Iraq in turmoilNation torn apart by violence

Tens of thousands of Iraqis have been killed since a U.S.-led invasion toppled the country's leader Saddam Hussein in 2003. Although overall violence has dropped sharply since a peak in 2006-7, daily life for Iraqis remains precarious.

• Millions displaced by violence
• Basic services devastated by sanctions and war
• Violence hampers aid agencies

The toppling of Saddam unleashed a ferocious insurgency which deepened divisions in Iraqi society along sectarian or ethnic lines. Tensions remain high in many areas, especially in the north and centre.

Iraqis still live with kidnappings, assassinations, forced recruitment, explosions, rape and casualties from unexploded ordinance, and general criminality.

Millions of Iraqis do not have access to clean water, are dependent on food aid and lack access to health care.

About 4.6 million people are still displaced, many of them sheltering in areas where jobs and public services are limited or non-existent.

Before the invasion, Iraqis had suffered decades of dictatorship, war and international sanctions. The economy was crippled and its infrastructure shattered.

The invasion brought an end to sanctions and paved the way for elections and a new constitution. Billions of aid dollars have poured in to rebuild the country but the dire security situation and corruption have hampered reconstruction.

The U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 ended nearly a quarter of a century of authoritarian rule under Saddam Hussein, but his removal hardly brought the peaceful transition to democracy envisaged by Washington.

Tens of thousands of Iraqis have died since the invasion and millions were forced to flee their homes. Many have still not returned home.

Tensions are high especially in the north and centre, and violence remains endemic. Iraqis still experience kidnappings, assassinations, forced recruitment, explosions, rape and casualties from unexploded ordinance.

Millions depend on food aid, and many do not have access to healthcare. Rebuilding the country's shattered infrastructure and economy has been very slow, despite Iraq's huge oil reserves and billions of dollars of aid.

The country has fractured into regions dominated by sectarian, ethnic or tribal political groupings, and al Qaeda's militant presence has spread to several major cities.

Many parts of the capital Baghdad are now more ethnically or religiously homogenous than at any time in Iraq's history.

And semi-autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan and Baghdad have been at loggerheads over the city of Kirkuk, which Kurds want to have wrapped into their northern region, and other disputed territories. Baghdad also opposed oil deals the Kurds signed independently with foreign firms, considering them illegal.

But there are signs of hope. The number of casualties has fallen dramatically since mid-2007, Iraqis formally took back control of security from the United States in January 2009, and multiparty elections in 2010 were relatively peaceful.

Iraq under Saddam

Saddam had already been the country's effective strongman for a decade when he came to power in 1979.

He abolished Islamic Shari'a law and turned Iraq into a secular state. His government was drawn from the minority Sunni community, marginalising the Shi'ite majority and non-Arab Kurds.

The country is predominantly Shi'ite - about 60 percent - and Sunnis form about 20 percent of Iraqis. The rest of the population is mostly made up of Kurds. Smaller minorities include Turkmen and Assyrians.

Iraq and Iran went to war in 1980, relations having deteriorated after the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran. The eight-year conflict left up to 1 million dead and Iraq heavily indebted. The war helped Saddam justify the creation of a nuclear programme and the world's fourth largest army.

Saddam used chemical weapons on Iranian troops and later against Iraqi civilians, most notably in an attack on the town of Halabja in 1988 which killed 5,000 Kurds, according to human rights activists.

Iraq's repression of the Kurds and Shi'ites did not attract huge international attention at the time. But the 1990 invasion of tiny Kuwait to the south was not overlooked. A U.S.-led force expelled the Iraqis from the oil-rich nation the following year.

The invasion triggered international sanctions. The United States, United Kingdom and France imposed no-fly zones over the Kurdish north in 1991 and the Shi'ite south in 1992 to protect the local populations. France later pulled out of patrolling the zones.

In an attempt to minimise the impact of sanctions on ordinary Iraqis, the United Nations administered an oil-for-food programme from 1996 onwards, which allowed the regime to sell oil in return for humanitarian goods.

However, some humanitarian agencies and academics say the sanctions led to the deaths of tens of thousands of children.

