemies to US international interests. A number of incorrect and false allegations were made against Iraq such as accusations that Iraq was acquiring uranium from Niger and that Iraq had secret weapons laboratories in trailers and isolated facilities throughout Iraq.[citation needed] Eventually all of these were proven false. However Saddam Hussein, under pressure from the U.S. and the U.N., agreed to allow weapon inspectors to return to Iraq in 2002. Invasion by American-led Coalition forces Downtown Baghdad monument of Saddam Hussein vandalized by Iraqis shortly after the invasion of Coalition forces in April 2003. Main article: 2003 invasion of Iraq Further information: Iraq War 20 March 2003, a United States-organized coalition invaded Iraq, with the stated reason that Iraq had failed to abandon its nuclear and chemical weapons development program in violation of United Nations resolution 687. When Iraq invaded Kuwait during the first Gulf War, the United Nations Security Council, under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter, adopted resolution 678, authorizing U.N. member states to use "all necessary means" to "restore international peace and security in the area." After Iraq was expelled from Kuwait the United Nations passed a cease-fire resolution 687. The agreement included provisions obligating Iraq to discontinue its nuclear weapons program. The United States asserted that because Iraq was in "material breach" of resolution 687, the armed forces authorization of resolution 678 was revived. The United States gave further justification for the invasion of Iraq in claims that Iraq had or was developing weapons of mass destruction and the opportunity to remove an oppressive dictator from power and bring democracy to Iraq. In his State of Union Address on 29 January, 2002, the American President George W. Bush declared that Iraq was a member of the "axis of evil", and that, like North Korea and Iran, Iraq's attempt to acquire weapons of mass destruction gave credence to the claim that the Iraqi government posed a serious threat to America's national security. He added, "Iraq continues to flaunt its hostilities toward America and to support terror. The Iraqi regime has plotted to develop anthrax, and nerve gas, and nuclear weapons for over a decade... This is a regime that agreed to international inspections—then kicked out inspectors. This is a regime that has something to hide from the civilized world... By seeking weapons of mass destruction, these regimes [Iran, Iraq and North Korea] pose a grave and growing danger. They could provide these arms to terrorists, giving them the means to match their hatred."[15] However, according to a comprehensive US report no Iraqi weapons of mass destruction have been found since the invasion.[16] Yet, there are news reports which contradict this. .[17] Post-invasion Main articles: Post-invasion Iraq, 2003–present, Insurgency in Iraq, and Civil war in Iraq Occupation zones in Iraq after invasion. Following the invasion, the United States established the Coalition Provisional Authority to govern Iraq.[18] Government authority was transferred to an Iraqi Interim Government in June 2004 and a permanent government was elected in October 2005. More than 140,000 Coalition troops remain in Iraq. Studies have placed the number of civilians deaths as high as 655,000 (see The Lancet study), although most studies have put the number much lower; the Iraq Body Count project has a figure of less than 10% of The Lancet Study, though IBC organizers acknowledge that their statistics are an undercount as they base their information off of media-confirmed deaths. The website of the Iraq body count states, "Our maximum therefore refers to reported deaths - which can only be a sample of true deaths unless one assumes that every civilian death has been reported. It is likely that many if not most civilian casualties will go unreported by the media."[19]. After the invasion, al-Qaeda took advantage of the insurgency to entrench itself in the country concurrently with an Arab-Sunni led insurgency and sectarian violence. On December 30, 2006, Saddam Hussein was hanged.[20] Hussein's half-brother and former intelligence chief Barzan Hassan and former chief judge of the Revolutionary Court Awad Hamed al-Bandar were likewise executed on January 15, 2007;[21] as was Taha Yassin Ramadan, Saddam's former deputy and former vice-president (originally sentenced to life in prison but later to death by hanging), on March 20, 2007.[22] Ramadan was the fourth and last man in the al-Dujail trial to die by hanging for crimes against humanity. At the Anfal genocide trial, Saddam's cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid (aka Chemical Ali), former defense minister Sultan Hashim Ahmed al-Tay, and former deputy Hussein Rashid Mohammed were sentenced to hang for their role in the Al-Anfal Campaign against the Kurds on June 24, 2007[citation needed]. Acts of sectarian violence have led to claims of ethnic cleansing in Iraq, and there have been many attacks on Iraqi minorities such as the Yezidis, Mandeans, Assyrians and others.[23] In 2007 Foreign Policy Magazine named Iraq as the second most unstable nation in the world after Sudan.[24] Although violence has declined from the summer of 2007,[25] the U.N. reported of a cholera outbreak in Iraq.[26] Iraqi diaspora Main articles: Iraqi diaspora and Refugees of Iraq The dispersion of native Iraqis to other countries is known as the Iraqi diaspora. There have been many large-scale waves of emigration from Iraq, beginning early in the regime of Saddam Hussein and continuing through to 2007. The UN High Commission for Refugees has estimated that nearly two million Iraqis have fled the country in recent years, mostly to Jordan and Syria.[27] Although some expatriates returned to Iraq after the 2003 invasion, the flow had virtually stopped by 2006.[28] In addition to the 2 million Iraqis who fled to neighbouring countries, the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre estimates the number of people currently displaced within the country at 1.9 million.[29] Roughly 40% of Iraq's middle class is believed to have fled, the U.N. said. Most are fleeing systematic persecution and have no desire to return.[30] Refugees are mired in poverty as they are generally barred from working in their host countries.[31][32] In recent times the Diaspora seems to be reversing with the increased security of the last few months, and the Iraqi government claims that so far 46,000 refugees have returned to their homes in October of 2007 alone.[33]. Government and politics Government Main article: Federal government of Iraq The federal government of Iraq is defined under the current Constitution as an Islamic, democratic, federal parliamentary republic. The federal government is composed of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches, as well as numerous independent commissions. Aside from the federal government, there are regions (made of one or more governorates), governorates, and districts within Iraq with jurisdiction over various matters as defined by law. Regions, governorates and districts Main articles: Regions of Iraq, Governorates of Iraq, and Districts of Iraq Currently, Kurdistan is the only legally defined region within Iraq, with its own government and quasi-official militia, the Peshmerga. Iraq itself is divided into eighteen governorates (or provinces) (Arabic: muhafadhat, singular - muhafadhah, Kurdish: ??????? Pârizgah). The governorates are subdivided into districts (or qadhas). Baghdad Salah ad Din Diyala Wasit Maysan Al Basrah Dhi Qar Al Muthanna Al-Qadisiyyah Babil Karbala An Najaf Al Anbar Ninawa Dahuk Arbil At Ta'mim (Kirkuk) Sulaymaniyah The following governorates are within the region Iraqi Kurdistan: Dahuk Arbil Sulaymaniyah Politics Jalal Talabani, the sanctioned President of Iraq. Main article: Politics of Iraq Iraq was under Baath Party rule from 1968 to 2003; in 1979 Saddam Hussein took control and remained president until 2003 after which he was unseated by a US-led invasion. On October 15, 2005, more than 63% of eligible Iraqis came out across the country to vote on whether to accept or reject the new constitution. On October 25, the vote was certified and the constitution passed with a 78% overall majority, with the percentage of support varying widely between the country's territories.[34] The new constitution had overwhelming backing among the Shia and Kurdish communities, but was overwhelmingly rejected by Arab Sunnis. Three