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Location: Middle East, bordering the Persian Gulf, between
Iran and Kuwait
Geographic coordinates: 33 00 N, 44 00 E
Map references: Middle East
Area:
total: 437,072 sq km
land: 432,162 sq km
water: 4,910 sq km
Area - comparative: slightly more than twice the size of
Idaho
Land boundaries:
total: 3,631 km
border countries: Iran 1,458 km, Jordan 181 km, Kuwait 242
km, Saudi Arabia 814 km, Syria 605 km, Turkey 331 km
Coastline: 58 km
Maritime claims:
continental shelf: not specified
territorial sea: 12 nm
Climate: mostly desert; mild to cool winters with dry, hot,
cloudless summers; northern mountainous regions along Iranian and
Turkish borders experience cold winters with occasionally heavy
snows that melt in early spring, sometimes causing extensive flooding
in central and southern Iraq
Terrain: mostly broad plains; reedy marshes along Iranian
border in south with large flooded areas; mountains along borders
with Iran and Turkey
Elevation extremes:
lowest point: Persian Gulf 0 m
highest point: Haji Ibrahim 3,600 m
Natural resources: petroleum, natural gas, phosphates, sulfur
Land use:
arable land: 12%
permanent crops: 0%
permanent pastures: 9%
forests and woodland: 0%
other: 79% (1993 est.)
Irrigated land: 25,500 sq km (1993 est.)
Natural hazards: dust storms, sandstorms, floods
Environment - current issues: government water control projects
have drained most of the inhabited marsh areas east of An Nasiriyah
by drying up or diverting the feeder streams and rivers; a once
sizable population of Shi'a Muslims, who have inhabited these areas
for thousands of years, has been displaced; furthermore, the destruction
of the natural habitat poses serious threats to the area's wildlife
populations; inadequate supplies of potable water; development of
Tigris-Euphrates Rivers system contingent upon agreements with upstream
riparian Turkey; air and water pollution; soil degradation (salination)
and erosion; desertification
Environment - international agreements:
party to: Law of the Sea, Nuclear Test Ban
signed, but not ratified: Environmental Modification
Background: Formerly part of the Ottoman Empire, Iraq became
an independent kingdom in 1932.
A "republic" was proclaimed in 1958, but in actuality a series of
military strongmen have ruled the country since then, the latest
being SADDAM Husayn.
Territorial disputes with Iran led to an inconclusive and costly
eight-year war (1980-1988). In August 1990 Iraq seized Kuwait, but
was expelled by US-led, UN coalition forces during January-February
1991.
The victors did not occupy Iraq, however, thus allowing the regime
to stay in control. Following Kuwait's liberation, the UN Security
Council (UNSC) required Iraq to scrap all weapons of mass destruction
and long-range missiles and to allow UN verification inspections.
UN trade sanctions remain in effect due to incomplete Iraqi compliance
with relevant UNSC resolutions.
Iraq
GEOGRAPHY
Size: Area of Iraq variously cited as between
433,970 (excluding Iraqi half of Iraq-Saudi Arabia Neutral Zone
shared with Saudi Arabia, consisting of 3,522 square kilometers)
and 437,393 square kilometers.
Topography: Country divided into four major regions:
desert in west and southwest; rolling upland between upper Euphrates
and Tigris rivers; highlands in north and northeast; and alluvial
plain in central and southeast sections.
SOCIETY
Population: Preliminary 1987 census figures give
total of 16,278,000, a 35 percent increase over 1977. Annual rate
of growth 3.1 percent; about 57 percent of population in 1987 under
twenty.
Religious and Ethnic Divisions: At least 95 percent
of population adheres to some form of Islam. Government gives number
of Shias (see Glossary)
as 55 percent but probably 60 to 65 percent is reasonable figure.
Most Iraqi Shias are Arabs. Almost all Kurds, approximately 19 percent
of population, are Sunnis
(see Glossary), together with about 13 percent Sunni Arabs. Total
Arab population in 1987 given by government as 76 percent. Remainder
of population small numbers of Turkomans, mostly Sunni Muslims;
Assyrians and Armenians, predominantly Christians; Yazidis, of Kurdish
stock with a syncretistic faith; and a few Jews.
