Country profilesIraq

Humanitarian profile

Tens of thousands of Iraqis have been killed since a U.S.-led invasion toppled the country's leader Saddam Hussein in 2003. Many people have been displaced and others have fled abroad. Basic services have been devastated by sanctions and war. Violence continues to hamper aid operations.

Country snapshot

Oil-rich Iraq has experienced years of insurgent attacks, sectarianism, international sanctions, Western occupation and Saddam Hussein's reign of fear.

After the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, violence spiralled and the country fractured into regions dominated by sectarian, ethnic or tribal political groupings.

The conflict generated the largest displacement crisis in the region since Israel's inception in 1948, with millions fleeing fighting to relatively stable parts of the country, and across the border mainly to Syria and Jordan.

But a drop in violence since 2007, and a relatively fair and stable election in 2010 have raised hopes for peace.

The government still has to improve security, reconcile the Shi'ite and Sunni Arab populations, deal with Kurdish aspirations for independence and manage the country's vast oil wealth - which is part of the reason for its troubles over the decades.

The United States and its allies are now shifting their focus away from Iraq.

Government

Iraq has a president - a mainly ceremonial head of state - and a prime minister, who heads a 40-strong cabinet.

Parliament has one chamber, the 325-member Council of Representatives, elected every four years.

The country has 18 governorates. Three of them - Duhuk, Irbil and Sulaymaniyah - are in the semi autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan, which has its own government and parliament.

Economy

Iraq has one of the world's largest proven oil reserves and oil exports account for the majority of foreign earnings, but the economy has been shattered by years of corruption, sanctions, war and insurgency.

Most recently, the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 and subsequent years of sectarian violence scared off foreign investors.

Insurgents attacked the oil industry infrastructure, costing billions of dollars in lost revenues.

Iraq is working on an institutional and legal framework needed to get the economy working again, with help from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

Crucial will be an agreement to share the country's oil wealth fairly among the regions, including the semi-autonomous oil-rich Iraqi Kurdistan.

The government has signed contracts with major oil companies aimed at greatly expanding revenues, but Iraq needs to upgrade its refinery and export infrastructure to realise these.

Agriculture is a major employer, and Iraq has reserves of natural gas, phosphates and sulphur.

Donors have pledged billions of dollars in aid but reconstruction has been slow, and ordinary Iraqis live with high levels of unemployment and corruption. Many lack access to clean water and healthcare, and millions depend on food aid.

The national currency is the dinar.

History

Iraq centres on a fertile crescent of land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers - formerly part of Mesopotamia, and one of the places where human civilisation first flowered in ancient times and home to Babylon.

Baghdad was later seat of the powerful Islamic caliphate but was overrun in the 13th-century Mongol invasion.

After centuries of Turkish Ottoman rule, Iraq fell to the British after World War One and gained independence in 1932.

First a kingdom, then a republic, it knew little but autocratic rule until the overthrow in 2003 of its last strongman, Saddam Hussein, who had risen to power in 1979. He led the then increasingly prosperous country from one disaster to the next, draining the national coffers.

Saddam and his secular Baath Party favoured Sunni Muslims, shutting out and oppressing the majority Shi'ites and the non-Arab Kurds of the north.

Saddam launched a 1980-1988 war against Iran, which killed up to a million people from both sides. In one notorious incident, Iraq gassed the town of Halabjah in Iraq's Kurdish north in 1988, killing 5,000 people, as part of a campaign against rebellious Kurds who sided with Iran.

In 1990 he invaded Kuwait. A U.S.-led coalition drove out his forces and enforced "no-fly" zones over north and south Iraq.

A decade of crippling sanctions followed, aimed at forcing him to hand over suspected biological and chemical weapons. The United Nations administered an oil-for-food programme from 1996, through which the regime sold oil for humanitarian goods.

In 1993, U.S. forces attacked Iraqi intelligence headquarters in Baghdad in retaliation for the attempted assassination of U.S. President George Bush in Kuwait.

After the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington in 2001, the U.S. government turned up the heat on Saddam, leading to the invasion on March 20, 2003.

Within three weeks, Saddam had been removed, but the suspected weapons of mass destruction were never found. An Iraqi court found Saddam guilty of crimes against humanity and he was executed in late 2006.

Immediately following the invasion a Sunni-led insurgency - which included some al Qaeda militants - targeted U.S.-led troops, the new Shi'ite-dominated government, oil installations and civilians. But the conflict spiralled into several civil wars involving different groups struggling for political power and control of the country's oil.

Tens of thousands of civilians have died in horrific suicide bombings and sectarian attacks. The United States poured in large numbers of extra troops in 2007 to help restore order. The same year, Britain ended nearly five years of control of Basra, southern Iraq.

Violence remains endemic, and al Qaeda's presence has spread to some major cities.

In October 2005, Iraqis approved a constitution in a referendum that paved the way for the country's first free elections in December that year, and then again in 2010.

Jalal Talabani has been president since 2005. He leads a Kurdish party in northern Iraq and is the first non-Arab to be elected leader of an Arab state.

U.S. troops are due to leave in 2011.

Legal snapshot

Under the 2005 constitution, the legal system is based on European civil and Islamic law.

The judicial branch is independent. The Higher Judicial Council and Federal Supreme Court head the federal courts. The Court of Cassation is the highest court of appeal.

Iraq has not accepted compulsory International Court of Justice jurisdiction.

It does not recognise the authority of the International Criminal Court.

Iraq ranks near the bottom of Transparency International's index measuring the perceived level of public-sector corruption in 180 countries (1st position is perceived as least corrupt).

It gets an overall 'very weak' rating from U.S.-based non-governmental organisation Global Integrity in its report measuring anti-corruption measures, government accountability and civic freedoms.