Iraq Government, Facts, and History

The modern nation of Iraq is built upon foundations that go back to some of humanitys earliest complex cultures. It was in Iraq, also known as Mesopotamia, that Babylonian king Hammurabi regularized the law in the Code of Hammurabi, c. 1772 BCE. Under Hammurabis system, society would inflict upon a criminal the same harm that the criminal had inflicted upon his victim. This is codified in the famous dictum, An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. More recent Iraqi history, however, tends to support the Mahatma Gandhis take on this rule. He is supposed to have said that An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind. Capital and Major Cities Capital: Baghdad, population 9,500,000 (2008 estimate) Major cities: Mosul, 3,000,000 Basra, 2,300,000 Arbil, 1,294,000 Kirkuk, 1,200,000 Government of Iraq The Republic of Iraq is a parliamentary democracy. The head of state is the president, currently Jalal Talabani, while the head of government is Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. The unicameral parliament is called the Council of Representatives; its 325 members serve four-year terms. Eight of those seats are specifically reserved for ethnic or religious minorities. Iraqs judiciary system consists of the Higher Judicial Council, the Federal Supreme Court, the Federal Court of Cassation, and lower courts. (Cassation literally means to quash - it is another term for appeals, evidently taken from the French legal system.) Population Iraq has a total population of about 30.4 million. The population growth rate is an estimated 2.4%. About 66% of Iraqis live in urban areas. Some 75-80% of Iraqis are Arabs. Another 15-20% are Kurds, by far the largest ethnic minority; they live primarily in northern Iraq. The remaining roughly 5% of the population is made up of Turkomen, Assyrians, Armenians, Chaldeans and other ethnic groups. Languages Both Arabic and Kurdish are official languages of Iraq. Kurdish is an Indo-European language related to Iranian languages. Minority languages in Iraq include Turkoman, which is a Turkic language; Assyrian, a Neo-Aramaic language of the Semitic language family; and Armenian, an Indo-European language with possible Greek roots. Thus, although the total number of languages spoken in Iraq is not high, the linguistic variety is great. Religion Iraq is an overwhelmingly Muslim country, with an estimated 97% of the population following Islam. Perhaps, unfortunately, it is also among the most evenly divided countries on Earth in terms of Sunni and Shia populations; 60 to 65% of Iraqis are Shia, while 32 to 37% are Sunni. Under Saddam Hussein, the Sunni minority controlled the government, often persecuting Shias. Since the new constitution was implemented in 2005, Iraq is supposed to be a democratic country, but the Shia/Sunni split is a source of much tension as the nation sorts out a new form of government. Iraq also has a small Christian community, around 3% of the population. During the nearly decade-long war following the US-led invasion in 2003, many Christians fled Iraq for Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, or western countries. Geography Iraq is a desert country, but it is watered by two major rivers - the Tigris and the Euphrates. Only 12% of Iraqs land is arable. It controls a 58 km (36 miles) coast on the Persian Gulf, where the two rivers empty into the Indian Ocean. Iraq is bordered by Iran to the east, Turkey and Syria to the north, Jordan and Saudi Arabia to the west, and Kuwait to the southeast. Its highest point is Cheekah Dar, a mountain in the north of the country, at 3,611 m (11,847 feet). Its lowest point is sea level. Climate As a subtropical desert, Iraq experiences extreme seasonal variation in temperature. In parts of the country, July and August temperatures average over 48 °C (118 °F). During the rainy winter months of December through March, however, temperatures drop below freezing not infrequently. Some years, heavy mountain snow in the north produces dangerous flooding on the rivers. The lowest temperature recorded in Iraq was -14 °C (7 °F). The highest temperature was 54 °C (129 °F). Another key feature of Iraqs climate is the sharqi, a southerly wind that blows from April through early June, and again in October and November. It gusts up to 80 kilometers per hour (50 mph), causing sandstorms that can be seen from space. Economy The economy of Iraq is all about oil; black gold provides more than 90% of government revenue  and accounts for 80% of the countrys foreign exchange income. As of 2011, Iraq was producing 1.9 million barrels per day of oil, while consuming 700,000 barrels per day domestically. (Even as it exports almost 2 million barrels per day, Iraq also imports 230,000 barrels per day.) Since the start of the US-led War in Iraq in 2003, foreign aid has become a major component of Iraqs economy, as well. The US has pumped some $58 billion dollars worth of aid into the country between 2003 and 2011; other nations have pledged an additional $33 billion in reconstruction aid. Iraqs workforce is employed primarily in the service sector, although about 15 to 22% work in agriculture. The unemployment rate is around 15%, and an estimated 25% of Iraqis live below the poverty line. The Iraqi currency is the dinar. As of February 2012, $1 US is equal to 1,163 dinars. History of Iraq Part of the Fertile Crescent, Iraq was one of the early sites of complex human civilization and agricultural practice. Once called Mesopotamia, Iraq was the seat of the Sumerian and Babylonian cultures c. 4,000 - 500 BCE. During this early period, Mesopotamians invented or refined technologies such as writing and irrigation; the famous King Hammurabi (r. 1792- 1750 BCE) recorded the law in the Code of Hammurabi, and over a thousand of years later, Nebuchadnezzar II (r. 605 - 562 BCE) built the incredible Hanging Gardens of Babylon. After about 500 BCE, Iraq was ruled by a succession of Persian dynasties, such as the Achaemenids, the Parthians, the Sassanids and the Seleucids. Although local governments existed in Iraq, they were under Iranian control until the 600s CE. In 633, the year after the Prophet Muhammad died, a Muslim army under Khalid ibn Walid invaded Iraq. By 651, the soldiers of Islam had brought down the Sassanid Empire in Persia  and began to Islamicize the region that is now Iraq and Iran. Between 661 and 750, Iraq was a dominion of