title: History of Iraq

text: Over the next 700 years, the regions forming modern Iraq came under Greek, Parthian, and Roman rule, with the Greeks and Parthians establishing new imperial capitals in the area with the cities of Seleucia and Ctesiphon, respectively. By the 3rd century AD, when the area once again fell under Persian (Sasanian) control, nomadic Arab tribesmen originating from South Arabia (consisting mostly of modern-day Yemen) began to migrate and settle within Lower Mesopotamia, culminating in the creation of the Sassanid-aligned Lakhmid Kingdom in around 300 AD; the Arabic name "al-ʿIrāq" dates to roughly this time. The Sassanid Empire was eventually conquered by the Rashidun Caliphate in the 7th century, with Iraq specifically falling under Islamic rule following the Battle of al-Qadisiyyah in 636. The city of Kufa was founded shortly thereafter in close proximity to the previous Lakhmid capital of Al-Hirah, and it became the home of the Rashidun dynasty from 656 until their overthrow by the Umayyads in 661. With the rise of the Abbasids in 750, Iraq once again became the center of Caliphate rule—first in Kufa from 750-752, then in Anbar for the following decade, and finally in the city of Baghdad after its founding in 762. Baghdad would remain the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate for the majority of its existence, during which time it became the cultural and intellectual center of the world in what is known today as the Islamic Golden Age. Baghdad's rapid growth and prosperity in the 9th century would be followed by a period of stagnation in the 10th century due to the Buwayhid and Seljuq invasions, but it remained of central importance until the Mongol invasion of 1258. After this, Iraq became a province of the Turco-Mongol Ilkhanate and declined in importance. After the disintegration of the Ilkhanate, Iraq was ruled by the Jalairids and Kara Koyunlu until its eventual absorption into the Ottoman Empire in the 16th century, intermittently falling under Iranian Safavid and Mamluk control.


title: History of Iraq

text: Ottoman rule ended with World War I, after which the British Empire administered Mandatory Iraq alongside a nominally self-governing Hashemite monarchy headed by King Faisal I. The Kingdom of Iraq was eventually granted full independence in 1932 under the terms of the Anglo-Iraqi Treaty, signed by High Commissioner Francis Humphrys and Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Said two years prior. A republic formed in 1958 following a coup d'état. Saddam Hussein governed from 1968 to 2003, into which period fall the Iran–Iraq War and the Gulf War. Saddam Hussein was deposed following the 2003 invasion of Iraq.


title: History of Iraq

text: During 1957–1961 Shanidar Cave was excavated by Ralph Solecki and his team from Columbia University, and nine skeletons of Neanderthal man of varying ages and states of preservation and completeness (labelled Shanidar I–IX) were discovered dating from 60,000–80,000 years BP. A tenth individual was recently discovered by M. Zeder during examination of a faunal assemblage from the site at the Smithsonian Institution. The remains seemed to Zeder to suggest that Neanderthals had funeral ceremonies, burying their dead with flowers (although the flowers are now thought to be a modern contaminant), and that they took care of injured and elderly individuals.


title: History of Iraq

text: Mesopotamia is the site of the earliest developments of the Neolithic Revolution from around 10,000 BC. It has been identified as having "inspired some of the most important developments in human history including the invention of the wheel, the planting of the first cereal crops and the development of cursive script, Mathematics, Astronomy and Agriculture."


title: History of Iraq

text: Sumer emerged as the civilization of Lower Mesopotamia out of the prehistoric Ubaid period (mid-6th millennium BC) in the Early Bronze Age (Uruk period)


title: History of Iraq

text: Classical Sumer ends with the rise of the Akkadian Empire in the 24th century BC. Following the Gutian period, the Ur III kingdom was once again able to unite large parts of southern and central Mesopotamia under a single ruler in the 21st century. It may have eventually disintegrated due to Amorite incursions. The Amorite dynasty of Isin persisted until c. 1600 BC, when southern Mesopotamia was united under Kassite Babylonian rule.


title: History of Iraq

text: The north of Mesopotamia had become the Akkadian-speaking state of Assyria by the late 25th century BC. Along with the rest of Mesopotamia it was ruled


title: History of Iraq

text: by Akkadian kings from the late 24th to mid 22nd centuries BC, after which it once again became independent.


title: History of Iraq

text: Babylonia was a state in Lower Mesopotamia with Babylon as its capital. It was founded as an independent state by an Amorite king named Sumuabum in 1894 BC.


title: History of Iraq

text: Akkadian gradually replaced Sumerian as the spoken language of Mesopotamia somewhere around the turn of the 3rd and the 2nd millennium BC, but Sumerian continued to be used as a written or ceremonial language in Mesopotamia well into the period of classical antiquity.


title: History of Iraq

text: Babylonia emerged from the Amorite dynasties (c. 1900 BC) when Hammurabi (c. 1792–1750 BC), unified the territories of the former kingdoms of Sumer and Akkad.


title: History of Iraq

text: During the early centuries of what is called the "Amorite period", the most powerful city-states were Isin and Larsa, although Shamshi-Adad I came close to uniting the more northern regions around Assur and Mari. One of these Amorite dynasties was established in the city-state of Babylon, which would ultimately take over the others and form the first Babylonian empire, during what is also called the Old Babylonian Period.


title: History of Iraq

text: Assyria was an Akkadian (East Semitic) kingdom in Upper Mesopotamia, that came to rule regional empires a number of times through history. It was named for its original capital, the ancient city of Assur (Akkadian "").


title: History of Iraq

text: Of the early history of the kingdom of Assyria, little is positively known. In the Assyrian King List, the earliest king recorded was Tudiya. He was a contemporary of Ibrium of Ebla who appears to have lived in the late 25th or early 24th century BC, according to the king list. The foundation of the first true urbanised Assyrian monarchy was traditionally ascribed to Ushpia a contemporary of Ishbi-Erra of Isin and Naplanum of Larsa. c. 2030 BC.


title: History of Iraq

text: Assyria had a period of empire from the 19th to 18th centuries BC. From the 14th to 11th centuries BC Assyria once more became a major power with the rise of the Middle Assyrian Empire.


title: History of Iraq

text: The Neo-Assyrian Empire (911–609 BC) was the dominant political force in the Ancient Near East during the Iron Age, eclipsing Babylonia, Egypt, Urartu and Elam. During this period, Aramaic was also made an official language of the empire, alongside the Akkadian language.


title: History of Iraq

text: The Neo-Babylonian Empire (626–539 BC) marks the final period of the history of the Ancient Near East preceding Persian conquest. A year after the death of the last strong Assyrian ruler, Assurbanipal, in 627 BC, the Assyrian empire spiralled into a series of brutal civil wars. Babylonia rebelled under Nabopolassar, a member of the Chaldean tribe which had migrated from the Levant to south eastern Babylonia in the early 9th century BC. In alliance with the Medes, Persians, Scythians and Cimmerians, they sacked the city of Nineveh in 612 BC, and the seat of empire was transferred to Babylonia for the first time since the death of Hammurabi in the mid 18th century BC. This period witnessed a general improvement in economic life and agricultural production, and a great flourishing of architectural projects, the arts and science.


title: History of Iraq

text: The Neo-Babylonian period ended with the reign of Nabonidus in 539 BC. To the east, the Persians had been growing in strength, and eventually Cyrus the Great established his dominion over Babylon.


title: History of Iraq

text: Mesopotamia was conquered by the Achaemenid Persians under Cyrus the Great in 539 BC, and remained under Persian rule for two centuries.


title: History of Iraq

text: The Persian Empire fell to Alexander of Macedon in 331 BC and came under Greek rule as part of the Seleucid Empire. Babylon declined after the founding of Seleucia on the Tigris, the new Seleucid Empire capital.


title: History of Iraq

text: The Seleucid Empire at the height of its power stretched from the Aegean in the west to India in the east. It was a major center of Hellenistic culture that maintained the preeminence of Greek customs where a Greek political elite dominated, mostly in the urban areas. The Greek population of the cities who formed the dominant elite were reinforced by immigration from Greece.


title: History of Iraq

text: Much of the eastern part of the empire was conquered by the Parthians under Mithridates I of Parthia in the mid-2nd century BC.


title: History of Iraq

text: At the beginning of the 2nd century AD, the Romans, led by emperor Trajan, invaded Parthia and conquered Mesopotamia, making it an imperial province. It was returned to the Parthians shortly after by Trajan's successor, Hadrian.


title: History of Iraq

text: Christianity reached Mesopotamia in the 1st century AD, and Roman Syria in particular became the center of Eastern Rite Christianity and the Syriac literary tradition. Mandeism is also believed to have either originated there around this time or entered as Mandaeans sought refuge from Palestine.


title: History of Iraq

text: Sumerian-Akkadian religious tradition disappeared during this period, as did the last remnants of cuneiform literacy, although temples were still being dedicated to the Assyrian national god Ashur in his home city as late as the 4th century.


title: History of Iraq

text: In the 3rd century AD, the Parthians were in turn succeeded by the Sassanid dynasty, which ruled Mesopotamia until the 7th-century Islamic invasion. The Sassanids conquered the independent states of Adiabene, Osroene, Hatra and finally Assur during the 3rd century. In the mid-6th century the Persian Empire under the Sassanid dynasty was divided by Khosrow I into four quarters, of which the western one, called "Khvārvarān", included most of modern Iraq, and subdivided to provinces of "Mishān", Asuristān (Assyria), Adiabene and Lower Media. The term Iraq is widely used in the medieval Arabic sources for the area in the center and south of the modern republic as a geographic rather than a political term, implying no greater precision of boundaries than the term "Mesopotamia" or, indeed, many of the names of modern states before the 20th century.


title: History of Iraq

text: Upper Mesopotamia came to be known as "Al-Jazirah" in Arabic (meaning "The Island" in reference to the "island" between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers), and Lower Mesopotamia came to be known as "ʿIrāq-i ʿArab", meaning "the escarpment of the Arabs" (viz. to the south and east of "the island".


title: History of Iraq

text: Until 602, the desert frontier of the Persian Empire had been guarded by the Arab Lakhmid kings of Al-Hirah. In that year, Shahanshah Khosrow II Aparviz (Persian خسرو پرويز) abolished the Lakhmid kingdom and laid the frontier open to nomad incursions. Farther north, the western quarter was bounded by the Byzantine Empire. The frontier more or less followed the modern Syria-Iraq border and continued northward, passing between Nisibis (modern Nusaybin) as the Sassanian frontier fortress and Dara and Amida (modern Diyarbakır) held by the Byzantines.


