Iraq

State · Capital: Baghdad

Iraq, officially the Republic of Iraq, is a country in West Asia with a population of over 46 million; its capital and largest city is Baghdad. Its territory, known historically as Mesopotamia between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, is known as the cradle of civilization, fostering Sumer, Akkad, Babylonia, and Assyria, and later serving as the metropole of the Abbasid Caliphate with Baghdad as a global intellectual hub during the Islamic Golden Age. Independent since 1932 after Ottoman defeat in World War I, it emerged as a Hashemite monarchy, which a 1958 military coup replaced with a republic; the Ba'ath Party took power in 1968, establishing a one-party state under Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr and later Saddam Hussein. In 2003 U.S.-led coalition forces invaded and occupied Iraq, overthrowing the government during the Iraq War, which ended in 2011, and from 2013 to 2017 Iraq faced a major conflict with the rise and defeat of the Islamic State.