Once known as Mesopotamia, Iraq was the site of flourishing ancient civilizations, including the Sumerian, Babylonian, and Parthian cultures. Muslims conquered Iraq in the seventh century A.D. In the eighth century, the Abassid caliphate established its capital at Baghdad, which became a famous center of learning and the arts. By 1638, Baghdad had become a frontier outpost of the Ottoman Empire.

At the end of World War I, Iraq became a British-mandated territory. When it was declared independent in 1932, the Hashemite family, which also ruled in Jordan, ruled as a constitutional monarchy. In 1945, Iraq joined the United Nations and became a founding member of the Arab League. In 1956, the Baghdad pact allied Iraq, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, and the United Kingdom, and established its headquarters in Baghdad.

Gen. Abdul Karim Qasim took power in a July 1958 coup, during which King Faysal II and Prime Minister Nuri as-Said were killed. Qasim ended Iraq's membership in the Baghdad Pact (later reconstituted as the Central Treaty Organization--CENTO) in 1959. Qasim was assassinated in February 1963, when the Arab Socialist Renaissance Party (Ba'ath Party) took power under the leadership of Gen. Ahmad Hasan al-Bakr as prime minister and Col. Abdul Salam Arif as president.

Nine months later, Arif led a coup ousting the Ba'ath government. In April 1966, Arif was killed in a plane crash and was succeeded by his brother, Gen. Abdul Rahman Mohammad Arif. On July 17, 1968, a group of Ba'athists and military elements overthrew the Arif regime. Ahmad Hasan al-Bakr reemerged as President of Iraq and Chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council (RCC). In July 1979, Bakr resigned, and his chosen successor, Saddam Hussein, assumed both offices.

Current Political Conditions

The Ba'ath Party controls the government. The Kurdish Democratic Party and the Kurdish Republican Party have nominally participated in a coalition government with the Ba'ath Party under the Popular Progressive National Front, but the Ba'ath Party carefully circumscribed their political activities, and are, often as not, in open rebellion against the government. Several senior government officials are Kurds.

The Iraqi regime does not tolerate opposition. The Communist Party was removed from the coalition and declared illegal in 1979. Since then, its activities have been conducted primarily in exile. The leaders of the outlawed Da'wa (Islamic Call) Party, which seeks to establish an Islamic republic in Iraq, operate from exile in Iran and other countries.

A large-scale rebellion by elements of the Kurdish population against the Ba'ath government ended in 1975 following the Algiers agreement between Iraq and Iran. The Iraq-Iran war has sparked renewed but limited antiregime insurgency in the Kurdish areas of northern Iraq since 1980. The two principal Kurdish opposition parties are the Kurdish Democratic Party, led by the remaining son of the late Mustafa Barzani, and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan of Jalal Talabani.

Source: U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Public Affairs, October 1987.