title: History of Iraq

text: The first organized conflict between invading Arab tribes and occupying Persian forces in Mesopotamia seems to have been in 634, when the Arabs were defeated at the Battle of the Bridge. There was a force of some 5,000 Muslims under Abū `Ubayd ath-Thaqafī, which was routed by the Persians. This was followed by Khalid ibn al-Walid's successful campaign which saw all of Iraq come under Arab rule within a year, with the exception of the Persian Empire's capital, Ctesiphon. Around 636, a larger Arab Muslim force under Sa`d ibn Abī Waqqās defeated the main Persian army at the Battle of al-Qādisiyyah and moved on to capture the Persian capital of Ctesiphon. By the end of 638, the Muslims had conquered all of the Western Sassanid provinces (including modern Iraq), and the last Sassanid Emperor, Yazdegerd III, had fled to central and then northern Persia, where he was killed in 651.


title: History of Iraq

text: The Islamic expansions constituted the largest of the Semitic expansions in history. These new arrivals did not disperse and settle throughout the country; instead they established two new garrison cities, at al-Kūfah, near ancient Babylon, and at Basrah in the south, while the north remained largely Assyrian and Arab Christian in character.


title: History of Iraq

text: The city of Baghdad was built in the 8th century and became the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate. Baghdad soon became the primary cultural center of the Muslim world during the centuries of the incipient "Islamic Golden Age" of the 8th to 9th centuries.


title: History of Iraq

text: In the 9th century, the Abbasid Caliphate entered a period of decline. During the late 9th to early 11th centuries, a period known as the "Iranian Intermezzo", parts of (the modern territory of) Iraq were governed by a number of minor Iranian emirates, including the Tahirids, Saffarids, Samanids, Buyids and Sallarids. Tughril, the founder of the Seljuk Empire, captured Baghdad in 1055. In spite of having lost all governance, the Abbasid caliphs nevertheless maintained a highly ritualized court in Baghdad and remained influential in religious matters, maintaining the orthodoxy of their Sunni sect in opposition to the Ismaili and Shia sects of Islam.


title: History of Iraq

text: In the later 11th century, Iraq fell under the rule of the Khwarazmian dynasty. Both Turkic secular rule and Abbasid caliphate came to an end with the Mongol invasions of the 13th century.


title: History of Iraq

text: The Mongols under Genghis Khan had conquered Khwarezmia by 1221, but Iraq proper gained a respite due to the death of Genghis Khan in 1227 and the subsequent power struggles.


title: History of Iraq

text: Möngke Khan from 1251 began a renewed expansion of the Mongol Empire, and when caliph al-Mustasim refused to submit to the Mongols, Baghdad was besieged and captured by Hulagu Khan in 1258. With the destruction of the Abbasid Caliphate, Hulagu had an open route to Syria and moved against the other Muslim powers in the region.


title: History of Iraq

text: Iraq now became a province on the southwestern fringes of the Ilkhanate and Baghdad would never regain its former importance.


title: History of Iraq

text: The Jalayirids were a Mongol Jalayir dynasty which ruled over Iraq and western Persia after the breakup of the Ilkhanate in the 1330s. The Jalayirid sultanate lasted about fifty years, until disrupted by Tamerlane's conquests and the revolts of the "Black Sheep Turks" or Qara Qoyunlu Turkmen. After Tamerlane's death in 1405, there was a brief attempt to re-establish the sultanate in southern Iraq and Khuzistan. The Jalayirids were finally eliminated by Kara Koyunlu in 1432.


title: History of Iraq

text: During the late 14th and early 15th centuries, the Black Sheep Turkmen ruled the area now known as Iraq. In 1466, the White Sheep Turkmen defeated the Black Sheep and took control. Later, the White Sheep were defeated by the Safavids, who took control over Mesopotamia for some time. In the 16th century, most of the territory of present-day Iraq came under the control of Ottoman Empire as the pashalik of Baghdad. Throughout most of the period of Ottoman rule (1533–1918) the territory of present-day Iraq was a battle zone between the rival regional empires and tribal alliances.


title: History of Iraq

text: The Safavid dynasty of Iran briefly asserted their hegemony over Iraq in the periods of 1508–1533 and 1622–1638. During the years 1747–1831 Iraq was ruled by the Mamluk officers of Georgian origin who succeeded in obtaining autonomy from the Ottoman Empire, suppressed tribal revolts, curbed the power of the Janissaries, restored order and introduced a program of modernization of economy and military. In 1831, the Ottomans managed to overthrow the Mamluk regime and again imposed their direct control over Iraq.


title: History of Iraq

text: Ottoman rule over Iraq lasted until World War I, when the Ottomans sided with Germany and the Central Powers. In the Mesopotamian campaign against the Central Powers, British forces invaded the country and suffered a defeat at the hands of the Turkish army during the Siege of Kut (1915–16). However the British finally won in the Mesopotamian Campaign with the capture of Baghdad in March 1917. During the war the British employed the help of a number of Assyrian, Armenian and Arab tribes against the Ottomans, who in turn employed the Kurds as allies. After the war the Ottoman Empire was divided up, and the British Mandate of Mesopotamia was established by League of Nations mandate.


title: History of Iraq

text: Britain imposed a Hāshimite monarchy on Iraq and defined the territorial limits of Iraq without taking into account the politics of the different ethnic and religious groups in the country, in particular those of the Kurds and the Christian Assyrians to the north. During the British occupation, the Kurds fought for independence, and the British employed Assyrian Levies to help quell these insurrections. Iraq also became an oligarchy government at this time.


title: History of Iraq

text: Although the monarch Faisal I of Iraq was legitimized and proclaimed King by a plebiscite on 23 August 1921, simultaneously changing the official name of the country from Mesopotamia to Iraq, independence was achieved in 1932, when the British Mandate officially ended.


title: History of Iraq

text: Establishment of Arab Sunni domination in Iraq was followed by Assyrian, Yazidi and Shi'a unrests, which were all brutally suppressed. In 1936, the first military coup took place in the Kingdom of Iraq, as Bakr Sidqi succeeded in replacing the acting Prime Minister with his associate. Multiple coups followed in a period of political instability, peaking in 1941.


title: History of Iraq

text: During World War II, Iraqi regime of Regent 'Abd al-Ilah was overthrown in 1941 by the Golden Square officers, headed by Rashid Ali. The short lived pro-Nazi government of Iraq was defeated in May 1941 by the allied forces (with local Assyrian and Kurdish help) in Anglo-Iraqi War. Iraq was later used as a base for allied attacks on Vichy-French held Mandate of Syria and support for the Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran.


title: History of Iraq

text: In 1945, Iraq joined the United Nations and became a founding member of the Arab League. At the same time, the Kurdish leader Mustafa Barzani led a rebellion against the central government in Baghdad. After the failure of the uprising, Barzani and his followers fled to the Soviet Union.


title: History of Iraq

text: In 1948, massive violent protests known as the Al-Wathbah uprising broke out across Baghdad with partial communist support, having demands against the government's treaty with Britain. Protests continued into spring and were interrupted in May when martial law was enforced as Iraq entered the failed 1948 Arab–Israeli War along with other Arab League members.


title: History of Iraq

text: In February 1958, King Hussein of Jordan and `Abd al-Ilāh proposed a union of Hāshimite monarchies to counter the recently formed Egyptian-Syrian union. The prime minister Nuri as-Said wanted Kuwait to be part of the proposed Arab-Hāshimite Union. Shaykh `Abd-Allāh as-Salīm, the ruler of Kuwait, was invited to Baghdad to discuss Kuwait's future. This policy brought the government of Iraq into direct conflict with Britain, which did not want to grant independence to Kuwait. At that point, the monarchy found itself completely isolated. Nuri as-Said was able to contain the rising discontent only by resorting to even greater political oppression.


title: History of Iraq

text: Inspired by Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, officers from the Nineteenth Brigade, 3rd Division known as "The Four Colonials", under the leadership of Brigadier Abd al-Karīm Qāsim (known as ""az-Za`īm"", 'the leader') and Colonel Abdul Salam Arif overthrew the Hashemite monarchy on July 14, 1958. The new government proclaimed Iraq to be a republic and rejected the idea of a union with Jordan. Iraq's activity in the Baghdad Pact ceased.


title: History of Iraq

text: Abd al-Karim Qasim promoted a civic nationalism in Iraq which asserts the belief that Iraqis are a nation and promotes the cultural unity of Iraqis of different ethnoreligious groups such as Mesopotamian Arabs, Kurds, Turkmens, Assyrians, Chaldeans, Yazidis, Mandeans, Yarsans, and others.


title: History of Iraq

text: Qasim's vision of nationalism involved the recognition of an Iraqi identity stemming from ancient Mesopotamia including its civilizations of Sumer, Akkad, Babylonia and Assyria.


title: History of Iraq

text: In 1961, Kuwait gained independence from Britain and Iraq claimed sovereignty over Kuwait. A period of considerable instability followed.


title: History of Iraq

text: The same year, Mustafa Barzani, who had been invited to return to Iraq by Qasim three years earlier, began engaging Iraqi government forces and establishing Kurdish control in the north in what was the beginning of the First Kurdish Iraqi War.


title: History of Iraq

text: Qāsim was assassinated in February 1963, when the Ba'ath Party took power under the leadership of General Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr (prime minister) and Colonel Abdul Salam Arif (president). In June 1963, Syria, which by then had also fallen under Ba'athist rule, took part in the Iraqi military campaign against the Kurds by providing aircraft, armoured vehicles and a force of 6,000 soldiers. Several months later, `Abd as-Salam Muhammad `Arif led a successful coup against the Ba'ath government. Arif declared a ceasefire in February 1964 which provoked a split among Kurdish urban radicals on one hand and Peshmerga (Freedom fighters) forces led by Barzani on the other.


title: History of Iraq

text: On April 13, 1966, President Abdul Salam Arif died in a helicopter crash and was succeeded by his brother, General Abdul Rahman Arif. Following this unexpected death, the Iraqi government launched a last-ditch effort to defeat the Kurds. This campaign failed in May 1966, when Barzani forces thoroughly defeated the Iraqi Army at the Battle of Mount Handrin, near Rawanduz. Following the Six-Day War of 1967, the Ba'ath Party felt strong enough to retake power in 1968. Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr became president and chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council (RCC). The Ba'ath government started a campaign to end the Kurdish insurrection, which stalled in 1969. This can be partly attributed to the internal power struggle in Baghdad and also tensions with Iran. Moreover, the Soviet Union pressured the Iraqis to come to terms with Barzani. The war ended with more than 100,000 mortal casualties, with little achievements to both Kurdish rebels and the Iraqi government.


