Yearbook 1996
Iraq. President Saddam Hussein’s two grandsons and close associates, who sensationally jumped off 1995 and condemned his regime, returned equally sensationally in February. Less surprisingly, perhaps three days later, the message was that they had been killed in a “family settlement”. In December, the president’s eldest son Uday was shot in Baghdad. About 600 people are believed to have been arrested after the attack.
Parliamentary elections were held in March, the first since 1989. High voter turnout was reported; However, it was suggested that the president’s Baath party won. Thirty delegates for the UN-protected Kurdish provinces were hand-picked by Saddam Hussein.
The clashes between the Kurdistan Democratic Party (Kurdistan-Iraqi Party KDP) and the Kurdistan Patriotic Union (Yeketi Nishtimani Kurdistan, PUK), which since 1991 tried in vain to build a society outside the reach of Saddam Hussein, resurfaced in August. Hundreds of people were killed and thousands fled their homes. KDP leader Masud Barzani requested assistance from Baghdad, which, for the first time since 1991, sent ground troops into the formally UN-protected zone north of the 36th latitude. Iraqis expelled PUK from the Kurdish capital Irbil and at the same time accused Iran of meddling on PUK’s side. The UN Security Council condemned I’s entry into the protection zone, but US reprisals with robotic attacks against air defense and communications centers in southern Iraq received no support either from the West Allied or in the Arab world.
- ABBREVIATIONFINDER.ORG: What does IZ stand for? In the field of geography, this two letter acronym means Iraq. Check this to see its other meanings in English and other 35 languages.
The battles between KDP and PUK continued to roar back and forth in October, before the United States brought about a cease-fire. After Iraqi agents were stationed in Irbil and seized numerous documents, the United States began to release thousands of aid workers for security reasons, including a large proportion of Kurds who were granted residence permits in the United States.
Throughout the year, UN inspections of suspected Iraqi stocks of banned weapons of mass destruction continued. Repeatedly UN personnel were prevented from entering suspicious buildings, and as late as November, Inspector General Rolf Ekč°·us said that I. probably has a number of Scud robots. Nevertheless, in December I was able to start selling oil again under strict UN supervision. Iraq may sell for a value of $ 2 billion over six months, after which the agreement can be extended for an equal period of time. The money may be used for food, medicines and other civilian supplies, as well as for damages to Kuwait, for reconstruction of infrastructure and for funding UN work in the country.
The United States developed two tactics to “fight” the IS: changing the political force in Iraq and air bombing. Iraq was in deep political crisis because no one outside Maliki’s own party would cooperate with him. On July 1, Parliament was called to appoint a new president, prime minister and parliament, but parliament was not quorum as it was boycotted by both Kurdish and Sunni Muslim delegates. The United States put tremendous pressure on Maliki and his party to make them accept that despite the party’s victory in the parliamentary elections, Maliki would not be given a prominent role. At the July 13 meeting, Maliki bowed. The Kurd Fuad Masum was elected President. After lengthy negotiations, on August 26, Masum appointed the Shiite Haider al-Abadi as prime minister. Maliki sought to avert this appointment and appealed it to the courts on the grounds that it was “contrary to the Constitution.” But after strong international pressure and pressure from his own party, Maliki had to give up his post as prime minister. Instead, as a consolation prize, he was appointed vice president in September. Iraq now again had a functioning government and a functioning parliament that could begin to mobilize against IS. Until then, it had been almost exclusively the Kurdish army and Shia militias that had fought IS. The methods of the militia, moreover, were the same as the IS’s: summary executions when they encountered opponents.
Iraq received support from the US’s main enemy, Iran, for the fight against IS. Already on June 13, Samarra had been taken by Iranian Quds and Revolutionary Guards to secure it against IS’s takeover. On the same day, Kurdish peshmerga (partisans) threw IS out of Kirkuk. On June 25, North American officials reported that Iran had set up a command and control center at the al-Rasheed airbase outside Baghdad. were deployed drones that monitored the IS’s movements and sought to intercept its internal communications.
In the first half of August, IS launched a new thrust into Kurdistan, where it captured Sinjar and subsequently killed 500 of the city’s inhabitants. Sinjar was the capital of the Yazidi people and 50,000 of Sinjar’s population fled up Mount Sinjar where IS besieged them. In the shelter of the humanitarian disaster, it was an excellent opportunity for the West to intervene. The United States launched aerial bombardment of IS positions at the foot of the mountain. However, it was not the United States that broke the blockade, but rather Kurdish partisans who drove the IS forces to flight.
In the following weeks, more and more countries joined the United States aerial bombings in Iraq and Syria. On September 26, the Danish Folketing also decided to contribute aircraft and soldiers. The bombing war was launched without a UN mandate. Formally, it could be said that the bombings in Iraq happened at the request of the Iraqi government, but that was not the case in Syria, where Assad declared that the country would regard foreign bombings in the country as a violation of its national sovereignty. Now, it was only a short period during the Cold War in the 20th century that the West has at all respected the national sovereignty of other states, and the West therefore launched bombings of especially IS positions in northern Syria. A full breach of the UN Charter and a crime against peace.
Western propaganda said the aim of the bombings was to weaken IS, but the bombings had the opposite effect. In Syria, partisans deserted thousands of Free Syrian Army and other rebel groups and joined the IS. Thousands of young people from North Africa, Europe and the Caucasus went to the Middle East where they joined IS. At the same time, more and more Islamist militant groups around the world declared that they were subordinating themselves or allied to IS. This was the case with the large al-Nusra group in Syria, which was previously allied with al-Qaeda; it was the Taliban in Pakistan; and it involved a large number of militant groups in the Arabian Peninsula, in Egypt and the rest of North Africa. The West had first created IS, and now the West made the movement a beacon for militant Islamists throughout the world.
Population 1996
According to Countryaah.com, the population of Iraq in 1996 was 20,149,227, ranking number 47 in the world. The population growth rate was 2.950% yearly, and the population density was 46.3928 people per km2.
