An Iraqi girl gets a close look at an Iraqi National Guardsman patrolling Haifa Street in Baghdad, Iraq, Thursday, April 7, 2005. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)

The land occupied by the modern state of Iraq is among the most historic on Earth. Home to humanity's first civilization, Sumer, it has been the backdrop to thousands of years of momentous human events.

What is currently Iraq resulted from the break-up of the Ottoman Empire after the First World War. When France and Britain divvied up the Middle East, Britain got the "Fertile Crescent," the arc of land including today’s Kuwait, Iraq, Jordan, Israel and Egypt.

The borders of these nations had no roots in history but were simply agreed upon by France and Britain. Like the nations formed out of the defunct Austro-Hungarian Empire in the same period, or the crumbling of other colonial empires 40 years later, this was to cause many problems.

Initially the government of Iraq was a monarchy. Through the 1920s and 1930s, Iraq slowly gained more independence. There were many factions within the country competing for power and Iraq remained politically unstable. One thing generally agreed on, however, was dissatisfaction with the national borders that had been dictated by foreigners.

From the beginning Iraq wanted to have Kuwait included in its territory. In 1939, Iraq set out to conquer the tiny land, which was still a colony of Britain. At the last moment, however, the King of Iraq died in a car crash and the invasion was called off. In 1961, when Britain granted Kuwait its independence, Iraq began invasion preparations, only backing down when Britain sent troops back into the region.

In 1958, the Iraqi monarchy — the same family that continues to rule neighbouring Jordan — was overthrown and Iraq became an Islamic republic. The king and most of his family were slaughtered in the coup. The next year, there was another coup attempt, but it failed. One of the members of the hit squad was a young officer who would later become famous.

The rise of Saddam Hussein

In these postwar years, Iraq, like many of its neighbours, continued to be politically unstable. During the Cold War, the United States needed an Islamic ally strong enough to counterbalance Gamal Abdel Nasser's Egypt, and by 1956 the U.S. began sending technical and military assistance to Iraq. Eventually, as the Shah's Iran emerged as a power, Iraq declined in importance.

By the 1970s, Iraq had been under military rule for 20 years. By then, no matter who was the official leader, the man behind the throne was Saddam Hussein. In 1979, he put an end to the charade and took sole power himself, purging his few remaining rivals.

That was the year of Iran's revolution. With the Shah replaced by a radically anti-American government, the U.S. suddenly focused its attention on Iraq. For the next decade, billions of dollars in aid poured in, as well as weapons. Iraq was also given the technology to establish a respectable communications network and industrial base.

A major American motivation for aid to Iraq during this period was the Iran-Iraq War started by Saddam in 1980. Though the border between the countries remained unchanged, the fighting cost some one million lives and shattered the economies of both nations.

By 1988, the U.S. could take comfort in the knowledge that its erstwhile client, Iran, had lost its impressive military capacity, and a strong and pliable regime had emerged in Baghdad.

A new war erupts

Everything changed in 1990. It was in that year that Saddam Hussein renewed his nation's threat to Kuwait. This time it was not about territory, but money.

The Iran-Iraq war had been largely financed by the oil-rich gulf states, especially Kuwait. Now that the war was over, Kuwait demanded its loans be paid back. What's more, the price of oil, which had provided Iraq with most of its income, was low. Saddam accused Kuwait of deliberately flooding the market to pressure Iraq.

Saddam Hussein was under the impression that he had a free hand from the U.S. in dealing with his grievances. So on August 2, 1990, he invaded Kuwait, his troops easily overrunning the little country. The United Nations condemned the action and, in a series of resolutions, not only imposed a complete blockade on Iraq but authorized member states to reverse the invasion by any means.

The U.S. took it from there, engaging in a military and diplomatic frenzy that resulted in a multinational force composed of several NATO countries including Britain, France and Canada, as well as neighbouring Arab states previously hostile to the U.S. Even former Warsaw Pact countries sent in units.