title: History of Iraq

text: In the aftermath of the First Kurdish Iraqi War, a peace plan was announced in March 1970 and provided for broader Kurdish autonomy. The plan also gave Kurds representation in government bodies, to be implemented in four years. Despite this, the Iraqi government embarked on an Arabization program in the oil rich regions of Kirkuk and Khanaqin in the same period. In the following years, Baghdad government overcame its internal divisions and concluded a treaty of friendship with the Soviet Union in April 1972 and ended its isolation within the Arab world. On the other hand, Kurds remained dependent on the Iranian military support and could do little to strengthen their forces. By 1974 the situation in the north escalated again into the Second Kurdish Iraqi War, to last until 1975.


title: History of Iraq

text: In July 1979, President Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr was forced to resign by Saddam Hussein, who assumed the offices of both President and Chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council. Saddam then purged his opponents including those from within the Baath party.


title: History of Iraq

text: Iraq's territorial claims to neighboring countries were largely due to the plans and promises of the Entente countries in 1919–1920, when the Ottoman Empire was divided, to create a more extensive Arab state in Iraq and Jazeera, which would also include significant territories of eastern Syria, southeastern Turkey, all of Kuwait and Iran’s border areas, which are shown on this English map of 1920.


title: History of Iraq

text: Territorial disputes with Iran led to an inconclusive and costly eight-year war, the "Iran–Iraq War" (1980–1988, termed "Qādisiyyat-Saddām" – 'Saddam's Qādisiyyah'), which devastated the economy. Iraq falsely declared victory in 1988 but actually only achieved a weary return to the "status quo ante bellum", meaning both sides retained their original borders.


title: History of Iraq

text: The war began when Iraq invaded Iran, launching a simultaneous invasion by air and land into Iranian territory on 22 September 1980, following a long history of border disputes, and fears of Shia insurgency among Iraq's long-suppressed Shia majority influenced by the Iranian Revolution. Iraq was also aiming to replace Iran as the dominant Persian Gulf state. The United States supported Saddam Hussein in the war against Iran. Although Iraq hoped to take advantage of the revolutionary chaos in Iran and attacked without formal warning, they made only limited progress into Iran and within several months were repelled by the Iranians who regained virtually all lost territory by June 1982. For the next six years, Iran was on the offensive. Despite calls for a ceasefire by the United Nations Security Council, hostilities continued until 20 August 1988. The war finally ended with a United Nations-brokered ceasefire in the form of United Nations Security Council Resolution 598, which was accepted by both sides. It took several weeks for the Iranian armed forces to evacuate Iraqi territory to honor pre-war international borders between the two nations (see 1975 Algiers Agreement). The last prisoners of war were exchanged in 2003.


title: History of Iraq

text: The war came at a great cost in lives and economic damage—half a million Iraqi and Iranian soldiers, as well as civilians, are believed to have died in the war with many more injured—but it brought neither reparations nor change in borders. The conflict is often compared to World War I, in that the tactics used closely mirrored those of that conflict, including large scale trench warfare, manned machine-gun posts, bayonet charges, use of barbed wire across trenches, human wave attacks across no-man's land, and extensive use of chemical weapons such as mustard gas by the Iraqi government against Iranian troops and civilians as well as Iraqi Kurds. At the time, the UN Security Council issued statements that "chemical weapons had been used in the war." However, in these UN statements, it was never made clear that it was only Iraq that was using chemical weapons, so it has been said that "the international community remained silent as Iraq used weapons of mass destruction against Iranian as well as Iraqi Kurds" and it is believed.


title: History of Iraq

text: A long-standing territorial dispute was the ostensible reason for Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990. In November 1990, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 678, permitting member states to use all necessary means, authorizing military action against the Iraqi forces occupying Kuwait and demanded a complete withdrawal by January 15, 1991. When Saddam Hussein failed to comply with this demand, the Gulf War (Operation "Desert Storm") ensued on January 17, 1991. Estimates range from 1,500 to as many as 30,000 Iraqi soldiers killed, as well as less than a thousand civilians.


title: History of Iraq

text: In March 1991 revolts in the Shia-dominated southern Iraq started involving demoralized Iraqi Army troops and the anti-government Shia parties. Another wave of insurgency broke out shortly afterwards in the Kurdish populated northern Iraq (see 1991 Iraqi uprisings). Although they presented a serious threat to the Iraqi Ba'ath Party regime, Saddam Hussein managed to suppress the rebellions with massive and indiscriminate force and maintained power. They were ruthlessly crushed by the loyalist forces spearheaded by the Iraqi Republican Guard and the population was successfully terrorized. During the few weeks of unrest tens of thousands of people were killed. Many more died during the following months, while nearly two million Iraqis fled for their lives. In the aftermath, the government intensified the forced relocating of Marsh Arabs and the draining of the Iraqi marshlands, while the Coalition established the Iraqi no-fly zones.


title: History of Iraq

text: On 6 August 1990, after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, the U.N. Security Council adopted Resolution 661 which imposed economic sanctions on Iraq, providing for a full trade embargo, excluding medical supplies, food and other items of humanitarian necessity, these to be determined by the Security Council sanctions committee. After the end of the Gulf War and after the Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait, the sanctions were linked to removal of weapons of mass destruction by Resolution 687. To varying degrees, the effects of government policy, the aftermath of Gulf War and the sanctions regime have been blamed for these conditions.


title: History of Iraq

text: The effects of the sanctions on the civilian population of Iraq have been disputed. Whereas it was widely believed that the sanctions caused a major rise in child mortality, recent research has shown that commonly cited data were fabricated by the Iraqi government and that "there was no major rise in child mortality in Iraq after 1990 and during the period of the sanctions." An oil for food program was established in 1996 to ease the effects of sanctions.


title: History of Iraq

text: Iraqi cooperation with UN weapons inspection teams was questioned on several occasions during the 1990s. UNSCOM chief weapons inspector Richard Butler withdrew his team from Iraq in November 1998 because of Iraq's lack of cooperation. The team returned in December. Butler prepared a report for the UN Security Council afterwards in which he expressed dissatisfaction with the level of compliance . The same month, US President Bill Clinton authorized air strikes on government targets and military facilities. Air strikes against military facilities and alleged WMD sites continued into 2002.


title: History of Iraq

text: After the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington in the United States in 2001 were linked to the group formed by the multi-millionaire Saudi Osama bin Laden, American foreign policy began to call for the removal of the Ba'ath government in Iraq. Neoconservative think-tanks in Washington had for years been urging regime change in Baghdad. On August 14, 1998, President Clinton signed Public Law 105–235, which declared that ‘‘the Government of Iraq is in material and unacceptable breach of its international obligations.’’ It urged the President ‘‘to take appropriate action, in accordance with the Constitution and relevant laws of the United States, to bring Iraq into compliance with its international obligations.’’ Several months later, Congress enacted the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 on October 31, 1998. This law stated that it "should be the policy of the United States to support efforts to remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq and to promote the emergence of a democratic government to replace that regime." It was passed 360 - 38 by the United States House of Representatives and 99–0 by the United States Senate in 1998.


title: History of Iraq

text: The US urged the United Nations to take military action against Iraq. American president George W. Bush stated that Saddām had repeatedly violated 16 UN Security Council resolutions. The Iraqi government rejected Bush's assertions. A team of U.N. inspectors, led by Swedish diplomat Hans Blix was admitted, into the country; their final report stated that Iraqis capability in producing "weapons of mass destruction" was not significantly different from 1992 when the country dismantled the bulk of their remaining arsenals under terms of the ceasefire agreement with U.N. forces, but did not completely rule out the possibility that Saddam still had weapons of mass destruction. The United States and the United Kingdom charged that Iraq was hiding WMD and opposed the team's requests for more time to further investigate the matter. Resolution 1441 was passed unanimously by the UN Security Council on November 8, 2002, offering Iraq "a final opportunity to comply with its disarmament obligations" that had been set out in several previous UN resolutions, threatening "serious consequences" if the obligations were not fulfilled. The UN Security Council did not issue a resolution authorizing the use of force against Iraq.


title: History of Iraq

text: In March 2003, the United States and the United Kingdom, with military aid from other nations, invaded Iraq.


title: History of Iraq

text: Over the following years in the U.S. occupation of Iraq, Iraq disintegrated into a civil war from 2006 to 2008, and the situation deteriorated in 2011 which later escalated into a renewed war following ISIL gains in the country in 2014. By 2015, Iraq was effectively divided, the central and southern part being controlled by the government, the northwest by the Kurdistan Regional Government and the western part by the Islamic State. IS was expelled from Iraq in 2017, but a low-intensity ISIL insurgency continues mostly in the rural parts of northern western parts of the country, due to Iraq's long border with Syria.


title: History of Iraq

text: In 2003, after the American and British invasion, Iraq was occupied by U.S.-led Coalition forces. On May 23, 2003, the UN Security Council unanimously approved a resolution lifting all economic sanctions against Iraq. As the country struggled to rebuild after three wars and a decade of sanctions, it was plagued by violence between a growing Iraqi insurgency and occupation forces. Saddam Hussein, who vanished in April, was captured on December 13, 2003 in ad-Dawr, Saladin Governorate.


title: History of Iraq

text: Jay Garner was appointed Interim Civil Administrator with three deputies, including Tim Cross. Garner was replaced in May 2003 by Paul Bremer, who was himself replaced by John Negroponte on April 19, 2004. Negroponte was the last US interim administrator and left Iraq in 2005. A parliamentary election was held in January 2005, followed by the drafting and ratification of a constitution and a further parliamentary election in December 2005.


title: History of Iraq

text: Terrorism emerged as a threat to Iraq's people not long after the invasion of 2003. Al Qaeda now had a presence in the country, in the form of several terrorist groups formerly led by Abu Musab Al Zarqawi. Al Zarqawi was a Jordanian militant Islamist who ran a militant training camp in Afghanistan. He became known after going to Iraq and being responsible for a series of bombings, beheadings and attacks during the Iraq war. Al Zarqawi was killed on June 7, 2006. Many foreign fighters and former Ba'ath Party officials also joined the insurgency, which was mainly aimed at attacking American forces and Iraqis who worked with them. The most dangerous insurgent area was the Sunni Triangle, a mostly Sunni-Muslim area just north of Baghdad.