Languages: Arabic official language and mother
tongue of about 76 percent of population; understood by majority
of others. Kurdish official language in As Sulaymaniyah, Dahuk,
and Irbil governorates. Minorities speaking Turkic, Armenian, and
Persian.
Education: Rapidly growing enrollment in tuition-free
public schools. Six years of primary (elementary), three years of
intermediate secondary, and three years of intermediate preparatory
education. Six major universities, forty-four teacher training schools
and institutes, and three colleges and technical institutes, all
government owned and operated. Dramatic increases since 1977 in
numbers of students in technical fields (300 percent rise) and numbers
of female primary students (45 percent rise). Literacy variously
estimated at about 40 percent by foreign observers and 70 percent
by government. Academic year 1985-86: number of students in primary
schools 2,812,516; secondary schools (general) 1,031,560; vocational
schools 120,090; teacher training schools and institutions 34,187;
universities, colleges, and technical institutes 53,037.
Health: High incidence of trachoma, influenza,
measles, whooping cough, and tuberculosis. Considerable progress
has been made in control of malaria. Continuing shortage of modern
trained medical and paramedical personnel, especially in rural areas
and probably in northern Kurdish areas.
Data as of May 1988
Iraq
GEOGRAPHY AND POPULATION
Boundaries
The border with Iran has been a continuing source of conflict and
was partially responsible for the outbreak in 1980 of the present
war. The terms of a treaty negotiated in 1937 under British auspices
provided that in one area of the Shatt al Arab the boundary would
be at the low water mark on the Iranian side. Iran subsequently
insisted that the 1937 treaty was imposed on it by "British imperialist
pressures," and that the proper boundary throughout the Shatt was
the thalweg. The matter came to a head in 1969 when Iraq, in effect,
told the Iranian government that the Shatt was an integral part
of Iraqi territory and that the waterway might be closed to Iranian
shipping.
Through Algerian mediation, Iran and Iraq agreed in March 1975
to normalize their relations, and three months later they signed
a treaty known as the Algiers Accord. The document defined the common
border all along the Shatt estuary as the thalweg. To compensate
Iraq for the loss of what formerly had been regarded as its territory,
pockets of territory along the mountain border in the central sector
of its common boundary with Iran were assigned to it. Nonetheless,
in September 1980 Iraq went to war with Iran, citing among other
complaints the fact that Iran had not turned over to it the land
specified in the Algiers Accord. This problem has subsequently proved
to be a stumbling block to a negotiated settlement of the ongoing
conflict.
In 1988 the boundary with Kuwait was another outstanding problem.
It was fixed in a 1913 treaty between the Ottoman Empire and British
officials acting on behalf of Kuwait's ruling family, which in 1899
had ceded control over foreign affairs to Britain. The boundary
was accepted by Iraq when it became independent in 1932, but in
the 1960s and again in the mid-1970s, the Iraqi government advanced
a claim to parts of Kuwait. Kuwait made several representations
to the Iraqis during the war to fix the border once and for all
but Baghdad has repeatedly demurred, claiming that the issue is
a potentially divisive one that could enflame nationalist sentiment
inside Iraq. Hence in 1988 it was likely that a solution would have
to wait until the war ended.
In 1922 British officials concluded the Treaty of Mohammara with
Abd al Aziz ibn Abd ar Rahman Al Saud, who in 1932 formed the Kingdom
of Saudi Arabia. The treaty provided the basic agreement for the
boundary between the eventually independent nations. Also in 1922
the two parties agreed to the creation of the diamond-shaped Neutral
Zone of approximately 7,500 square kilometers adjacent to the western
tip of Kuwait in which neither Iraq nor Saudi Arabia would build
permanent dwellings or installations . Beduins from either country
could utilize the limited water and seasonal grazing resources of
the zone. In April 1975, an agreement signed in Baghdad fixed the
borders of the countries. Despite a rumored agreement providing
for the formal division of the Iraq-Saudi Arabia Neutral Zone, as
of early 1988 such a document had not been published. Instead, Saudi
Arabia was continuing to control oil wells in the offshore Neutral
Zone and had been allocating proceeds from Neutral Zone oil sales
to Iraq as a war payment.
