A political

analysis of Iraq

-By Muhammed
After the Prophet
Muhammads death
Caliphate: A government
ruled by a spiritual leader

Ali bin Abi Talib: First or

Fourth?

His sons, Hassan & Hussain

After Hussain’s death, the

Shias grew & became
established group but a
minority.
Iraq’s oil production is a double bladed
sword. On one hand, it is one of the
strongest advantages Iraq has which has
helped boost its economy but also one of
it’s biggest disadvantages.

Since Iraq is easy to invade, it has been

made a big target to invade for oil.

Second, it’s distributed unequally, where

only the kurds and shia arabs seem to have
most of the oil. Sunni Arabs on the other
hand are deprived of this oil hence have the
poorer sites. (Blame the British for this)

This has caused a lot of sectarian violence

and was a big reason why ISIS wanted to
take over Iraq and targeted both groups.
 Iraq - Iran tensions
In the 1980’s. Iraq and Iran tensions
had been steadily building up for 2
main reasons:
1. Iran’s control over Khuzestan
and Shatt al-Arab
2. Ayatollah Khomeini’s Islamic
revolution
Algiers agreement (1975) - later
broken by Saddam (1980), 1 year
after the Islamic revolution (1979) by
invading Iran (1980).
 Beginning of the invasion and war - Sep. 1980
- Iraqi forces successfully took over a portion of this huge province called Khorramshahr, however this
region was not rich in oil at all and were not able to capture Abadan - the target.
- They held this area for a few months, until december until Iranian resistance militias, supporters of the
revolution called the IRGC, fought back until April 1981 when they pushed Iraqi military groups back so far
they have entered Iraq borders around Shatt al-Arab.
- For the next year, brutal bloodshed had continued but Khorramshahr was recaptured by Iran in May 1982.
 In 1982, Saddam
withheld his soldiers
from continuing to
fight, but rather
offered to make a
peace agreement.
 A decline in Iraq’s economy
- To support Iraq, China and Soviet union were giving
supplies to Iraq

- However, Syria (an ally of Iran) close a crucial pipeline,

which was causing Iraq’s economy to suffer at an
extremely rapid rate

- Kuwait and Saudi Arabia intervened to support Iraq over

fear of Iran’s influence

- The US supported Iraq in this war, offering them a huge

amount of war supplies, money and other resource

- Iraq than committed mass amounts of war crimes

- Iraq’s air force targeted civilians in cities within Iran rather
than the troops and the battle area in between the borders

- It’s special missiles, soviet scud missiles, proved devastating

damage as over 30,000 civilians were killed during his
launches of them including the air raids over the cities and
many more displaced which was destroying the Iranian
economy which collapsed in 1987

- Iran in response purchased scud missiles from Libaya and

launched them in baghdad, an action that made many
Iranians lose support for the government
August 1988 - End of
Iraq-Iran war

August 1990 -
Beginning of the Gulf
wars
 Iraq - Kuwait tensions
In 1990, Saddam invaded Kuwait for
3 main reasons:

1. Iraq was unable to pay off their

debts to Kuwait

2. Kuwait was over producing oil

3. Iraq’s desire for access to a

bigger port

While the main reasons boiled off

from the previous war, there were
other political motivations for this
invasion.
In 1913, the british got an agreement with the family which ruled this area
and thus got rights to control it. In WW1, the british were in war with the
Ottomans, thus established this area as independent, occupied it and
invaded Ottoman iraq. After the war, they drew the border between their
colony and protectorate.
That marks the end of the Persian gulf war,
from August 1990 to March 1991
Iraq: 20,000 soldiers killed, 70,000 injured and 80,000 captured
Kuwait: 16,000 casualties
Allies: ~2,000 casualties (most of which was friendly fire)
The rise of ISIS and the American
invasion of Iraq
Muslims (mostly sunnis) world-wide join the rebels
seeing it as a means to defend Islam, among them…
Who did 9/11?
‘Why didn’t you bring this up in the meeting? ~ Bush
 Vice President: Dick Cheney

Secretary of State: Colin Powell

Zarqawi’s group in Iraq becomes
the head of rebels and becomes
an alliance with al-Qaeda (AQI)

Assad rises in syria but opposed

by much rebellion, he lets out
extremists prisoners to let them
cause violence against the rebels

AQI supports the rebel groups,

disliking Assad, and thus sends
al-Qaeda groups in Syria
2011, USA leaves AQI gains new leader
- an educated scholar Abu Bakr al-
Baghdadi who claims caliphate

He claims control of all lands but is

then opposed to al-Qaeda forming ISI
but also becoming enemies with al-
Qaeda in Syria. ISI mostly expand into
syria and become ISIS with a huge
amount of land with much power
Iraqi people’s main source of water has been the tigris and euphrates rivers
which have blessed the inhabitants of iraq for thousands of years. However, it is
one of Iraq’s biggest political weakness as it does not have any control over
either one.

When most of the water flow is controlled by other countries, what they can do
is build dams to hold more fresh water for themselves and make Iraq absolutely
suffer. And they did that.

In 1990, the 5th largest dam in the world - the ataturk dam - on the euphrates
river was built and withheld 100% of the euphrates river flow for an entire month
which was heavily protested by the syrians and iraqis.

As of today, this dam reduces the water flow by ⅓ which has brought ecological
damage the both countries. Syria, on top of that, built their own dams which has
led to Iraq only getting 25% of the total water flow of the euphrates river. Today,
Turkey alone has 14 dams built around the euphrates river and 8 around the
tigris.

Iraq has continuously accused these countries. especially turkey, of weaponizing

these rivers and causing mass amount of suffering to the Iraqi people of which
Turkey knows and it's why they have their dams heavily defended with military
groups guarding it all times.
 Consequences of the very low water flow of the rivers:

- Iraq’s rivers can’t satisfy their very thirsty population of 40 million people, especially since they’re
in a desert.

- Crops, animals and farms are not being supplied with sufficient water causing many people to
starve.

- Worse of all it’s a lot of pollution in the rivers themselves - making the little water undrinkable.
Iraq has 2 dams, one of them is on the tigris river in the north
just a little ahead of the city of Mosul.

The issue with this dam is that it’s built from a soft material
called gypsum which dissolves when in contact with water.
That’s the stupidity of Saddam for you.

If it gets destroyed, the powerful surge of water will go and

destroy the entire city of mosul and later most of baghdad will
be flooded.

https://theecologist.org/2016/mar/07/iraqs-greatest-danger-
yet-collapse-worlds-most-dangerous-dam
 Summary
Iraq had suffered much after the unnecessary war with Iran, which later contributed to the war with Kuwait.
That war basically destroyed Iraq’s economy and many sanctions made it difficult to come back on it’s feets.

Iraq has only 1 small waterport where 100% of its maritime trade goes off at.

Iraq has been continuously bombed throughout all of this making the country a place of dust and rubble.
Iraq has suffered 28 years of war because Saddam has led the country through so many major wars.

The rise of terrorism after America messed up in it’s invasion all over has resulted to Iraq being a war zone

Iraq has a lot of internal conflicts because of its sectarian diversity, and thus had a civil war in 2006.

raq is not able to properly revive itself because turkey and syria are weaponizing the rivers

Iraq has a catastrophic dam that could flood half the country because of Saddam

And global climate change is just making everything many times worse