SUMMARY
Iraq has been in the grips of several waves of violence and instability since a coalition comprised of USA, UK, and Australia invaded Iraq in 2003 and ousted the Saddam Hussein regime. Soon afterwards, a renewed armed conflict over government broke out, in which a number of opposition groups, often hostile to the continued presence of foreign forces, became involved. Whilst the US-led coalition had withdrawn from Iraq by the end of 2011, several of the same countries returned to support the Iraqi government against the Islamic State (IS) after it overran much of northern Iraq in 2014.
The Iraqi government responded to the sudden growth of IS by calling in large quantities of voluntary militias, mainly from the Shiite south. These Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) militias have since become a powerful force in Iraqi politics. They constituted a multitude of powerful armed factions that were formally under Iraqi state control but often acted outside of state sanction, and controlled significant portions of Iraqi territory and the Iraqi economy. Many of the PMF militias were ideologically aligned with and financed by Iran. The conflict with IS was formally declared to have been won by the Iraqi government in December 2017. However, violence has continued ever since.
Since 1989, Iraq has experienced the interstate, intrastate, non-state and one-sided categories of UCDP organized violence.
2025
Although the Iraqi government declared victory over the Islamic State (IS) in 2017, the group has remained active, continuing to launch armed attacks across Iraq. In 2025, the conflict between Iraqi forces and IS intensity slightly decreased compared to the previous year. A large majority of the causalties reported in 2025 resulted from Iraqi airstrikes targeting IS hideputs in rural areas.
Meanwhile, in the Kurdistan Region, Turkey maintained its military campaign against Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), conducting cross-border airstrikes aimed at PKK strongholds in northern Iraq. Tensions notably escalated in 2022 when Turkey launched Operation Claw-Lock, a combined air and ground offensive targeting PKK enclaves in the Metina, Zap, and Avashin-Basyan regions. Concurrently, the PKK sustained its attacks against Turkish forces. However, following the peak of this offensive in 2022, the intensity of the conflict between Turkey and the PKK declined for the third consecutive year.
Creation of and fall of the Hashemite Kingdom of Iraq
The territory of present-day Iraq largely covers the three former provinces of the Ottoman Empire that became a British protectorate in 1920 following the Ottoman defeat in First World War. A secret agreement between the British and French governments on how to divide the Ottoman territories between them, known as the Sykes-Picot Agreement, granted what was to become Iraq to the British. This agreement contradicted a previous agreement made by the British with the Hashemite king of Hejaz, who was to become king of most Arab territories following the Ottoman defeat in exchange for rallying Arab nationalists to support the British. The Sykes-Picot Agreement has often been credited with creating artificial borders for many of the states in the Middle East, and has therefore been the target of much criticism from pan-Arab nationalists and Islamists. Iraq is constituted of several areas with largely distinct populations, with the northwest dominated by Sunni Arabs, the northeast by Sunni Kurds, and the south by the Shiite Arab majority population. In addition, minorities of Christians, Yazidis and Turkmen are scattered primarily in the north.
The Hashemite Kingdom of Iraq was proclaimed independent in 1932, with a son of the old king of Hejaz (which had since been conquered by Saudi Arabia) on the throne. The political elite was dominated by the educated Sunni Muslim minority which had previously worked for the Ottoman administration, and regularly used brutal suppression against other parts of Iraq’s diverse population. The military, dominated by Sunni generals, soon became the real power in Iraq, regularly removing Prime Ministers with whom they disagreed with. A coup in 1941 brought to power a government widely considered to be sympathetic to Germany. As Iraq and its oil reserves were deemed strategically important for the war effort, the country again became subjected to military occupation by the British in 1941-47. With Iraq under British occupation and the British distracted by the war, a Kurdish revolt led by Mustafa Barzani broke out in 1943. The revolt was, however, quickly dealt with, with most members of the revolt fleeing across the border to Iran, where they helped establish the first independent Kurdish state, known as the Republic of Mahabad. In Mahahbad, Barzani participated in the formation of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), which continues to dominate Iraqi Kurdish politics under the leadership of the Barzani tribe.
Britain sought to retain its influence in Iraq through the 1948 Anglo-Iraqi Treaty, which would maintain British control of Iraqi oil, foreign policy and allowed for the continued presence of the British military on Iraqi soil. The treaty was vehemently opposed by Iraqi and Arab nationalists, sparking the al-Wathbah protest movement, which was subsequently suppressed. The Anglo-Iraqi Treaty, coupled with the Iraqi defeat in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, humiliated the Iraq monarchy in the eyes of the nationalists. The rise of the pan-Arab nationalist leader Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt in a military coup that overthrew the Egyptian monarchy, was perceived threatening to the Iraqi monarchy. In an effort to show its own pan-Arabic credentials, the Hashemite Kingdoms of Iraq and Jordan formed a union called the Arab Federation in 1958. The effort failed to convince the increasingly radical officer corps though, and nationalist officers under Abd al-Karim Qasim instigated a military coup later the same year, which overthrew the monarchy and established the Iraqi Republic. The coup set off an intrastate conflict between Qasim’s leftist government and more conservative officers in 1959. The revolt was quickly crushed, though another military revolt by pan-Arabic nationalists overthrew Qasim’s government in 1963.