Data as of May 1988
Iraq
Major Geographical Features
Most geographers, including those of the Iraqi government, discuss
the country's geography in terms of four main zones or regions:
the desert in the west and southwest; the rolling upland between
the upper Tigris and Euphrates rivers (in Arabic the Dijlis and
Furat, respectively); the highlands in the north and northeast;
and the alluvial plain through which the Tigris and Euphrates flow
. Iraq's official statistical reports give the total land area as
438,446 square kilometers, whereas a United States Department of
State publication gives the area as 434,934 square kilometers.
The desert zone, an area lying west and southwest of the Euphrates
River, is a part of the Syrian Desert, which covers sections of
Syria, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. The region, sparsely inhabited
by pastoral nomads, consists of a wide, stony plain interspersed
with rare sandy stretches. A widely ramified pattern of wadis--watercourses
that are dry most of the year--runs from the border to the Euphrates.
Some Wadis are over 400 kilometers long and carry brief but torrential
floods during the winter rains.
The uplands region, between the Tigris north of Samarra and the
Euphrates north of Hit, is known as Al Jazirah (the island) and
is part of a larger area that extends westward into Syria between
the two rivers and into Turkey. Water in the area flows in deeply
cut valleys, and irrigation is much more difficult than it is in
the lower plain. Much of this zone may be classified as desert.
The northeastern highlands begin just south of a line drawn from
Mosul to Kirkuk and extend to the borders with Turkey and Iran.
High ground, separated by broad, undulating steppes, gives way to
mountains ranging from 1,000 to nearly 4,000 meters near the Iranian
and Turkish borders. Except for a few valleys, the mountain area
proper is suitable only for grazing in the foothills and steppes;
adequate soil and rainfall, however, make cultivation possible.
Here, too, are the great oil fields near Mosul and Kirkuk. The northeast
is the homeland of most Iraqi Kurds.
The alluvial plain begins north of Baghdad and extends to the Persian
Gulf. Here the Tigris and Euphrates rivers lie above the level of
the plain in many places, and the whole area is a delta interlaced
by the channels of the two rivers and by irrigation canals. Intermittent
lakes, fed by the rivers in flood, also characterize southeastern
Iraq. A fairly large area (15,000 square kilometers) just above
the confluence of the two rivers at Al Qurnah and extending east
of the Tigris beyond the Iranian border is marshland, known as Hawr
al Hammar, the result of centuries of flooding and inadequate drainage.
Much of it is permanent marsh, but some parts dry out in early winter,
and other parts become marshland only in years of great flood.
Because the waters of the Tigris and Euphrates above their confluence
are heavily silt laden, irrigation and fairly frequent flooding
deposit large quantities of silty loam in much of the delta area.
Windborne silt contributes to the total deposit of sediments. It
has been estimated that the delta plains are built up at the rate
of nearly twenty centimeters in a century. In some areas, major
floods lead to the deposit in temporary lakes of as much as thirty
centimeters of mud.
The Tigris and Euphrates also carry large quantities of salts.
These, too, are spread on the land by sometimes excessive irrigation
and flooding. A high water table and poor surface and subsurface
drainage tend to concentrate the salts near the surface of the soil.
In general, the salinity of the soil increases from Baghdad south
to the Persian Gulf and severely limits productivity in the region
south of Al Amarah. The salinity is reflected in the large lake
in central Iraq, southwest of Baghdad, known as Bahr al Milh (Sea
of Salt). There are two other major lakes in the country to the
north of Bahr al Milh: Buhayrat ath Tharthar and Buhayrat al Habbaniyah.
The Euphrates originates in Turkey, is augmented by the Nahr (river)
al Khabur in Syria, and enters Iraq in the northwest. Here it is
fed only by the wadis of the western desert during the winter rains.
It then winds through a gorge, which varies from two to sixteen
kilometers in width, until it flows out on the plain at Ar Ramadi.
Beyond there the Euphrates continues to the Hindiyah Barrage, which
was constructed in 1914 to divert the river into the Hindiyah Channel;
the present day Shatt al Hillah had been the main channel of the
Euphrates before 1914. Below Al Kifl, the river follows two channels
to As Samawah, where it reappears as a single channel to join the
Tigris at Al Qurnah.