title: History of Iraq

text: Reported acts of violence conducted by an uneasy tapestry of insurgents steadily increased by the end of 2006. Sunni jihadist forces including Al Qaeda in Iraq continued to target Shia civilians, notably in the 23 February 2006 attack on the Al Askari Mosque in Samarra, one of Shi'ite Islam's holiest sites leading to a civil war between Sunni and Shia militants in Iraq. Analysis of the attack suggested that the Mujahideen Shura Council and Al-Qaeda in Iraq were responsible, and that the motivation was to provoke further violence by outraging the Shia population. In mid-October 2006, a statement was released stating that the Mujahideen Shura Council had been disbanded and was replaced by the "Islamic State of Iraq". It was formed to resist efforts by the U.S. and Iraqi authorities to win over Sunni supporters of the insurgency. Shia militias, some of whom were associated with elements in the Iraq government, reacted with reprisal acts against the Sunni minority. A cycle of violence thus ensued whereby Sunni insurgent attacks were followed reprisals by Shiite militias, often in the form of Shi'ite death squads that sought out and killed Sunnis. Following a surge in U.S. troops in 2007 and 2008, violence in Iraq began to decrease. The U.S. ended their main military presence in 2011, however, resulting in renewed escalation into war.


title: History of Iraq

text: The departure of US troops from Iraq in 2011 triggered a renewed insurgency and by a spillover of the Syrian civil war into Iraq. By 2013, the insurgency escalated into a state renewed war, the central government of Iraq being opposed by various factions, primarily radical Sunni forces.


title: History of Iraq

text: The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant invaded Iraq in 2013–14 and seized the majority of Al Anbar Governorate, including the cities of Fallujah, Al Qaim, Abu Ghraib and (in May 2015) Ramadi, leaving them in control of 90% of Anbar. Tikrit, Mosul and most of the Nineveh province, along with parts of Salahuddin, Kirkuk and Diyala provinces, were seized by insurgent forces in the June 2014 offensive. ISIL also captured Sinjar and a number of other towns in the August 2014 offensive, but were halted by the Sinjar offensive launched in December 2014 by Kurdish Peshmerga and YPG forces. The war ended with a government victory in December 2017.


title: History of Iraq

text: On 30 April 2016, thousands of protesters entered the Green Zone in Baghdad and occupied the Iraqi parliament building. This happened after the Iraqi parliament did not approve new government ministers. The protesters included supporters of Shia cleric Muqtada Al Sadr. Although Iraqi security forces were present, they did not attempt to stop the protesters from entering the parliament building.


title: History of Iraq

text: Protests over deteriorating economic conditions and state corruption started in July 2018 in Baghdad and other major Iraqi cities, mainly in the central and southern provinces. The latest nationwide protests, erupting in October 2019, had a death toll of at least 93 people, including police.


title: History of Iraq

text: Cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Sadrist Movement was the biggest winner in the 2021 parliamentary elections. Governmental stalemate lead to the 2022 Iraqi political crisis.


title: History of Iraq

text: In October 2022, Abdul Latif Rashid was elected as the new President of Iraq after winning the parliamentary election against incumbent Barham Salih, who was running for a second term. The presidency is largely ceremonial and is traditionally held by a Kurd. On 27 October 2022, Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, close ally of former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, took the office to succeed Mustafa al-Kadhimi as new Prime Minister of Iraq.


title: Jenna Ellis

text: Jenna Lynn Ellis (born November 1, 1984) is a conservative lawyer known for her work as a member of Donald Trump's legal team. She is a former deputy district attorney in Weld County, Colorado and a former assistant professor of legal studies at Colorado Christian University. As a private lawyer, she has litigated cases in state courts. In 2015, she self-published "The Legal Basis for a Moral Constitution", a book arguing that the Constitution of the United States can only be interpreted in accordance with the Bible. Since 2018, Ellis has presented herself as a "constitutional law attorney" during cable news appearances, though "The New York Times" reported her background did not reflect such expertise and "The Wall Street Journal" reported she had no history in any federal cases.


title: Jenna Ellis

text: Ellis was a critic of Donald Trump and his supporters in 2015 and early 2016 until he became the 2016 Republican nominee for president, at which point Ellis began voicing support, including in media appearances. Ellis was hired by Trump in November 2019 as a senior legal adviser. From November 2020 to January 2021, Ellis was a member of what she characterized as an "elite strike force team" that made efforts to overturn Joe Biden's victory in the 2020 presidential election. She made unsubstantiated claims that Trump was the actual winner of the election and drafted two memos falsely asserting vice president Mike Pence could change the results.


title: Jenna Ellis

text: Ellis was homeschooled by her parents. In 2003, she enrolled at Cedarville University, then transferred to Colorado State University in order to study journalism. In 2011, she received a J.D. degree from the University of Richmond School of Law.


title: Jenna Ellis

text: From 2012 to 2013, Ellis served as deputy district attorney in Weld County, Colorado. According to the Weld County District Attorney's office, Ellis worked on misdemeanor cases, including those relating to traffic. Her experience as a prosecutor also covered crimes such as assault and theft in state courts.


title: Jenna Ellis

text: Ellis was fired as deputy district attorney after around six months, which she attributed to her insistence that she would not prosecute a case she thought was unethical. Asked by "The Wall Street Journal", the Weld County District Attorney's office declined to comment on the matter. "The Colorado Sun" published government records in December 2020 indicating Ellis had been fired for "mistakes", including a failure to "adhere" to Colorado's Victim Rights Act. The mistakes were attributed to "deficiencies in her education and experience", ensuring that she retained unemployment benefits despite the firing, stated the records. But the report also stated, "The number of cases in which (Ellis) committed an irreparable, egregious act was not significant compared to the total number of cases she processed. … There are insufficient facts (Ellis) was not performing the duties to the best of her ability." Thus Ellis was eligible for unemployment benefit. The 2020 Trump campaign responded to "The Colorado Sun" on Ellis' behalf, stating that this was a "nonstory". Another profile on a Christian site claims that Ellis won a wrongful termination appeal.


title: Jenna Ellis

text: With the end of her public sector stint, Ellis went into private practice at law firms based in Northern Colorado. She defended clients in state courts in matters pertaining to assault, domestic abuse, prostitution, and theft. According to Ellis, she also worked in cases regarding immigration and tenancy. Records showed that Ellis took part in approximately 30 state court cases which began from 2012 or 2016, including one state appeals court case; this was described as a 'sparse record' by another Colorado lawyer interviewed by "The Wall Street Journal". Court records do not show Ellis having taken part in election law cases, federal judiciary cases, or any cases in the United States district courts or courts of appeals before December 2020.


title: Jenna Ellis

text: In 2013, Ellis worked for IE Discovery in one lawsuit involving a contract dispute. IE Discovery is a company that assists the U.S. Department of State in legal discovery matters. Ellis later claimed to have been an "attorney for the U.S. Department of State", though no records exist of her as a State Department employee.


title: Jenna Ellis

text: In 2015, Ellis became an affiliate faculty member of Colorado Christian University, and later an assistant professor of legal studies, until her departure in 2018. Ellis taught political science and pre-law to undergraduates. The university does not have a law school.


title: Jenna Ellis

text: Ellis self-published a book, "The Legal Basis for a Moral Constitution: A Guide for Christians to Understand America's Constitutional Crisis", in 2015. She argued that the Constitution of the United States must only be interpreted according to the Bible. Her view of the Supreme Court of the United States legalizing same-sex marriage, in "Obergefell v. Hodges", was that it would lead to polygamy and pedophilia becoming accepted. In 2016, Ellis described homosexuals as "sinners" whose "conduct is vile and abominable". Robert Cochran Jr., an expert in Christian law, described Ellis' views as "further to the right" than most conservative Christian legal scholars.


title: Jenna Ellis

text: In 2015 and early 2016, while Donald Trump was vying to become the Republican nominee for president, Ellis was a stern critic. In 2015, Ellis wrote on Facebook that Trump was "without love", "treacherous", "abusive", and "unholy". In February 2016, Ellis made various comments on Trump, such as her belief that he wanted to "destroy American democracy", was "one of the greatest threats to our liberty", "cannot handle criticism", and was not a real Christian, because he could not repent. To stop Trump from becoming the nominee, Ellis proposed that the Republican Party set up a brokered convention.


title: Jenna Ellis

text: In March 2016, Ellis criticized Trump's supporters, stating that they "DON'T CARE about facts or logic. They aren't seeking truth", but are "narcissists"; that supporters ignored how Trump was an "unethical, corrupt, lying, criminal, dirtbag"; that arguments in support of Trump are "ridiculously illogical, inconsistent, and blatantly stupid", and that Trump "cannot be trusted to be consistent or accurate in anything".


title: Jenna Ellis

text: After Trump became the Republican nominee for president, Ellis expressed support for him in the 2016 general election.


title: Jenna Ellis

text: In 2017, Ellis became a writer for the "Washington Examiner", where she falsely claimed to have a history of being a "professor of constitutional law". Colorado Christian University does not have a constitutional law program. "The New York Times" reports that Ellis has made appearances on Denver radio shows as a legal commentator, although the "Times" does not state when this was. In 2018, Ellis left Colorado Christian University to work for the , as director of its public policy division, the .


title: Jenna Ellis

text: By late 2018, Ellis was defending Trump in cable news appearances, as well as alleging bias in the FBI, presenting herself as a "constitutional law attorney". By 2019, Ellis had often been featured by Fox News as a guest.


title: Jenna Ellis

text: In 2020, Ellis became the special counsel for the Thomas More Society, a conservative group that has filed 2020 election-related lawsuits via the Amistad Project organization. The Amistad Project cited Ellis as one of their "Leadership and Advisory Board" members. Ellis and the Thomas More Society have stated that Ellis is not working for Amistad. Ellis also stated that Amistad had cited her as a board member without her approval.


title: Jenna Ellis

text: In April 2022, Ellis criticized the effort to repeal the Reedy Creek Improvement Act, calling it "misguided" and arguing that Disney has the "right to speak" and take a position on whether to support or oppose legislation "without government consequences."