Ba’ath rule
As different factions of the military competed against each other, the administration eventually became controlled by the Ba’ath party that established a socialist one-party state in 1968, whose politics were dominated by Sunni Arabs. During this time, the Iraqi government established an extensive security apparatus to suppress dissent, causing many opposition leaders to flee the country. In 1979, Saddam Hussein formally took power, though he had been a leading political figure within the Ba’ath regime since its foundation. Under Saddam Hussein Iraq would adopt a more ambitious foreign policy as well as step up repression at home.
Renewed Kurdish rebellions promoted by the KDP occurred in 1961-70 and 1974-1975. The creation of PUK (Yekitiya Nistimaniya Kurdistan; Patriotic Union of Kurdistan) in 1975 by members of KDP disaffected by the Barzani tribe’s dominance of the party, splintered the Kurdish nationalist movement. The splinter would prove significant for the Kurdish nationalist movement, as the two parties have since regularly been engaged in conflict against each other, including the non-state conflict KDP - PUK during 1994-1997. After the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, the military formations of KDP and PUK became integrated as part of the autonomous Kurdistan Region’s military forces, called the Peshmerga, and were thus part of the Iraqi government’s security forces.
Several of the borders between Iraq and its neighboring countries have been contested, with the Iraqi state having voiced claims to all of Kuwait and the Shatt al Arab waterway it shares with Iran. As the 1979 Iranian Revolution established a Shiite theocratic regime in Iran, which had ambitions to spread the revolution to other Shia areas, tensions between the countries rose. Iraq feared that the Iranian government would seek to destabilize Iraq by riling up its own majority Shiite population. With tacit approval from the world powers, none of whom had good relations with the new Iranian government, Iraq renounced a previous border agreement and launched an interstate war to take Shatt al Arab.
Soon after the conflict started, both countries made clear that they intended to depose the government of the other side. With this goal in mind, Iran helped organize exiled Shia Iraqis in Iran to form the militant group SCIRI (The Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq) that intended to overthrow Ba’athist regime and implement an Iranian-style Shiite theocratic regime. SCIRI was active in an intrastate conflict against the Iraqi government for much of the Iran – Iraq war, as well as in 1991-96. After the US-led invasion of Iraq overthrew the Ba’athist regime in 2003, SCIRI re-branded as a political party, participating in Iraqi elections from 2005 onward. In response, Iraq armed and fought alongside the Iranian opposition movement MEK (Mujahideen e Khalq), which aimed to topple the Islamic Republic, from 1986. The 1980-1988 war was devastating for both nations, with hundreds of thousands killed in brutal trench warfare fighting. The war ended with both sides withdrawing to pre-war borders in 1988.
In addition to supporting SCIRI, Iran provided aid to the Kurdish PUK in its conflict with the Iraqi from 1986 until the end of the war. The Kurdish uprising ended with a brutal Iraqi counter-offensive, known as the Al-Anfal campaign 1986-1989, during which the Iraqi government used conventional and chemical weapons to kill tens of thousands of mainly Kurdish civilians. The campaign was widely seen as part of the Saddam Hussein regime’s Arabization effort of ethnically mixed areas in northern Iraq, and has been recognized as a genocide by several countries.
In 1990, the Iraqi government invaded Kuwait, claiming the territory should be considered a province of Iraq, thus starting the Gulf War. The conflict was largely motivated by the dire economic situation in Iraq following the war with Iran. The Iraqi government had borrowed heavily from Kuwait during the war, and when Kuwait refused to forgive the debt after the war, Iraq decided to absorb the small country and its oil wealth to help rebuild the devastated Iraq. The move was widely condemned, leading the Government of United States of America to gather a coalition of 35 countries to support Kuwait in driving Iraqi troops out of its territory. A five-week bombing campaign was followed by a 100-hour ground invasion, which successfully expelled Iraqi forces from Kuwait and dismantled Iraqi military capabilities.
Iraq War
Following claims that the Iraqi government was developing weapons of mass destruction and was supporting terrorism, an alliance comprised of USA, United Kingdom, and Australia invaded Iraq in 2003 and ousted the Saddam Hussein regime and abolished the one-party state. Soon afterwards, violence and criticism of the new government escalated into a renewed armed conflict over government, in which a number of opposition groups became involved. This time, the numerous opposition groups mainly requested a more prominent role for religion in the governance of the country, as well as criticized the government’s cooperation with the USA. The US-led coalition remained in Iraq until the end of 2011 in support of the Iraqi government.