When the UN deadline for Iraq's withdrawal from Kuwait expired on January 15, 1991, the coalition launched a massive attack on Iraq. The American air forces employed their most advanced Cold War technologies to destroy Iraq's air defence network, and from then on owned the skies.

When the ground war began, Iraqi forces crumpled in the face of American hammer-blows. By the time the fighting stopped on February 28, 1991, not only had Iraqi forces been thrown from Kuwait, they had been nearly annihilated. And Iraq itself was starving and in ruins.

Food-for-oil plan

Soon after the shooting had stopped, it emerged that Iraq had spent years secretly trying to produce atomic, biological and chemical (ABC) weapons. It had used chemical weapons, the cheapest of the three, in 1988 against a Kurdish uprising. But nuclear and biological weapons are much more expensive and difficult to develop, and were not yet complete.

After the war, UN weapons inspectors were dispatched to Iraq. Their mission was to locate all stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, and the means of producing them.

The extent of the weapons programs, and the secrecy surrounding them, left the inspectors with a difficult job. The inspections dragged on while devastating political and economic sanctions continued. Trade with Iraq was forbidden until the country was certified as being free of ABC weapons.

Iraq is part of a region whose main wealth lies in its oil, rather than in agriculture. The sanctions left Iraq starving. Everything was in short supply, especially food and medicine. It has been estimated that more than a million people died as a result of the privations, many of them women and children.

As the suffering became clear to the UN, the Security Council offered a special arrangement to Iraq, whereby it could sell its oil on the market and would receive, instead of money, food and medicine. Saddam Hussein, however, refused to accept the deal. The sanctions are a potent political weapon for him. As long as the suffering continues, he can play the part of the champion of the Iraqi people.

Saddam and the U.S. government now existed in two solitudes. Saddam bemoaned the suffering caused by the sanctions, while refusing the oil-for-food deal, and demanded an end to inspections while hindering their progress.

Tension mounts over inspections

On June 27, 1993, when former American president George Bush was visiting Kuwait, there was an alleged attempt on his life. President Bill Clinton retaliated with a cruise missile attack on Iraq.

And so began another cycle of tension between Iraq and the United States. In 1994, elite Iraqi Republican Guard units moved near the Kuwaiti border and U.S. troops were deployed to the Persian Gulf once again. When it became clear the Americans meant business, Saddam backed down.

From then on the tension revolved solely around the UN weapons inspections. It became a dreary rhythm: Saddam blustered, the inspectors were hindered, the American military flexed its muscle, and Saddam backed down.

Finally, December 1999 brought good news to the Iraqi people when the UN Security Council voted to relieve sanctions against the country.

The new millennium began on a promising note for the country, which opened its international airport after a 10-year closure. After a decade of absence, Iraq was asked to attend the Arab League summit in 2000.

The following year, Iraq was accused of being behind the anthrax deaths of five Americans, which prompted U.S. President George W. Bush, in the tense time after the Sept. 11, 2001 al-Qaeda attacks, to push for weapons inspections.

Operation Iraqi Freedom

Late in 2002, Iraq submitted a 12,000-page declaration claiming it had no banned weapons and agreed to open the country to another round of weapons inspections.

Chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix concluded in January 2003 that "Iraq hasn't come to terms yet with the world's demand that it give up its weapons, and had yet to co-operate fully in the search for them." Yet a month later, Blix admitted that no weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq.

The Bush administration continued to press its case for inspections and against the regime of Saddam Hussein, bolstered by a resolution from the U.S. Congress authorizing force against Iraq.

Secretary General Colin Powell took the American case to the UN General Assembly in a dramatic hearing in February 2003. Addressing the council, Powell presented evidence accusing Iraq of ties to al-Qaeda and of developing weapons of mass destruction. The U.S. and supporting nations introduced a motion supporting military action against Saddam's regime. It ultimately failed, but the U.S., along with coalition partners such as Britain, decided to act outside the UN's approval. Canada decided not to participate in any military action.

