Here is a brief essay about Iraq:

 Iraq is a country which lies in the Middle East , Iraq is a country which have a great civilization and a great history, it’s a country that was known to be the birth place of writing, where was first invented in the form of the Cuneiform Writing. Iraq in ancient times was known as Mesopotamia, it is the country where the two great rivers Tigris and the Euphrates meet.

 Iraq is considered by many historians to be the birth place of civilization; this is because Iraq was the first country to have the first civilization the Sumerian civilization, the Sumerian civilization flourished for over 3,000 years. There are many different empires in the history of Iraq such as the Babylonian empire, the Assyrian empire, and many other.  There are two rivers which run through Iraq, and they are the Tigris and the Euphrates, people settled and lived by the sides of these two rivers, they created cities and villages which later on grew to become kingdoms and empires. People in ancient times needed water and a fertile soil for their farming, which they depended on to make a living, so they settled by the sides of rivers.

The Euphrates and the Tigris are the rivers which gave life to Iraq and its people, also Iraq in ancient times was an important country, and it had many farm lands and a very fertile soil which was used for farming, not to mention the big amount of trade that was between the kingdoms in Iraq. The Iraqis are very intelligent people, they were the one who invented writing and also had many great inventions such as the wheel. They had their own religions and believe and they worshiped many gods, they created beautiful and strong cities in ancient times such as the city of Ur.

They invented the first government ruling system, as each city was ruled and governed by a prince and a ruling royal family. Some of these cities were strong, and they use their power to conquer and rule over the other cities, this brought unity to the nation and soon kingdoms and empires were formed. And these empires were very great not only in their strength but also in many other aspects. The Babylonian empire had it first code of laws they were also the first code of laws in the world. All these great properties made other nations greedy to conquer and rule Iraq, there were many invasions in Iraq; these invasions were as early as 2004 BC when an Elamite invasion brought the Third Dynasty of Ur to an end. After that the country was governed by many empires and kingdoms.

However until 7th century AD Iraq was ruled by the Persian Empire, but after that came the Islamic armies defeated the Persian Empire and took power over Iraq resulting in the spread of Islam among the people of Iraq, since then Iraq is considered to be an Islamic nation and also because of its Arab speaking people it became an Arab country.

 Under the Islamic rule Iraq was ruled by two caliphates, The Umayyad Caliphate and the Abbasid Caliphate, after the fall of the Abbasid Caliphate by the Mongol invasion. Iraq came under the rule of the Mongols and after a period of time the Mongol rule over Iraq fell and then came the rule of the Ottoman Empire.

The local population of Iraq during all these invasions suffered a lot and they were the true people who were damaged a lot. The local people suffered a lot under the harsh rule of the conquers, the conquering governments did not pay any attention to the local people the only thing which concerned them was how to keep control of Iraq and how to make full use of its resources, and this resulted in a very bad way for the local people their health was very  bad as there were few medical center to go to and in most cases the local people were unable to buy medicines as they were expensive, not to mention that there were very few people who know how to read and write as there was no schools and no learning institutes  to go to, and there are many other bad things which happened during these times and it had a very negative results on the local people, that by the 20th century the population of Iraq had shrunk to under 5 million.

The Ottoman rule lasted until WWI, where they lost in that war and as result of this the British forces and other Allie forces controlled the Middle East and other areas which were under the Ottoman rule. The British forces controlled Iraq and imposed a Hashemite monarchy. At the end of World War I, the League of Nations granted the area to the United Kingdom as a mandate. It initially formed two former Ottoman vilayets (regions): Baghdad and Basra into a single country in August 1921. Five years later, in 1926, the northern vilayet of Mosul was added, forming the territorial boundaries of the modern Iraqi state.

 Britain granted independence to Iraq in 1932, though they kept their military bases. But the local people did not like to be governed by a monarchy and so in 1958 the monarchy was overthrown by a coup by the Iraqi Army known as the 14 July Revolution. The coup brought General Abdul Karim Qassim to power; he established a communist government, though it lasted until February 1963, when it was overthrown by a coup by Colonel Abdul Salam Arif. Salam Arif died and his brother Abdul Rahman Arif took power. In 1968 Abdul Rahman Arif was overthrown by the Bath Socialist Party. Ahmad Hasan Al-Bakir became the first Bath President of Iraq but then Saddam Hussein his vice-president took power from him by controlling the Bath Party. Saddam Hussein ruled Iraq for 35 years, during his reign the country went into two deadly wars, the first war was the Iraq-Iran war which lasted for 8 years from 1980 till 1988 and after that came the Gulf War in 1990, in which invaded and seized Kuwait. The United Nations as a reaction to this innovation it agreed to pass heavy sanctions on Iraq and demanded the withdrew of the Iraqi forces from Kuwait. However, Iraq refused to withdrew from Kuwait and the UN Security Council responded by launching Operation Desert Storm which was able to defeat the Iraqi Army and gain control of Kuwait. Shortly after the war ended the Shia Muslim a Kurdish Iraqis engaged in protests against Saddam’s regime, Saddam responded with violent repression against Shia Muslims, and the protests came to an end. About 100,000 people were killed.

In 2003, the United States and other nations invaded Iraq, as the reason that Iraq had failed to abandon its nuclear and chemical weapons development program in violation of U.N. Resolution 687.  The United States managed to defeat Saddam Hussein regime and they took control of the country. However, some people doubt the reason which they use to invade Iraq, on which they said Iraq posses Mass Destruction Weapons, however after the invasion was done, these weapons were NEVER FOUND, as they probably never existed at all. However in 2006 Iraq has it first general election as the United Nation and the United States gave the right for Iraqis to rule themselves, and then an elected Iraqi government was formed. And with this government the country have many new changes as it have new constitution, and also a new democratic ruling system.