title: Jenna Ellis

text: In June 2022, Doug Mastriano appointed Ellis his senior legal adviser in his campaign for governor of Pennsylvania. At one of Mastriano's campaign events in Erie, Ellis called Mastriano the "Donald Trump of Pennsylvania". In October 2022, Ellis posted on Twitter that Mastriano's opponent "Josh Shapiro is at best a secular Jew in the same way Joe Biden is a secular Catholic — both are extremists for gender transition surgeries on minors and no limits on abortion. Doug Mastriano is for wholesome family values and freedom."


title: Jenna Ellis

text: In November 2022, Ellis claimed that the Colorado Springs nightclub shooting was being exploited to present a narrative where "Christians hate homosexual and transgender individuals and somehow that 'hate' led to the shooting", before going on to suggest that there was "no evidence at all" that the five people killed during the shooting were Christians and thus, "assuming that [...] they had not accepted the truth of the gospel of Christ and affirmed Jesus Christ as the lord of their life, they are now reaping the consequences of having eternal damnation [...] Instead of just the tragedy of what happened to the body, we need to be talking about what happened to the soul and the fact that they are now in eternal separation from our lord and savior Jesus Christ." She later rejected any claims of having judged the victims or of being hateful towards them, but continued to insist on her assumption that they were not Christians and so were "eternally separated from Christ" as a result.


title: Jenna Ellis

text: In November 2019, Ellis was hired as a senior legal adviser for Trump and his 2020 re-election campaign. "Axios" reported that Trump had discussed being swayed by Ellis' media appearances. The Trump campaign paid Ellis $3,900 in December 2019, then paid her almost $140,000 in October 2020 for legal consulting fees. Ellis was paid $30,000 in November 2020 by the campaign. In mid-November 2020, Ellis acknowledged her previous criticisms of Trump in 2015; stating that her past opinions were "completely wrong", because she "didn't know him" personally at the time, and she eventually "saw him keeping his promises".


title: Jenna Ellis

text: A "Washington Post" report narrated the following events: after all major news organizations projected Trump's Democratic opponent


title: Jenna Ellis

text: Joe Biden's victory on November 7, Trump's advisers and campaign staff were pessimistic about Trump's chances of prevailing. Trump's main lawyers were particularly discouraged by a November 13 defeat of Trump allies in the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ("Bognet v. Boockvar") that decided that the plaintiffs had no standing to sue under the Constitution's electors clause in the Pennsylvania case. Ellis and Trump's


title: Jenna Ellis

text: personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani were far more optimistic about his prospects. "The Washington Post" report described Ellis as Giuliani's


title: Jenna Ellis

text: On November 14, Trump announced a legal team to challenge the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election results for his campaign, naming Ellis as a member of the team, along with Joseph diGenova, Victoria Toensing, Sidney Powell, and team leader Giuliani. According to "The Washington Post", after Trump's announcement, Ellis and Giuliani privately staged "a hostile takeover" of the Trump campaign from Trump's other advisers and campaign staff, resulting in Ellis, Giuliani and Powell gaining the foremost public roles regarding Trump's post-election efforts. On November 19, Ellis spoke at a press conference alongside Powell and Giuliani, with Giuliani stating that all three of them represent Trump and his campaign, and Ellis declaring that they were "an elite strike force team" assisting Trump. However, Powell soon left the team; Ellis and Giuliani stated on November 22 that Powell "is not a member of the Trump Legal Team", nor is she a personal lawyer for Trump.


title: Jenna Ellis

text: During the November 19 press conference, Ellis declined to present evidence of fraud when asked to do so. Instead, she responded that asking for evidence at the press conference was "fundamentally flawed". She said that the Trump campaign would only provide "a preview of what we’ve discovered" at the press conference, while the actual evidence would be given to a court.


title: Jenna Ellis

text: In the midst of a case regarding Michigan, the Trump campaign requested permission to amend their complaint but erroneously signed the judge's name as if he had already permitted them. Ellis claimed that this was no error, but actually a "courtesy" to the judge so that he would only need to approve the amendment with the judge's seal. However, when the Trump campaign refiled the request, they removed the judge's name, indicating that their previous signing was indeed an error.


title: Jenna Ellis

text: The Trump campaign's federal lawsuit regarding Pennsylvania was dismissed with prejudice with the judge citing "strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations" which were "unsupported by evidence". Ellis and Giuliani reacted by stating that the ruling "helps" the Trump campaign "get expeditiously to the U.S. Supreme Court". They also indicated that the judge, Matthew W. Brann, was "Obama-appointed", though Brann is also a Republican and a former member of the right-leaning Federalist Society.


title: Jenna Ellis

text: The Trump campaign appealed the Pennsylvania lawsuit to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, where a three-judge panel ruled that the Trump campaign "cannot win this lawsuit"; having provided neither "specific allegations" nor "proof", their "claims have no merit". Giuliani and Ellis reacted by condemning the "activist judicial machinery in Pennsylvania". Of the three Appeal Court judges, Stephanos Bibas (who wrote the panel's opinion) was appointed by Trump himself, while D. Brooks Smith and Michael Chagares were appointed by Republican president George W. Bush.


title: Jenna Ellis

text: On November 23, even after the General Services Administration recognized Joe Biden as the apparent winner of the 2020 election, Ellis baselessly claimed that the "election was stolen and President Trump won by a landslide".


title: Jenna Ellis

text: Also on November 25, Ellis and Giuliani appeared in front of the Pennsylvania Senate Majority Policy Committee. There, Ellis urged Pennsylvania lawmakers to fix a "corrupted, irredeemably compromised election" by either arranging for a new, "special election", or to "direct the manner of your electors", indicating that the lawmakers should not select presidential electors who would support Pennsylvania's popular vote winner (Joe Biden).


title: Jenna Ellis

text: On November 30, Ellis and Giuliani met with Arizona lawmakers, where they again urged for the popular vote result (Joe Biden's victory) in the state to be ignored, suggesting that lawmakers should not appoint pro-Biden presidential electors. The Arizona House Speaker rejected Ellis and Giuliani's request.


title: Jenna Ellis

text: On December 1, 2020, the Trump administration's Attorney General, William Barr, stated that the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security had investigated "systemic fraud", whether "machines were programmed essentially to skew the election results", and that "so far, we haven’t seen anything to substantiate that". On whether fraud had cost Trump the election, Barr said he had not seen evidence of that yet. Ellis and Giuliani reacted by accusing the Department of Justice of failing to investigate fraud.


title: Jenna Ellis

text: On December 2, Ellis and Giuliani met with Michigan's House Oversight Committee, where they urged the lawmakers to ignore the certified results of a Biden victory. Ellis personally urged the lawmakers to intervene in the election, however, Michigan law mandates that the state's electoral votes must go to the winner of the state's popular vote. Michigan's potential presidential electors had been chosen earlier that year, and Michigan lawmakers could not do anything at that point to appoint other presidential electors.


title: Jenna Ellis

text: On December 4, Ellis and Giuliani met state lawmakers in Georgia, making efforts to overturn the 2020 election result.


title: Jenna Ellis

text: On December 8, 2020, "Axios" reported that Ellis had told associates that she tested positive for COVID-19. ABC News and CNN corroborated the story. However, Ellis refused to confirm the story to "Axios". Giuliani confirmed Ellis' diagnosis later that day. Ellis had not worn a mask at a December 2 meeting with Michigan lawmakers and at a December 4 White House party, while on December 6, it was reported that Giuliani himself had tested positive for COVID-19. Meanwhile, in late November, Ellis and Giuliani ignored Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines to quarantine themselves despite coming into close contact with a known infected COVID-19 case: Boris Epshteyn, a Trump campaign adviser.


title: Jenna Ellis

text: On New Year's Eve 2020, White House chief of staff Mark Meadows sent a memo drafted by Ellis to a top Pence aide containing a detailed plan to overturn the election results. The plan entailed Pence returning the electoral results to six battleground states on January 6, with a deadline of January 15 for the states to return them. If any state did not return their electoral slate by that date, neither Trump nor Biden would hold a majority, so the election would be thrown to the House for a vote to determine the winner. Per the Constitution, in such a scenario the vote would be conducted based on state delegations made up of their respective House members with each state having one vote. With Republicans holding 26 of 50, that would presumably give Trump the victory.


title: Jenna Ellis

text: Ellis drafted a second memo dated January 5 which she shared with Trump personal attorney, Jay Sekulow. The memo argued that certain provisions of the Electoral Count Act that restricted Pence's authority to accept or reject selected electors were unconstitutional. She proposed that when Pence reached Arizona in the alphabetical order during the certification, he could declare the state's results as disputed and send all the electoral slates back to the states for "the final ascertainment of electors to be completed before continuing". Sekulow did not agree that Pence had such authority.


title: Jenna Ellis

text: Ellis was subpoenaed in January 2022 to testify before the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack.


title: Veetla Vishesham

text: Veetla Vishesham () is a 2022 Indian Tamil-language comedy-drama film directed by RJ Balaji and NJ Saravanan. It is a remake of the 2018 Hindi film "Badhaai Ho". The film is being produced by Boney Kapoor in association with Zee Studios, Bayview Projects LLP and Romeo pictures.


title: Veetla Vishesham

text: The film was released in theatres by 17 June 2022. It received positive reviews from critics and audiences and became commercial success with praise for the performances of the cast, story and comic timing of main leads.


title: Veetla Vishesham

text: Ilango is 26 years old, working as a biology teacher in a school. He is in a stable relationship with Sowmya, who is the school owner’s daughter in which he's working. Her mother likes him and approves of their relationship. His father Unnikrishnan ‘Unni’, is a middle-aged man working in the Railways. His mother Krishnaveni is a typical housewife. His younger brother, Anirudh ‘Ani’ is a high-school student. His family resides in the railway quarters, near the train station. Ilango’s grandmother always quarrels with Krishnaveni and dominates over her son, Unni. One day, she taunts Krishnaveni, who gets hurt by her comments. Unni consoles his wife and gets intimate.


title: Veetla Vishesham

text: 17 weeks later, Krishnaveni realises she is pregnant after visiting the doctor. She decides not to abort the child. So Unni announces Krishnaveni’s third pregnancy to the family. The two sons are embarrassed and start to avoid their parents, friends, and society, over the fear of being ridiculed. Unni also tells his mother about Krishnaveni's pregnancy and his mother responds that they must deals with whatever God's desires are. The next day Unni's mother makes a big scene and asks Krishnaveni to do a tedious work because she was not wearing her hearing aids the night before when Unni broke the news to her.