The trade embargo made it hard for Iraq to rebuild civilian infrastructure which had been destroyed during the Gulf War. Almost all the country's electricity plants were bombed, water-pumping and sanitation systems failed and untreated sewage flowed into rivers used for drinking water, rapidly spreading disease.

The Iraqi government's lack of cooperation with the United States and United Nations were partly to blame for the duration of the sanctions, and its actions made their impact worse. Iraq periodically halted oil sales to protest the sanctions. Child mortality rates rose in the south and centre, where Saddam was in charge, but they fell in northern Iraq where the U.N. managed the relief programme.

Towards the end of the 1990s the sanctions were eased and Iraq was allowed to sell more oil, and import the goods necessary to restore infrastructure and agriculture.

This provided some relief but also appears to have enriched Saddam and those around him. An independent inquiry after the U.S.-led invasion found thousands of companies had colluded with Saddam's government to skim $1.8 billion off the programme.

Invasion

U.S. and British forces invaded Iraq in March 2003, accusing Saddam of failing to cooperate with U.N. inspectors searching for alleged weapons of mass destruction. The invasion was opposed by France, Germany, China and Russia among others.

Saddam was overthrown on April 9 after U.S. troops took Baghdad.

Inspectors have since concluded that pre-war Iraq did not have stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons and that its nuclear programme had already decayed.

Following his capture, Saddam, who came from the Sunni minority, was put on trial for the killing of 148 Shi'ites in 1982. He was found guilty and executed at the end of 2006. He was also charged with genocide against Kurds in the late 1980s, but was executed before the trial ended. Kurdish authorities say tens of thousands were killed and hundreds of thousands displaced in a campaign to assert government control over Kurdish areas in the north.

Immediately following the invasion the United States created an occupation authority that disbanded Saddam's ruling Baath party and the Iraqi army, leaving hundreds of thousands of men jobless.

In the security and political vacuum that followed, violence erupted.

Insurgency

A Sunni-led insurgency attacked U.S.-led troops and anyone deemed to support them. These included Iraq's new Shi'ite-dominated government, its fledgling security forces, oil installations and civilians - many of them the victims of devastating suicide and car bombings.

The insurgents included nationalists, former members of the Iraqi military and supporters of Saddam. Al Qaeda militants made up around 5 percent, according to U.S. officials and Sunni politicians. Sunnis accused Shi'ite militia of carrying out revenge killings.

Sectarian violence spiralled in early 2006 following the bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra, one of the holiest Shi'ite shrines, which was blamed on Sunni Islamist militant group al Qaeda.

Many Iraqis fled their homes as death squads sought to clear neighbourhoods of those they saw as outsiders. Victims often showed signs of torture.

Shi'ite militia leaders said they were responding to Sunni-led violence. Sunnis said the Shi'ite militia had links with the Shi'ite dominated police and accused them of killing thousands.

But the conflicts were not just between Sunni and Shi'ite groups. Iraq was wracked by several different wars and insurgencies involving different groups struggling for political power and control of the country's oil, says a 2007 report from British think tank Chatham House.

Shi'ite and Sunni groups fought a vicious civil war in and around Baghdad for control of the state. Kurds fought non-Kurds in the north, and fought both Sunnis and Shi'ites over increased freedom for the Kurdish north. Sunnis attacked U.S. troops in the centre and north of the country, and Shi'ites attacked coalition troops in the centre and south. A Sunni-Sunni conflict has raged between tribal forces and groups associated with al Qaeda and other radical Islamist movements, and a Shi'ite-Shi'ite conflict has also been waged.

Iraq's neighbours Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey influenced different parties to the conflict, says the Chatham House report.

The predominantly Kurdish region remained relatively peaceful. But neighbouring Turkey launched air attacks and cross-raids, saying Kurdish rebels were using northern Iraq as a base for attacks on Turkish soil.

Levels of violence across the country fell sharply after mid-2007. This has been attributed to a major U.S. military build-up, a more aggressive strategy towards al Qaeda and Shi'ite militias, and Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's order to his Mehdi Army militia to freeze their activities.

Informal talks in 2007 and 2008 between Iraqis across the sectarian divide, together with peacemakers from Northern Ireland and South Africa, helped to build bridges and ease the violence, the U.N. Development Programme says.