The Tigris also rises in Turkey but is significantly augmented
by several rivers in Iraq, the most important of which are the Khabur,
the Great Zab, the Little Zab, and the Uzaym, all of which join
the Tigris above Baghdad, and the Diyala, which joins it about thirty-six
kilometers below the city. At the Kut Barrage much of the water
is diverted into the Shatt al Gharraf, which was once the main channel
of the Tigris. Water from the Tigris thus enters the Euphrates through
the Shatt al Gharraf well above the confluence of the two main channels
at Al Qurnah.
Both the Tigris and the Euphrates break into a number of channels
in the marshland area, and the flow of the rivers is substantially
reduced by the time they come together at Al Qurnah. Moreover, the
swamps act as silt traps, and the Shatt al Arab is relatively silt
free as it flows south. Below Basra, however, the Karun River enters
the Shatt al Arab from Iran, carrying large quantities of silt that
present a continuous dredging problem in maintaining a channel for
ocean-going vessels to reach the port at Basra. This problem had
been superseded by a greater obstacle to river traffic, however,
namely the presence of several sunken hulks that had been rusting
in the Shatt al Arab since early in the war.
The waters of the Tigris and Euphrates are essential to the life
of the country, but they may also threaten it. The rivers are at
their lowest level in September and October and at flood in March,
April, and May when they may carry forty times as much water as
at low mark. Moreover, one season's flood may be ten or more times
as great as that in another year. In 1954, for example, Baghdad
was seriously threatened, and dikes protecting it were nearly topped
by the flooding Tigris. Since Syria built a dam on the Euphrates,
the flow of water has been considerably diminished and flooding
was no longer a problem in the mid-1980s. In 1988 Turkey was also
constructing a dam on the Euphrates that would further restrict
the water flow.
Until the mid-twentieth century, most efforts to control the waters
were primarily concerned with irrigation. Some attention was given
to problems of flood control and drainage before the revolution
of July 14, 1958, but development plans in the 1960s and 1970s were
increasingly devoted to these matters, as well as to irrigation
projects on the upper reaches of the Tigris and Euphrates and the
tributaries of the Tigris in the northeast. During the war, government
officials stressed to foreign visitors that, with the conclusion
of a peace settlement, problems of irrigation and flooding would
receive top priority from the government.
Data as of May 1988
Iraq
Settlement Patterns
In the rural areas of the alluvial plain and in the lower Diyala
region, settlement almost invariably clusters near the rivers, streams,
and irrigation canals. The bases of the relationship between watercourse
and settlement have been summarized by Robert McCormick Adams, director
of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. He notes
that the levees laid down by streams and canals provide advantages
for both settlement and agriculture. Surface water drains more easily
on the levees' backslope, and the coarse soils of the levees are
easier to cultivate and permit better subsurface drainage. The height
of the levees gives some protection against floods and the frost
that often affect low-lying areas and may kill winter crops. Above
all, those living or cultivating on the crest of a levee have easy
access to water for irrigation and household use in a dry, hot country.
Although there are some isolated homesteads, most rural communities
are nucleated settlements rather than dispersed farmsteads; that
is, the farmer leaves his village to cultivate the fields outside
it. The pattern holds for farming communities in the Kurdish highlands
of the northeast as well as for those in the alluvial plain. The
size of the settlement varies, generally with the volume of water
available for household use and with the amount of land accessible
to village dwellers. Sometimes, particularly in the lower Tigris
and Euphrates valleys, soil salinity restricts the area of arable
land and limits the size of the community dependent on it, and it
also usually results in large unsettled and uncultivated stretches
between the villages.
Fragmentary information suggests that most farmers in the alluvial
plain tend to live in villages of over 100 persons. For example,
in the mid-1970s a substantial number of the residents of Baqubah,
the administrative center and major city of Diyala Governorate,
were employed in agriculture.
The Marsh Arabs (the Madan) of the south usually live in small
clusters of two or three houses kept above water by rushes that
are constantly being replenished. Such clusters often are close
together, but access from one to another is possible only by small
boat. Here and there a few natural islands permit slightly larger
clusters. Some of these people are primarily water buffalo herders
and lead a seminomadic life. In the winter, when the waters are
at a low point, they build fairly large temporary villages. In the
summer they move their herds out of the marshes to the river banks.