On March 19, 2003, two days after Bush warned Saddam to leave Iraq or face the U.S. army, Operation Iraqi Freedom began to unfold. It officially ended on May 1, 2003, when Bush announced the U.S. had prevailed in the conflict.

In June 2003, Bush told U.S. troops in Qatar that the invasion of Iraq was justified and vowed to "reveal the truth" about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. But a month later, Washington admitted that claims Bush made in his state of the union address about Iraq's nuclear program were wrong, and the CIA claimed responsibility for providing the incorrect information.

The U.S. Senate later released a scathing report saying pre-war intelligence claiming Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction was wrong and overstated.

The news got no better for the U.S. in 2004. In April, the U.S. military charged six soldiers after photographs of American soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison were published. The British military also began investigating the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners. Bush issued an apology for the abuse of Iraqi prisoners and promised a full investigation, while Rumsfeld, as secretary of defence, assumed full responsibility for the abuses.

In apparent retaliation, an American civilian, who identified himself as Nick Berg, was beheaded with a knife by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a lieutenant of Osama bin Laden. A video of the decapitation was aired on a website with links to al-Qaeda.

Spc. Jeremy C. Sivits was sentenced to a year in prison for his role in the abuse of the Iraqi detainees.

Demise of a dictator, rise of a government

The final downfall of Saddam Hussein began with a raid on a farmhouse near his hometown of Tikrit in December 2003. A dishevelled, bewildered-looking Saddam was hauled from a hole in the ground by U.S. soldiers and into custody.

Saddam faced many charges, including those related to the mass killings of Shias in the town of Dujail during the early 1980s. After a trial lasting several months, an Iraqi court found him guilty in November 2006 and sentenced the former dictator to death.

Saddam, defiantly refusing to have his head covered by a hood and clutching a copy of the Koran, walked to the gallows on December 30, 2006. His execution was captured on a controversial video and circulated on the internet.

Meanwhile, a new political era had begun in Iraq during the time of Saddam's imprisonment.

A coalition government was formed after the invasion, but it was only to be in place temporarily. Its job was to draft a constitution and govern the country until a December 2005 parliamentary election.

On April 22, 2006, more than four months after elections were held, a prime minister-designate was named: Shia politician Nouri al-Maliki.

The unusual delay was caused by internal disputes among Shias, Sunnis and Kurds. The squabbling between the various political parties engendered an outburst in sustained sectarian violence and some commentators described the fighting as tantamount to a civil war.

As prime minister-designate, Maliki was given 30 days to form a government of national unity by appointing a cabinet that would include Kurds, Shia and Sunni Arabs. This was a strategy to pull Iraq back from the brink of civil war.

Jalal Talabani was re-elected as president and Tariq al-Hashimi was elected as Iraq's new Sunni vice-president.

Troop surge to combat insurgency

While the military operation officially ended in May 2003, violence continued to claim the lives of foreign soldiers and Iraqi civilians. Car bombs, kidnappings, shootings and other attacks marked the years following the invasion.

An insurgency, comprised of various factions, targeted troops in the U.S.-led coalition, as well as efforts at Iraqi reconstruction. Yet the insurgency was not a single, cohesive unit. The fighters pulling the triggers and detonating the bombs — Baathist loyalists, Shiite militia fighters, al-Qaeda sympathizers — often had varied interests, even if their aims (destabilizing the reconstruction and ridding the countries of foreign troops) and deadly methods were similar.

Coalition efforts to stop the bloodshed proved to be ineffective, as support for the war in the United States plummeted.

While insurgent groups continued to call for a pullout of Western troops, precisely the opposite occurred. Bush, in an address to the U.S. people in January 2007, announced his administration's plans to add 20,000 soldiers to the country.

Some credited this "troop surge" with increasing stability in the country, even as the U.S. marked the 4,000th military death in March 2008, the fifth anniversary of the invasion.

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