Some say violence has declined because areas were ethnically cleansed during two years of sectarian bloodshed.

The dire security slowed reconstruction and attacks on the country's oil infrastructure cost billions of dollars in lost revenue.

At the end of 2007, Britain handed security for Basra to Iraqi forces, effectively ending nearly five years of British control of southern Iraq.

Under a security pact which came into force on January 1, 2009, the United States returned control of military operations to Iraq's military and police and, at the end of June 2009, U.S. troops withdrew from Iraqi towns. By September 2010 the last combat brigade had left the country, marking the end of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Some U.S. soldiers remain to support Iraqi forces. They are due to leave Iraq by the end of 2011.

Parliamentary elections in 2010 were relatively peaceful - a marked contrast from parliamentary elections in January 2005 which helped put Iraq on the path to civil war. Sunnis - who mainly boycotted the 2005 elections - turned out in large numbers.

But tensions remain high, especially in the country's north and centre.

Flight

An estimated 2.76 million people were internally displaced in November 2009 - over 70 per cent of them women and children - according to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC).

Another 2.3 million people left the country, mainly for Syria and Jordan, although the number of Iraqi refugees had dropped to 1.7 million by June 2009, the United Nations says.

But a significant number of these people had fled their homes before the 2003 invasion. In 2002, more than 700,000 Iraqis were internally displaced and 420,000 were refugees.

Host governments have struggled to meet the needs of Iraqi refugees. Syria - which has taken in about 1.4 million Iraqis - imposed tighter entry restrictions in October 2007, effectively closing its border to any more refugees. They are barred from formal employment and work in the informal market.

Refugees in Jordan have no legal status - the government considers them to be guests rather than refugees. The UNHCR says they are generally safe, but they have no access to employment and some are in dire straits.

Around 870,000 internally displaced Iraqis sought safety in the more stable north of the country.

Death tolls

No one knows how many civilians have died since the invasion. The campaign group Iraq Body Count tallies the numbers reported in the media.

British polling group Opinion Research Business said in 2008 that their research showed more than a million people had died as a result of the war. Their survey of 2,414 adults found 20 percent of people had had at least one death in their household.

In October 2006, U.S. and Iraqi researchers said as many as 600,000 Iraqis had died in violence - although their data did not distinguish between civilians and combatants. And they said another 54,000 had died beyond the norm, prevented by violence from getting healthcare, for example. These numbers were dismissed by the Iraqi, U.S. and British governments.

Iraqi government and World Health Organisation researchers have estimated the civilian death toll for the same period at around 150,000.

Delivering aid

Many international humanitarian organisations and the United Nations were forced to withdraw foreign staff, or left altogether, when insurgents began targeting them after the invasion.

• The U.N. headquarters in Baghdad were bombed in August 2003. Twenty-two people died, including envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello. The organisation subsequently withdrew all non-Iraqi staff.
• Twelve people were killed when a car bomb hit the International Committee of the Red Cross in October 2003, prompting the organisation to pull out foreign staff.
• Many foreign aid agencies began withdrawing following the abduction of two Italian aid workers in September 2004. The hostages were released but World Vision's Iraqi head of operations was killed the same month. The Paris-based aid group Action Contre la Faim said aid activities by U.S.-led forces made it hard for charities to appear impartial.
• Militants kidnapped and killed British aid worker Margaret Hassan, who ran CARE International's operations in Iraq, in late 2004. Her death shocked many because she had lived in Iraq for decades and opposed the invasion. An Italian aid worker Salvatore Santoro was kidnapped and killed at the end of 2004.

Thousands of Iraqis and more than 200 foreigners have been abducted since the invasion. More than 60 foreign hostages have been reported executed.

Since 2003, at least 94 aid workers have been killed, 248 injured, 24 arrested or detained and 89 kidnapped or abducted, according to the NGO Coordination Committee in Iraq.

The agencies are cautiously returning, but many run their programmes remotely through local partners, and still struggle to access some areas.