the Umayyad Caliphate, which ruled from Damascus (now in Syria). The Abbasid Caliphate, which ruled the Middle East and North Africa from 750 to 1258, decided to build a new capital closer to the political power hub of Persia. It built the city of Baghdad, which became a center of Islamic art and learning. In 1258, catastrophe struck the Abbasids and Iraq in the form the Mongols under Hulagu Khan, a grandson of Genghis Khan. The Mongols demanded that Baghdad surrender, but the Caliph Al-Mustasim refused. Hulagus troops laid siege to Baghdad, taking the city with at least 200,000 Iraqi dead. The Mongols also burned the Grand Library of Baghdad and its wonderful collection of documents - one of the great crimes of history. The caliph himself was executed by being rolled in a carpet and trampled by horses; this was an honorable death in Mongol culture  because none of the caliphs noble blood touched the ground. Hulagus army would meet defeat by the Egyptian Mamluk slave-army in the Battle of Ayn Jalut. In the Mongols wake, however, the Black Death carried away about a third of Iraqs population. In 1401, Timur the Lame (Tamerlane) captured Baghdad  and ordered another massacre of its people. Timurs fierce army only controlled Iraq for a few years  and was supplanted by the Ottoman Turks. The Ottoman Empire would rule Iraq from the fifteenth century through 1917  when Britain wrested the Middle East from Turkish control and the Ottoman Empire collapsed. Iraq Under Britain Under the British/French plan to divide the Middle East, the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement, Iraq became part of the British Mandate. On November 11, 1920, the region became a British mandate under the League of Nations, called the State of Iraq. Britain brought in a (Sunni) Hashemite king from the region of Mecca and Medina, now in Saudi Arabia, to rule over the primarily Shia Iraqis and Kurds of Iraq, sparking widespread discontent and rebellion. In 1932, Iraq gained nominal independence from Britain, although the British-appointed King Faisal still ruled the country and the British military had special rights in Iraq. The Hashemites ruled until 1958  when King Faisal II was assassinated in a coup led by Brigadier General Abd al-Karim Qasim. This signaled the beginning of a rule by a series of strongmen over Iraq, which lasted through 2003. Qasims rule survived for just five years, before being overthrown in turn by Colonel Abdul Salam Arif in February of 1963. Three years later, Arifs brother took power after the colonel died; however, he would rule Iraq for just two years before being deposed by a Baath Party-led coup in 1968. The Baathist government was led by Ahmed Hasan Al-Bakir at first, but he was slowly elbowed aside over the next decade by Saddam Hussein. Saddam Hussein formally seized power as president of Iraq in 1979. The following year, feeling threatened by rhetoric from the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the new leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Saddam Hussein launched an invasion of Iran that led to the eight-year-long Iran-Iraq War. Hussein himself was a secularist, but the Baath Party was dominated by Sunnis. Khomeini hoped that Iraqs Shiite majority would rise up against Hussein in an Iranian Revolution-style movement, but that did not happen. With support from the Gulf Arab states and the United States, Saddam Hussein was able to fight the Iranians to a stalemate. He also took the opportunity to use chemical weapons against tens of thousands of Kurdish and Marsh Arab civilians within his own country, as well as against the Iranian troops, in blatant violation of international treaty norms and standards. Its economy ravaged by the Iran-Iraq War, Iraq decided to invade the small but wealthy neighboring nation of Kuwait in 1990. Saddam Hussein announced that he had annexed Kuwait; when he refused to withdraw, the United Nations Security Council voted unanimously to take military action in 1991 in order to oust the Iraqis. An international coalition led by the United States (which had been allied with Iraq just three years earlier) routed the Iraqi Army in a matter of months, but Saddam Husseins troops set fire to Kuwaiti oil wells on their way out, causing an ecological disaster along the Persian Gulf coast. This fighting would come to be known as the First Gulf War. Following the First Gulf War, the United States patrolled a no-fly zone over the Kurdish north of Iraq to protect civilians there from Saddam Husseins government; Iraqi Kurdistan began to function as a separate country, even while nominally still part of Iraq. Throughout the 1990s, the international community was concerned that Saddam Husseins government was trying to develop nuclear weapons. In 1993, the US also learned that Hussein had made a plan to assassinate President George H. W. Bush during the First Gulf War. The Iraqis allowed UN weapons inspectors into the country, but expelled them in 1998, claiming that they were CIA spies. In October of that year, US President Bill Clinton called for regime change in Iraq. After George W. Bush became president of the United States in 2000, his administration began to prepare for a war against Iraq. Bush the younger resented Saddam Husseins plans to kill Bush the elder and made the case that Iraq was developing nuclear weapons despite the rather flimsy evidence. The September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington DC gave Bush the political cover he needed to launch a Second Gulf War, even though Saddam Husseins government had nothing to do with al-Qaeda or the 9/11 attacks. Iraq War The Iraq War began on March 20, 2003, when a US-led coalition invaded Iraq from Kuwait. The coalition drove the Baathist regime out of power, installing an Iraqi Interim Government in June of 2004, and organizing free elections for October of 2005. Saddam Hussein went into hiding  but was captured by US troops on December 13, 2003. In the chaos, sectarian violence broke out across the country between the Shia majority and the Sunni minority; al-Qaeda seized the opportunity to establish a presence in Iraq. Iraqs interim government tried Saddam Hussein for the killing of Iraqi Shiites in 1982  and sentenced him to death. Saddam Hussein was hanged on December 30, 2006. After a surge of troops to quell violence in 2007-2008, the US withdrew from Baghdad in June of 2009  and left Iraq completely in December of 2011.