title: Veetla Vishesham

text: The news of the pregnancy becomes viral and they are made fun of by family, friends, relatives, and society. Ilango begins to avoid Sowmya. Eventually, he reveals the news of his mum’s pregnancy to Sowmya. Unni and Krishnaveni ask Ilango and Anirudh to go to Kerala for their cousin’s wedding. Both of them refuse by making excuses. This makes Unni angry at them and he leaves them with Krishnaveni and his mother. Meanwhile, Sowmya offers a room date to cheer Ilango up. But he is unable to get intimate with her as it reminds him of his mum’s pregnancy. Sowmya’s mother gets to know about Krishnaveni’s pregnancy from Sowmya. She is shocked and speaks bad about Ilango’s family. Ilango eavesdrops on their conversation and talks harshly with Sowmya’s mum, and breaks up with Sowmya.


title: Veetla Vishesham

text: At home, Anirudh reveals to Ilango that some boys made fun of him at school and when he responded to them, one of the boys hit him on the face. Ilango and Anirudh then realise their love for their mum and dad. While in Kerala, Unni’s elder sister-in-law and sister teases Krishnaveni for her late pregnancy. For the first time, Unni’s mother defends her daughter-in-law for her dutifulness and makes them realise their selfishness and harsh attitude towards her.


title: Veetla Vishesham

text: Ilango then reconciles with his parents after their return and begins to fulfil his duties as a son. Krishnaveni realises that Ilango has broken up with Sowmya, and she tells him to apologise to Sowmya’s mother. Ilango reluctantly agrees, for his mother’s sake, and tells that he misses Sowmya, and the reason he accepted his mum’s pregnancy was because of Sowmya.


title: Veetla Vishesham

text: After the baby shower, Krishnaveni experiences labour pain and is immediately taken to the hospital where Chief Minister LKG is also admitted due to heart pain. Sowmya’s mother tells her daughter about Ilango’s visit and apology as well as saying that she has forgiven Ilango. Sowmya visits Ilango at the hospital. After the comical/strenuous delivery, the doctor announces the birth of a baby girl.


title: Veetla Vishesham

text: The family are delighted at the announcement. Later, the family gather around Krishnaveni in joy and take a group selfie with the baby girl.


title: Veetla Vishesham

text: The film is being directed by NJ Saravanan and RJ Balaji. The technical crew includes Selva R. K. and Girishh G. as editor and musician respectively, who both collaborated earlier for Mookuthi Amman. Meanwhile, Karthik Muthukumar was brought for the film's cinematography. RJ Balaji will be playing the role played by Ayushmann Khurrana,Aparna Balamurali of Sanya Malhotra, Urvashi of Neena Gupta, KPAC Lalitha of Surekha Sikri, Sathyaraj of Gajraj Rao played in the original.


title: Veetla Vishesham

text: The music rights of the film are owned by Zee Music Company. The music of the film is composed by Girishh Gopalakrishnan and lyrics are written by Pa. Vijay.


title: Veetla Vishesham

text: The movie cast RJ Balaji and Aparna Balamurali appeared as a guests in "Pudhu Pudhu Arthangal" television series, which was broadcasting on Zee Tamil for promoting the film. The series current track is also like the film where an aged woman having a baby.


title: Veetla Vishesham

text: The post-theatrical streaming rights of the film was bought by ZEE5 and the satellite rights of the film was bought by Zee Tamil and Zee Thirai. The film was digitally streamed on ZEE5 from 15 July 2022.


title: Veetla Vishesham

text: Bhuvanesh Chandar of The Hindu said, "It is also a film that seems to be introducing to audiences what one might assumed as the ‘RJ Balaji Cinematic Universe’ (RJBCU)". Pinkvilla Desk of Pinkvilla said, "This family drama is worth watching for some of the aspects that are highlighted when compared to the original". M. Suganth of The Times of India who gave 3.5 stars out of 5 stars after reviewing the film stated that "The duo manages to smoothen out these wrinkles with help from Girishh Gopalakrishnan's emotive score that elevates the emotions in the dramatic scenes". Indiaglitz who gave 3.25 stars out of 5 stars after reviewing the film stated that "An adorable family drama laced with humour". Haricharan Pudipeddi of Hindustan Times said, "The Tamil remake of Badhaai Ho is a well-made entertaining film that manages to not just be good on its own but even stands up to the National Award-winning original.". Sudhir Srinivasan of Cinema Express who gave 3 stars out of 5 stars after reviewing the film stated that "When a film shows heart, you can excuse a loss of finesse, I think". Soundarya Athimuthu of The Quint who gave 3.5 stars out of 5 stars after reviewing the film stated that "Veetla Vishesham works both as an improvised remake if you already saw the Hindi original, and as a stand-alone film when watched with a pair of fresh eyes".


title: Unfriendly Countries List

text: The Unfriendly Countries List () is a list of countries published by the Russian government that it says "commit unfriendly actions against Russia, Russian companies and citizens".


title: Unfriendly Countries List

text: Established in May 2021 with only two countries named on the list – the United States and the Czech Republic – the list has since been expanded to 49 states, including the European Union, after those countries imposed sanctions against Russia in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine that began on 24 February 2022. All G7 member states and all 27 European Union member states are on the list.


title: Unfriendly Countries List

text: Countries added to the Unfriendly Countries List are subject to certain restrictions related to their relationships with Russia, including trade and currency restrictions and hiring limits in the listed countries' diplomatic missions in Russia.


title: Unfriendly Countries List

text: The Czech Republic and the United States were added to the list in May 2021, while the rest of the countries on the list were added from March 2022 onwards.


title: Unfriendly Countries List

text: In June 2018, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a law empowering the government to introduce countermeasures against countries determined to have engaged in "unfriendly" actions against Russia. The countermeasures listed included import and export restrictions, suspension or termination of international cooperation, or privatization of state assets. An announcement on the passage of the legislation published by Russian state media specifically named the United States as the law's target.


title: Unfriendly Countries List

text: In April 2021, Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova announced that Russia would be publishing an "Unfriendly Countries List" that includes the United States. Early drafts of the list were leaked and included up to ten countries, but the final list issued by Russia only contained two: the United States and the Czech Republic. In publishing the list, the Russian government restricted the Czech embassy in Russia to hiring no more than 19 Russian nationals, and prohibiting the U.S. embassy in Russia from hiring any local employees.


title: Unfriendly Countries List

text: Russia's relations with both countries were at a low point at the time. The United States and Russia had recently expelled each other's diplomats and the United States imposed sanctions against Russia in retaliation to claimed Russian cyberattacks and interference in American elections. Similarly, the Czech Republic accused Russian intelligence officers of being behind two ammunition warehouse explosions inside the country in 2014.


title: Unfriendly Countries List

text: In February 2022, Russia launched a full scale invasion of neighboring Ukraine. Numerous countries around the world began instituting economic sanctions against Russia in retaliation for the invasion with a goal of crippling the Russian economy, in addition to Micronesia's decision to sever diplomatic relations with Russia. In response, Russia expanded the Unfriendly Countries List to include 48 countries around the world that had imposed the sanctions or severed diplomatic relations.


title: Unfriendly Countries List

text: The legal basis for instituting sanctions against countries deemed "unfriendly" to Russia was initially passed in June 2018 with a menu of available countermeasures, including import and export restrictions, suspension or termination of international cooperation, or privatization of state assets, but no specific targets were listed. When the United States and the Czech Republic were added to the list in April 2021, Russia restricted the numbers of local employees that could be hired by the two countries' diplomatic missions in Russia. The Czech Republic's embassy could only hire 19 Russian employees, while the United States embassy could not hire any.


title: Unfriendly Countries List

text: In March 2022, in retaliation to sanctions imposed against Russia in response to their invasion of Ukraine, Russia added an additional 48 countries that had imposed sanctions against it to the Unfriendly Countries List. Creditors from countries on the list who sought to receive payments on the debt were required to open a special bank account at a Russian bank to receive payments in Russia's currency, rubles, rather than another international currency. In addition, all new corporate deals between Russian companies and entities in countries on the Unfriendly Countries List had to seek approval from a government commission.


title: Unfriendly Countries List

text: Putin announced several weeks later that Russia would only accept the ruble as payment for Russia's natural gas exports to countries on the Unfriendly Countries List. As a result of the freezing of Russian Central Bank foreign reserves in euro and dollars by the unfriendly countries, in addition to the SWIFT ban on dollar and euro transfers to or from a large portion of the Russian banking sector, Russia no longer considered payment in dollars and euro via foreign accounts viable. Russian Gazprombank and Rosneftbank were spared from the SWIFT sanctions to allow payments for Russian gas and oil to be processed to Gazprom and Rosneft. However Russia still faced a risk that dollar or euro energy payments stored in these banks might also be frozen there in a future SWIFT ban extension. With the requirement to pay in rubles this is forestalled. Putin said that as a result, it "made no sense" to receive payments in other currencies. In addition the international sanctions against Russia caused the value of the ruble to plummet. The European Union, which was added to the list, relies on Russia for 40% of its natural gas imports, and forcing payments in rubles could help to inflate the demand for and value of the currency.


title: Unfriendly Countries List

text: Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree introducing visa restrictions for citizens from "unfriendly countries," a decision made in retaliation to hostile measures taken by the European Union, the Kremlin said on April 4, 2022. According to the decree, Russia will partially suspend its simplified visa agreements with EU member countries along with Norway, Iceland, Switzerland and Liechtenstein. The Kremlin said that the decree also ordered the country's foreign ministry to impose individual entry restrictions on foreigners and stateless persons who commit hostile acts against Russia, its citizens or legal entities.


title: Unfriendly Countries List

text: Russia banned the export of inert gases including neon and helium to "unfriendly countries" on May 31, 2022. This was a counter sanction which followed a ban on electronics exports to Russia.


title: Unfriendly Countries List

text: On July 22, 2022, Russia added Croatia, Denmark, Greece, Slovakia and Slovenia individually to the list, separate from the European Union. Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin stated that the list is now made up of countries that "adopted actions that are unfriendly toward Russia and particularly against Russia's diplomatic and consular representations abroad." The Danish embassy in Russia has been limited to 20 staff, the Greek embassy to 34 and the Slovak embassy to 16. Additionally, the Croat and Slovene embassies "will not be able to hire employees in their diplomatic missions and consular offices".


title: Unfriendly Countries List

text: On July 24, 2022, Russia added the Bahamas, as well as the British Crown Dependencies of Guernsey and the Isle of Man to the list.