Humanitarian situation

Iraqis once enjoyed some of the highest living standards in the region. But poverty grew under Saddam, and the 2003 invasion triggered a humanitarian crisis beyond the scale that aid agencies predicted in the run-up to the war.

Aid agencies say the worst of the crisis is now over, but most Iraqis live in precarious conditions. The situation varies widely - emergency relief is still needed in areas where violence is ongoing, and development aid is needed to help areas affected by poverty and underdevelopment.

Iraqi refugees and internally displaced (IDPs) are particularly vulnerable. About 500,000 IDPs are living in settlements or camp-like situations in extremely poor conditions, UNHCR said in March 2010. Many of the displaced do not have proper access to health care.

Millions of Iraqis lack clean drinking water and many depend on food aid.

The government supplies monthly food rations to about 90 percent of the population. In December 2009, the World Food Programme was delivering food aid to over 1 million people. The agency warns, however, that another 6.4 million are highly dependent on safety nets such as the government-run Public Distribution System which supplies 90 percent of the population.

Children - who make up almost half Iraq's population - are particularly at risk.

The instability has compromised aid agencies' ability to work in the country. Many scaled back their presence or pulled out following a spate of attacks on aid workers. Some are cautiously returning to the country, although many still work remotely through local agencies.

The United Nations, which withdrew most of its 600 staff from Baghdad in 2003, has expended its role in Iraq following a U.N. Security Council resolution.

The agency has a strong advisory role in Iraqi affairs, allowing it to help the government settle political, economic and constitutional matters, internal border disputes and to foster dialogue between the country's different factions.

Reconstruction

Iraq sits on some of the world's largest oil reserves and donors have pledged billions of dollars in loans and grants since 2003, but reconstruction has lagged.

The violence is partly to blame. Early on looters stripped newly rebuilt facilities, while attacks on westerners or anybody working with foreign companies slowed work to a crawl. The cost of keeping workers safe soared.

Corruption is another major challenge to reconstruction.

Iraq is ranked near the bottom of Transparency International's survey of perceived levels of public sector corruption.

Iraqis complain bitterly about government corruption which they blame for the poor state of electricity, water and other basic services.

And U.S. officials have investigated dozens of cases of fraud involving American military officers, civilian officials and private contractors.

Oil smuggling by well-organized gangs is another problem.

U.S. officials originally predicted Iraq's oil would fund relief and reconstruction projects. But efforts to rejuvenate the oil sector have suffered setbacks, including insurgent attacks on energy facilities.

Although Iraq's oil reserves are huge, in 2010 it was only the 11th-largest producer, and the government plans to increase production.

It is also trying to reach an agreement to share the country's oil wealth fairly among the regions, including the semi-autonomous Kurdistan which is home to some of the country's oilfields.

Analysts say Iraq must diversify its economy because its population is too large to be supported by oil money alone, making it dangerously reliant on high oil prices.

Another problem is that the oil industry employs relatively few people. Although oil contributed around 56 percent of Iraq's gross domestic product in 2008, it employed only one percent of workers.

U.S. abuses

Although the United States formally returned sovereignty to an Iraqi interim government in June 2004, it has maintained tens of thousands of troops in the country, with a peak of 160,000-170,000 in 2007.

In its campaign to stamp out the insurgency the U.S. military has been accused of killing civilians, mass detentions and torture.

U.S. troops have said they were acting in self defence in some cases, but the military has launched investigations into several incidents.

In one of the worst cases, soldiers gang raped and murdered an Iraqi teenager and shot dead her parents and younger sister in March 2006. Three of the soldiers involved received jail sentences between 90 and 110 years. The crime significantly increased tensions with U.S. forces in Iraq.

Allegations of prisoner abuse have also dogged the U.S.-led forces. In 2004 photographs emerged of Iraqi detainees being sexually humiliated, threatened with snarling dogs and otherwise mistreated in Abu Ghraib prison on the outskirts of Baghdad.

The U.S. government says it has put on trial scores of armed forces staff accused of prisoner abuse in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Under the January 2009 security pact, the United States lost the power to hold prisoners indefinitely without charge - at the time of the pact it held about 17,000 detainees in Iraq. Also, U.S. contractors became subject to Iraqi law, able to be prosecuted in Iraqi courts.