In the Shiite areas of southern Iraq, the most prominent group early on to oppose the new Iraqi government was the al-Mahdi Army, which occasionally fought the Iraqi government 2003-2008. Al-Mahdi Army was led by Muqtada al-Sadr, a member of a prominent Iraqi clerical family, who mixed his roles as a militia leader, a religious leader and a politician to build one of the most powerful political organizations in Iraq. Whilst the al-Mahdi Army has formally disbanded, most of the organization has since 2014 been part of the PMF Saraya as-Salam (Peace Companies) as a state-backed militia. Other prominent groups include Ansar al-Islam (Supporters of Islam), a Sunni militant group opposed to the increasing Shiite dominance of the central government, and RJF (Reform and Jihad Front), which was formed to combat the growing influence of al-Qaida in Iraq, which later became IS.
Conflict with the Islamic State
Formed at this time was also Jamaat al-Tawhid waal-Jihad (JTJ), which developed into al-Qaida’s branch in Iraq (formally known as Tanzim Qaidat al-Jihad fi Bilad al-Rafidayn, or Organization of Jihads Base in the Country of the Two Rivers) in 2004, and later became the Islamic State (IS) . The group was notorious for its widespread use of one-sided violence, including the 2014 massacres of Yazidis in northern Iraq. During 2013, the group (at the time called Islamic State in Iraq and Syria) began to spread its influence into Syria, which was engulfed in a multiparty intrastate conflict over government. IS established a strong presence there with extensive territorial control, mainly by fighting other opposition groups (see for instance IS - Islamic Front, Mujahideen Army, SRF, Authenticity and Development Front, Islamic Front, Jabhat Fateh al-Sham - IS and the state-based Syria: Islamic State).
IS gained global fame as it launched an offensive into Iraq from Syria, capturing large stretches of northern Iraq including Mosul, the second largest city in Iraq. The Iraqi army largely collapsed during the fighting, leading many to fear that Baghdad itself might be threatened. In response, a new US-led coalition began carrying out airstrikes against IS-targets in both Iraq and Syria. In Iraq the coalition did so as secondary warring parties to the Government of Iraq, whilst in Syria it was mainly done in support of PYD and later SDF. The Iraqi government responded to the collapse of its army by calling in large quantities of voluntary militias, mainly from the Shiite south, including former opposition groups such as the re-constituted al-Mahdi Army. These Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) militias have since become a powerful force in Iraqi politics. They constituted a multitude of powerful armed factions that were formally under Iraqi state control but often acted outside of state sanction, and controlled significant portions of Iraqi territory and the Iraqi economy. Many of the PMF militias were ideologically aligned with and financed by Iran.
IS committed brutal massacres of civilians during the offensive into Iraq, as well as during its prolonged occupation of the north. The killings often targeted religious minorities in the area, largely displacing the indigenous Yazidi, Assyrian and Christian minorities from Iraq, as well as engaging in brutal sectarian killings against Shia Muslims. Most notable was a series of massacres of the Yazidi religious minority, often referred to as a genocide, during the 2014 offensive.
The conflict with IS was formally declared to have been won by the Iraqi government in December 2017, following a grueling fight to capture Mosul had succeeded. However, violence has continued ever since, albeit on a much lower scale. The US-led coalition formally ended its combat missions in Iraq in December 2021. IS has partially reconstituted itself since its collapse in 2017, and has established itself as a guerilla fighting force. IS’s survival in northern Iraq has been aided by internal disputes within the Iraqi state, in particular the strained relations between the central government and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), following the latter’s referendum on independence in 2017 and continuous territorial disputes between the two. The disputed territory has become an important base of operation for IS, as large swathes has ended up in a security vacuum due to lack of coordination and cooperation between the central government and the KRG.
Tension between various branches of the Iraqi government’s array of armed forces is on the rise, in particular between the mainly American-trained security forces directly under the prime minister’s command and Iran-backed groups within the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) militia. In 2021, factions of the PMF was even accused of trying to assassinate the prime minister. Groups aligned with factions within the PMF have been launching attacks on the American presence in the country, mainly by firing rockets and setting of IEDs. The Iraqi state’s attempts to bring such groups to heel has failed to achieve results, due to the power of the PMF. The 2021 general election results were disputed by the PMF, after parties aligned to the militias suffered a heavy defeat. The largest party following the election was the Sadrist Movement, led by the commander of the Peace Companies (formerly al-Mahdi Army) Muqtada al-Sadr. Sadr has increased tensions with many PMF factions through his stated intention of establishing a majority government excluding these factions, rather than, as has happened after previous elections, forming a grand coalition. Iraqi politics of grand coalitions, with government posts and functions divided up as spoils by the parties, has been widely viewed as corrupt, and getting rid of this form of government has been one of the main demands of the protest movements since 2019.
Mass anti-government protests against poor services and lack of accountability for the PMF’s killing of protesters and activists during and after the October 2019 protest movement regularly break out. The 2019 protests were brutally cracked down on by state forces, most notably the PMF, killing hundreds. Then-Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi was forced to resign, though this failed to satisfy all protester demands. Since then, new rounds of protests regularly break out, often with the explicit demand that those who participated in the killings in 2019 and later be brought to justice. New rounds of protests and activists that organize them regularly face violence from various factions within the PMF (see Government of Iraq - Civilians).