The war has had its effect on the lives of these denizens of the
marshes. With much of the fighting concentrated in their areas,
they have either migrated to settled communities away from the marshes
or have been forced by government decree to relocate within the
marshes. Also, in early 1988, the marshes had become the refuge
of deserters from the Iraqi army who attempted to maintain life
in the fastness of the overgrown, desolate areas while hiding out
from the authorities. These deserters in many instances have formed
into large gangs that raid the marsh communities; this also has
induced many of the marsh dwellers to abandon their villages.
The war has also affected settlement patterns in the northern Kurdish
areas. There, the persistence of a stubborn rebellion by Kurdish
guerrillas has goaded the government into applying steadily escalating
violence against the local communities. Starting in 1984, the government
launched a scorched-earth campaign to drive a wedge between the
villagers and the guerrillas in the remote areas of two provinces
of Kurdistan in which Kurdish guerrillas were active. In the process
whole villages were torched and subsequently bulldozed, which resulted
in the Kurds flocking into the regional centers of Irbil and As
Sulaymaniyah. Also as a military precaution, the government has
cleared a broad strip of territory in the Kurdish region along the
Iranian border of all its inhabitants, hoping in this way to interdict
the movement of Kurdish guerrillas back and forth between Iran and
Iraq. The majority of Kurdish villages, however, remained intact
in early 1988.
In the arid areas of Iraq to the west and south, cities and large
towns are almost invariably situated on watercourses, usually on
the major rivers or their larger tributaries. In the south this
dependence has had its disadvantages. Until the recent development
of flood control, Baghdad and other cities were subject to the threat
of inundation. Moreover, the dikes needed for protection have effectively
prevented the expansion of the urban areas in some directions. The
growth of Baghdad, for example, was restricted by dikes on its eastern
edge. The diversion of water to the Milhat ath Tharthar and the
construction of a canal transferring water from the Tigris north
of Baghdad to the Diyala River have permitted the irrigation of
land outside the limits of the dikes and the expansion of settlement.
Data as of May 1988
Iraq
Climate
Roughly 90 percent of the annual rainfall occurs between November
and April, most of it in the winter months from December through
March. The remaining six months, particularly the hottest ones of
June, July, and August, are dry.
Except in the north and northeast, mean annual rainfall ranges
between ten and seventeen centimeters. Data available from stations
in the foothills and steppes south and southwest of the mountains
suggest mean annual rainfall between thirty-two and fifty-seven
centimeters for that area. Rainfall in the mountains is more abundant
and may reach 100 centimeters a year in some places, but the terrain
precludes extensive cultivation. Cultivation on nonirrigated land
is limited essentially to the mountain valleys, foothills, and steppes,
which have thirty or more centimeters of rainfall annually. Even
in this zone, however, only one crop a year can be grown, and shortages
of rain have often led to crop failures.
Mean minimum temperatures in the winter range from near freezing
(just before dawn) in the northern and northeastern foothills and
the western desert to 2o-3° C and 4o-5° C in the alluvial
plains of southern Iraq. They rise to a mean maximum of about 15.5°
C in the western desert and the northeast, and 16.6° C in the
south. In the summer mean minimum temperatures range from about
22.2° C to about 29° C and rise to maximums between roughly
37.7o and 43.3° C. Temperatures sometimes fall below freezing
and have fallen as low as -14.4° C at Ar Rutbah in the western
desert. They are more likely, however, to go over 46° C in the
summer months, and several stations have records of over 48°
C.
The summer months are marked by two kinds of wind phenomena. The
southern and southeasterly sharqi, a dry, dusty wind with
occasional gusts of eighty kilometers an hour, occurs from April
to early June and again from late September through November. It
may last for a day at the beginning and end of the season but for
several days at other times. This wind is often accompanied by violent
duststorms that may rise to heights of several thousand meters and
close airports for brief periods. From mid-June to mid-September
the prevailing wind, called the shamal, is from the north
and northwest. It is a steady wind, absent only occasionally during
this period. The very dry air brought by this shamal permits
intensive sun heating of the land surface, but the breeze has some
cooling effect.
The combination of rain shortage and extreme heat makes much of
Iraq a desert. Because of very high rates of evaporation, soil and
plants rapidly lose the little moisture obtained from the rain,
and vegetation could not survive without extensive irrigation. Some
areas, however, although arid do have natural vegetation in contrast
to the desert. For example, in the Zagros Mountains in northeastern
Iraq there is permanent vegetation, such as oak trees, and date
palms are found in the south.
Data as of May 1988
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