title: Unfriendly Countries List

text: On September 5, 2022, Russia terminated the agreement with Japan on facilitated visits to the Kuril Islands by Japanese citizens, former residents of these islands.


title: Unfriendly Countries List

text: On October 30, 2022, Russia added 11 British territories to unfriendly countries list. The Russian Cabinet's website said, "Eleven more British Overseas Territories have been added to the list that supported the sanctions imposed by the UK on Russia. These are: Bermuda, British Antarctic Territory, British Indian Ocean Territory, Cayman Islands, Falkland Islands, Montserrat, Pitcairn Islands, St. Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha Islands, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, Akrotiri and Dhekelia, Turks and Caicos Islands." Along with three British-controlled territories - the island of Anguilla, the British Virgin Islands and Gibraltar - this amounted to all 14 British Overseas Territories being included on the list.


title: Robert Mercer

text: Robert Leroy Mercer (born July 11, 1946) is an American hedge fund manager, computer scientist, and political donor. Mercer was an early artificial intelligence researcher and developer and is the former co-CEO of the hedge fund company Renaissance Technologies.


title: Robert Mercer

text: Mercer played a key role in the campaign for the United Kingdom to leave the European Union by donating data analytics services to Nigel Farage. He has also been a major funder of organizations supporting right-wing political causes in the United States, such as "Breitbart News", the now-defunct Cambridge Analytica, and Donald Trump's 2016 campaign for president. He is the principal benefactor of the Make America Number 1 super PAC.


title: Robert Mercer

text: In November 2017, Mercer announced he would step down from Renaissance Technologies and sell his stake in "Breitbart News" to his daughters. He was the majority owner of SCL Group, a self-described "global elections management agency", before it was dissolved in 2018. In 2021, Mercer was involved in possibly the largest tax settlement in U.S. history, as he, James Simons, and other executives at the hedge fund Renaissance Technologies were ordered to pay as much as $7 billion to the IRS in back taxes.


title: Robert Mercer

text: Mercer grew up in New Mexico. He developed an early interest in computers and in 1964 attended a National Youth Science Camp in West Virginia where he learned to program a donated IBM computer. He went on to get a bachelor's degree in physics and mathematics from the University of New Mexico. While working on his degree he had a job at the Air Force Weapons Laboratory at Kirtland Air Force Base writing programs where, though he felt he produced good work, he felt it was not optimized. He later said the experience left him with a "jaundiced view" of government-funded research. He earned a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign in 1972.


title: Robert Mercer

text: Mercer joined IBM Research in the fall of 1972 and worked at the Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown, New York, where he helped develop Brown clustering, a statistical machine translation technique, as part of a speech recognition and translation research program led by Frederick Jelinek and Lalit Bahl. In June 2014, Mercer received the Association for Computational Linguistics Lifetime Achievement Award for this work.


title: Robert Mercer

text: In 1993, Mercer joined hedge fund Renaissance Technologies after being recruited by executive Nick Patterson. The founder of Renaissance, James Harris Simons, a mathematician, preferred to hire mathematicians, computer scientists, and physicists rather than business school students or financial analysts. Mercer and a former colleague from IBM, Peter Brown, became co-CEOs of Renaissance when Simons retired in 2009. Renaissance's main fund, Medallion, earned 39% per year on average from 1989 to 2006. A bipartisan Senate panel estimated in 2014 that Medallion investors underpaid their taxes by some $6.8 billion over more than a decade by masking short-term gains as long-term returns. As of 2014, Renaissance managed $25 billion in assets. In November 2017, Mercer announced that he would be stepping down from his position at Renaissance Technologies. The decision was taken after the hedge fund faced a backlash over Mercer's political activism.


title: Robert Mercer

text: Mercer appears in the Paradise Papers as a director of eight Bermuda companies, some of which appear to have been used to legally avoid US taxes.


title: Robert Mercer

text: In 2015, "The Washington Post" called Mercer one of the ten most influential billionaires in politics. Since 2006, Mercer has donated about $34.9 million to Republican political campaigns in the US.


title: Robert Mercer

text: Mercer has given $750,000 to the Club for Growth, $2 million to American Crossroads, and $2.5 million to Freedom Partners Action Fund. In 2010, he financially supported fringe biochemist Art Robinson's unsuccessful efforts to unseat Peter DeFazio in Oregon's 44th congressional district. In the 2013-2014 election cycle, Mercer donated the fourth largest amount of money among individual donors and the second most among Republican donors.


title: Robert Mercer

text: Mercer joined the Koch brothers’ conservative political donor network after the 2010 "Citizens United v. FEC", but Mercer and his daughter, Rebekah Mercer, decided to establish their own political foundation. The Mercer Family Foundation, run by Rebekah, has donated to a variety of conservative causes.


title: Robert Mercer

text: Mercer has donated to the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, the Media Research Center, Reclaim New York, GAI, and Citizens for Self-Governance. In 2013, Mercer was shown data by former Jimmy Carter pollster Patrick Caddell, who has been critical of top Democrats, and commissioned more research from Caddell that showed "voters were becoming alienated from both political parties and mainstream candidates".


title: Robert Mercer

text: Mercer was the main financial backer of the Jackson Hole Summit, a "shadow" conference (not to be confused with a similarly named Federal Reserve conference) that took place in Wyoming in August 2015 to advocate for the gold standard. He has also supported Doctors for Disaster Preparedness, Fred Kelly Grant (an Idaho activist who encourages legal challenges to environmental laws), a campaign for the death penalty in Nebraska, and funded ads in New York critical of the so-called "ground-zero mosque". According to associates interviewed by Bloomberg, Mercer is concerned with the monetary and banking systems of the United States, which he believes are in danger from government meddling. Mercer is a major source of funds of "Breitbart News". He gave at least $10 million to the media outlet, according to "Newsweek".


title: Robert Mercer

text: In 2015 Mercer also gave $400,000 to Black Americans for a Better Future, a conservative think tank led by Raynard Jackson. Since 2017 Mercer has donated $87,100 to the same Super PAC.


title: Robert Mercer

text: Mercer was an activist in the campaign for the United Kingdom to end its membership of the European Union, also known as Brexit. Andy Wigmore, communications director of Leave.EU, said that Mercer donated the services of data analytics firm Cambridge Analytica to Nigel Farage, the head of the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP). The firm was able to advise Leave.EU through its ability to harvest data from people's Facebook profiles in order to target them with individualized persuasive messages to vote for Brexit.


title: Robert Mercer

text: It has been reported that Cambridge Analytica also has undisclosed links to Canadian digital firm AggregateIQ, which also played a pivotal role in Dominic Cummings' VoteLeave campaign, where he delivered an estimated one billion individually curated targeted adverts to voters in the lead up to the Brexit referendum, in contravention of established voting rules. Neither VoteLeave nor Leave.EU informed the UK electoral commission of the donation despite the fact that a law demands that all donations valued over £7,500 must be reported. In 2018, the Electoral Commission found the VoteLeave campaign guilty of breaking electoral law.


title: Robert Mercer

text: Mercer was one of the biggest donors in the 2016 U.S. elections, donating $22.5 million to Republican candidates and PACs. Mercer was a major financial supporter of the 2016 presidential campaign of Ted Cruz, contributing $11 million to a super PAC associated with the candidate.


title: Robert Mercer

text: Mercer was a major supporter of Donald Trump's 2016 campaign for president. Mercer and his daughter Rebekah helped to obtain senior roles in the Trump campaign for Steve Bannon and Kellyanne Conway. Rebekah worked with Conway on the Cruz Super-PAC Keep the Promise in the 2016 Republican primaries. Mercer also financed a Super PAC, Make America Number One, which supported Trump's campaign. Nick Patterson, a former colleague of Mercer's said in 2017 that Trump would not have been elected without Mercer's support.


title: Robert Mercer

text: Mercer has said that the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the landmark federal statute arising from the civil rights movement of the 1960s, was a major mistake. In 2017, David Magerman, a former Renaissance employee, alleged in a lawsuit that Mercer had said that African Americans were economically better off before the civil rights movement, that white racists no longer existed in the United States, and that the only racists remaining were black racists.


title: Robert Mercer

text: Mercer and his wife Diana Lynne Dean have three daughters: Jennifer ("Jenji"), Rebekah ("Bekah"), and Heather Sue. Rebekah runs the Mercer Family Foundation. The three Mercer daughters formerly owned a bakery called Ruby et Violette.


title: Robert Mercer

text: Mercer plays competitive poker and owns an HO scale model railroad. In 2009, Mercer filed suit against RailDreams Custom Model Railroad Design, alleging that RailDreams overcharged him by $2 million.


title: Robert Mercer

text: Mercer lives at "Owl's Nest" mansion in Head of the Harbor, New York. He has commissioned a series of yachts, all named "Sea Owl". The most recent one is 203 feet (62 metres) in length, and has a pirate-themed playroom for Mercer's grandchildren and a chandelier of Venetian glass.


title: Robert Mercer

text: In Florida, Mercer built a large stable and horse riding center. He has acquired one of the country's largest collections of machine guns and historical firearms, including a weapon Arnold Schwarzenegger wielded in "The Terminator".


title: Robert Mercer

text: In 2013, Mercer was sued by several members of his household staff, who accused him of docking their wages and failing to pay overtime compensation. The lawsuit was settled, according to a lawyer who represented the staff members.


title: Robert Mercer

text: Mercer's net worth is estimated to be hundreds of millions of dollars, and he is often referred to as a billionaire.


title: Sinjar massacre

text: The Sinjar massacre () marked the beginning of the genocide of Yazidis by ISIL, the killing and abduction of thousands of Yazidi men, women and children. It took place in August 2014 in Sinjar city and Sinjar District in Iraq's Nineveh Governorate and was perpetrated by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). The massacre began with ISIL attacking and capturing Sinjar and neighboring towns on 3 August, during its Northern Iraq offensive.


title: Sinjar massacre

text: On 8 August 2014, the United States and the United Kingdom responded with airstrikes on ISIL units and convoys in northern Iraq, which led to a military intervention from several countries against ISIL.


title: Sinjar massacre

text: On 17 December 2014, the Kurdish Peshmerga, PKK and YPG forces started the December 2014 Sinjar offensive with the support of US and British airstrikes. This offensive broke ISIL's troop transport routes and supply lines between Mosul and Raqqa, the largest cities in the Islamic State at the time.


title: Sinjar massacre

text: According to Noori Abdulrahman, the head of the Department of Coordination and Follow-up of the Kurdistan Regional Government, ISIL wanted to push most of the Kurds out of strategic areas and bring in Arabs who were obedient to ISIL.