Should Society Throw in the Towel on Boxing - 1053 Words

Originating from the Ancient Greeks over 13 centuries ago, boxing has been a highly anticipated, globally entertaining sport watched by millions. However, todays society has began to raise an eyebrow over the relevance of boxing in todays age. Many, without much knowledge on the sport, would argue that it causes fatal injuries, brain damage and illnesses that boxers will have to live with for the rest of their lives. Some say it shows the dark side of sport for younger generations and ties them up in a life of violence. The envious, middle-class working men would criticise some big-time boxers financial stabilities and the money used in boxing. On the other hand, people who have a better insight into boxing and know more about it, would†¦show more content†¦Diseases to retired boxers include Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. A prime example from the boxing world who was given a final blow by Parkinson’s was the peoples’ champion, Muhammad Ali. Ali, con sidered one of the greatest boxers in the sports history, is one of the most iconic, inspirational figures known to man with not only his skills in the ring but his actions out it too. 3 years after retiring from boxing in 1984 at the age of 42, Muhammad Ali was unfortunately diagnosed with Parkinson’s. He began to develop tremors, slurred speech and his body movements were very slow. His muscles regularly seized up causing excrutiating pain. This disease led to depression. Contrary to this previous point, there are many safety measures taken and it the fighters are in a very safe environment. With the idea that boxing causes diseases and injuries, the boxers already know about the consequences and still go through with it. Boxers should have the right to participate in doing what they love and if people are against it then simply no-one is stopping them from not watching it or getting involved. In every amateur and professional boxing match there is a referee to step in when a boxers is severely wounded, and there is medicalShow MoreRelatedThe Ballad of the Sad Cafe46714 Words   |  187 Pageshundred yards long. On Saturdays the tenants from the near-by farms come in for a day of talk and trade. Otherwise the town is lonesome, sad, and like a place that is far off and estranged from all other places in the world. The nearest train stop is Society City, and the Greyhound and White Bus Lines use the Forks Falls Road which is three miles away. The winte rs here are short and raw, the summers white with glare and fiery hot. If you walk along the main street on an August afternoon there is nothing

Compare and Contrast Mesopotamia free essay sample

Mesopotamian religion saw humans as the servants of the gods, who had to be appeased for protection. Egyptians believed that the gods created all humans but were also controlled by the principle of maat, or order. Unlike followers of Mesopotamian religion, the Egyptians had a strong belief in the afterlife, which they expressed by building elaborate tombs such as the pyramids. The Sumerian afterlife involved a descent into a gloomy netherworld to spend eternity in a wretched existence as a Gidim (ghost). Egyptians believed that their gods had created Egypt as a sort of refuge of good and order in a world filled with chaos and disorder. The major god for much of Mesopotamia was the sky god Enlil; later th e worship of Enlil was replaced by the worship of the Babylonian god Marduk. For Egyptians, Amen-Ra was the most powerful deity, chief of the pantheon. Statues of winged bulls were a protective symbol related to the god Sin Mesopotamia, while the ankh, a kind of cross with a loop at the top, was a prominent representation of life in ancient Egypt. We will write a custom essay sample on Compare and Contrast Mesopotamia or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page The Enuma Elish tells the Mesopotamian story of creation and explains how Marduk became the chief of the gods. The Egyptian Book of the Dead was a guide for the dead, setting out magic spells and charms to be used to pass judgment in the afterlife. Ancient Nippur was the site of the chief temple to Enlil, while Babylon was the location of Marduks sanctuary. Thebes and the temple complex of Karnak were home to the worship of Amen- Ra. In the modern world the remains of these early religions can be seen in Egypts pyramids, tombs for the pharaohs, and in Mesopotamias ziggurats, temples to the gods. The New Years Festival was a major event in Mesopotamian religion, while Egypts most important festival was Opet. Because Egypt was the gift of the Nile and generally prosperous and harmonious, Egyptian gods tended to reflect a positive religion with an emphasis on a positive afterlife. In contrast, Mesopotamian religion was bleak and gloomy. Ancient Mesopotamian prayers demonstrate the lack of relationships with gods and goddesses who viewed humans with suspicion and frequently sent calamities to remind everyone of their humanity. Such was the message

English Assignment on Education free essay sample

Some even argue that student-loan borrowing is threatening he financial future of todays college students. More often, the problem among students who go heavily into debt is that they are determined to attend their dream college, no matter the cost. Mark Constraint, publisher Of Final, claims that People dont pay attention to the debt. They want to be able to pay for the school they have wanted to go to for as long as they can remember, and they are willing to do whatever it takes (258). In other words, people live outside their means. In response to those who claim student loans are A Life Sentence, Anthony Carnival, director of Georgetown University Center, stated, Debt is the est. way to pay for education because youre shifting the cost forward until youll be earning more money (260). Carnivals point is that college graduates earn about 80 percent more a year than high-school graduates do. We will write a custom essay sample on English Assignment on Education or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page A college graduate can expect to earn nearly one million more in lifetime earnings than a high-school graduate can.In the article, Are Colleges Worth the Price of Admission? Andrew Hacker and Claudia Derides agree with Wilson when they state, Nearly 82 percent of college graduates found full-time employment within a yea (188). In other words, Hacker, Derides, and Wilson all agree that college is a conservative approach to being successful in life. In the Youth video, Changing Education Paradigms, Ken Robinson also supports their claim when he states, You are better having a degree than not, but its not a guarantee anymore. Robinson believes that college graduates are better off but theyre still not guaranteed the career they want. On the other hand, Wilson believes that The only thing worse than borrowing, is not borrowing and not going to college at all (260). In conclusion, Wilson, Hacker, Derides, and Robinson all agree that choosing to go to college is not just about the education you are achieving, but the experiences youll have that will change your life. Works Cited Wilson, Robin. A Lifetime Of Student Debt?