title: Sinjar massacre

text: Sinjar was predominantly inhabited by Yazidis before the arrival of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.


title: Sinjar massacre

text: On 29 June 2014, the Islamic State declared a caliphate in the contiguous areas of Syria and Iraq it controlled, after it had made significant advances in northern Iraq during the Northern Iraq offensive (June 2014). After Iraqi federal military forces fled from the advancing ISIL troops, local residents seized their abandoned weapons in case of an attack by the Islamic State. Kurdistan Regional Government Peshmerga fighters then moved into and took control of much of the abandoned territory in northern Iraq from their stronghold in the Kurdistan Region. The Peshmerga confiscated the weapons the Iraqi Army had abandoned, assuring residents that they would protect them.


title: Sinjar massacre

text: As ISIL attacked Sinjar and neighboring cities, the Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga fighters in Sinjar withdrew, leaving the civilians behind without warning. There is general agreement that the majority of the forces in Shingal on that day were affiliated with the KDP, despite wildly varying estimates as to troop levels. KDP commanders claim that there were 2,000–4,000 KDP troops in the area. Similarly, Shex Alo, the KDP frontline commander for Shingal section, claims that there were 2,000 KDP fighters in the area, along with one additional Peshmerga brigade and PUK units. Meanwhile most others, including but not limited to HPÊ commander Haydar Shesho and Senior Gorran Movement official Mustafa Saed Qadir who was the Minister of Peshmerga Affairs at the time and had some Peshmerga brigades in Shingal under his control, estimate that there were many more, around 11,000–15,000 troops stationed.


title: Sinjar massacre

text: The villagers defended themselves with their own weapons, but ISIL fighters shelled them with mortars. By 3 a.m., ISIL fighters had broken through, and began killing anyone seen outdoors.


title: Sinjar massacre

text: On the morning of 3 August 2014, ISIL forces captured the city of Sinjar as well as the Sinjar area. ISIL then detonated the Sayyidah Zaynab Mosque in Sinjar, executed resisters, and demanded the residents to swear allegiance and to convert to Islam or be killed.


title: Sinjar massacre

text: In the surrounding villages, many residents fled immediately. According to Yazidis, ISIL fighters asked the remaining Yazidis to convert to Islam or face death, and ISIL Twitter accounts posted images of murders in the Sinjar area.


title: Sinjar massacre

text: Almost 200,000 civilians, mostly Yazidis along with Shia, managed to flee from the fighting in Sinjar city.


title: Sinjar massacre

text: About 50,000 Yazidis fled into the Sinjar Mountains, where they were trapped without food, water or medical care and faced starvation and dehydration.


title: Sinjar massacre

text: The U.S. government, Kurdish Peshmerga forces, and Western media reported that thousands of Yazidis in the Sinjar Mountains were under siege by ISIL.


title: Sinjar massacre

text: Tahseen Said, the emir of the Yazidis, issued an appeal to world leaders on 3 August 2014, asking for humanitarian help to aid those who were besieged by ISIL. On 4 August, Kurdish fighters reportedly battled ISIL to retake Sinjar.


title: Sinjar massacre

text: On 7 August 2014, "The New York Times" reported that ISIL had executed dozens of Yazidi men in Sinjar city and had taken their wives for forced marriage. It was also reported that ISIL fighters executed ten caretakers of the Shia Sayeda Zeinab shrine in Sinjar before blowing it up.


title: Sinjar massacre

text: While the siege of Mount Sinjar was continuing, ISIL killed hundreds of Yazidis in at least six of the nearby villages. 250–300 men were killed in the village of Hardan, 200 between Adnaniya and Jazeera, 70–90 in Qiniyeh, and on the road out of al-Shimal witnesses reported seeing dozens of bodies. Hundreds of others had also been killed for refusing to convert to Islam.


title: Sinjar massacre

text: On 15 August 2014, in the Yazidi village of Kocho, south of Sinjar, over 80 men were killed after refusing to convert to Islam.


title: Sinjar massacre

text: A witness recounted that the villagers were first converted under duress, According to reports from survivors interviewed by OHCHR, on 15 August, the entire male population of the Yazidi village of Kocho, up to 400 men, were rounded up and shot by ISIL, and up to 1,000 women and children were abducted.


title: Sinjar massacre

text: On the same day, up to 200 Yazidi men were reportedly executed for refusing conversion in a Tal Afar prison. The massacres took place at least until 25 August when ISIL executed 14 elderly Yazidi men in Sheikh Mand Shrine in Jidala, western Sinjar, and blew up the shrine there.


title: Sinjar massacre

text: A civilian reported that on 3 August 2014 alone, 2,000 Yazidis had been killed throughout the Sinjar District. A Yazidi member of the Council of Representatives of Iraq said that between 2 and 5 August, 500 Yazidi men had been killed in the city of Sinjar by ISIL, women had been killed or sold into slavery, and 70 children had died from thirst or suffocation while fleeing the ISIL advance.


title: Sinjar massacre

text: From the findings of a joint October 2014 report of the OHCHR and UNAMI, ISIL had massacred up to 5000 Yazidi men during August 2014. Kurdistan Region estimated in December 2014 that the total number of killed or missing Yazidi men, women and children from Sinjar since August amounted to around 4,000.


title: Sinjar massacre

text: A 2017 report by the PLOS Medical Journal estimated between 2,100 and 4,400 deaths and 4,200 to 10,800 abductions.


title: Sinjar massacre

text: 40,000 or more Yazidis were trapped in the Sinjar Mountains and mostly surrounded by ISIL forces who were firing on them. They were largely without food, water or medical care, facing starvation and dehydration.


title: Sinjar massacre

text: On 5 August 2014, Iraqi military helicopters reportedly dropped some food and water for the Yazidis in the mountains. The US began their own supply drops on 7 August and the UK participated 3 days later. French aid was also promised.


title: Sinjar massacre

text: On 12 August, an Iraqi military helicopter, piloted by Maj. Gen. Majid Abdul Salam Ashour, crashed in the mountains while delivering aid and rescuing stranded Yazidi refugees. The general was killed in the crash, while most of the passengers, including Iraqi MP Vian Dakhil, were injured.


title: Sinjar massacre

text: On 13 August, a 16-aircraft mission including US C-17s and C-130Hs, an Australian C-130J, and a British C-130J delivered supplies to mostly Yezidi civilians stranded on Mount Sinjar.


title: Sinjar massacre

text: On 7 August 2014, the U.S. President, Barack Obama, stated that the U.S. was starting air strikes to prevent a potential massacre (genocide) by ISIL of thousands of Yazidis trapped in the Sinjar Mountains. Obama further defended his decision by saying:


title: Sinjar massacre

text: On 8 August 2014, US airstrikes were launched in the Erbil area, 180 km east of Sinjar. The first airstrikes in the Mount Sinjar area were reported on 9 August, when the US launched four strikes against armored fighting vehicles of ISIL fighters threatening civilians on Mount Sinjar. The continued Iraqi airdrops of food and water in the Sinjar Mountains and their picking up of some Yazidis were also backed up by the U.S. airstrikes.


title: Sinjar massacre

text: After the air strikes, the U.S. government spent five days discussing the possibilities and necessity of a rescue operation with U.S. ground troops or U.S. airlifts.


title: Sinjar massacre

text: Between 9 and 11 August 2014, a safe corridor was established from the mountain enabling 10,000 people to evacuate on the first day. Kurdish fighters of Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) entered the Sinjar Mountains with trucks and tractors to carry out the sick and elderly into Syria via a path that was cleared by Syrian Kurdish militants (YPG). According to Dr. Salim Hassan, a professor at the University of Sulaymaniyah and spokesman of the uprooted Yazidis, the PKK and YPG enabled an estimated 35,000 of the initially 50,000 trapped Yazidis to escape into Syria. According to the account of the Sinjar District Governor, the route was jointly set up by Peshmerga and the YPG.


title: Sinjar massacre

text: On 12 or 13 August 2014, a dozen U.S. Marines and special forces servicemen landed on Mount Sinjar from V-22 aircraft to assess options for a potential rescue of Yazidi refugees joining British SAS already in the area. They reported that "the situation is much more manageable", that there were now far fewer Yazidis on the mountain than expected, and that those Yazidis were in relatively good condition. A U.S. rescue mission for those still on the mountain was therefore "far less likely now", said Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel.


title: Sinjar massacre

text: The U.S. government officially declared the siege to be broken on 13 August 2014. This was reportedly done by U.S airstrikes and Kurdish fighters of the People's Protection Units from Syria, together with their PKK allies from Turkey, allowing more than 50,000 refugees to escape. Despite this, according to Professor Salim Hassan, between 5,000 and 10,000 people still remained trapped in the mountains. They were reportedly afraid to return to their homes and were sustained in the coming months by airdrops from a lone Iraqi helicopter.


title: Sinjar massacre

text: On 7 August 2014, U.S. President Obama ordered targeted airstrikes on IS militants and emergency air relief for the Yazidis. Airstrikes began on 8 August. (See .)


title: Sinjar massacre

text: On 8 August 2014, the US asserted that the systematic destruction of the Yazidi people by the Islamic State was genocide.


title: Sinjar massacre

text: President Barack Obama had authorized the attacks to protect Yazidis but also Americans and Iraqi minorities. President Obama gave an assurance that no troops would be deployed for combat. Along with the airstrikes of 9 August, the US airdropped 3,800 gallons of water and 16,128 MREs. Following these actions, the United Kingdom and France stated that they also would begin airdrops.


title: Sinjar massacre

text: On 10 August 2014, at approximately 2:15 a.m. ET, the US carried out five additional airstrikes on armed vehicles and a mortar position, enabling 20,000–30,000 Yazidi Iraqis to flee into Syria and later be rescued by Kurdish forces. The Kurdish forces then provided shelter for the Yazidis in Dohuk.


title: Sinjar massacre

text: On 13 August 2014, fewer than 20 United States Special Forces troops stationed in Irbil along with Special Air Service troops visited the area near Mount Sinjar to gather intelligence and plan the evacuation of approximately 30,000 Yazidis still trapped on Mount Sinjar. One hundred and twenty-nine additional US military personnel were deployed to Irbil to assess and provide a report to President Obama. The United States Central Command also reported that a seventh airdrop was conducted and that to date, 114,000 meals and more than 35,000 gallons of water had been airdropped to the displaced Yazidis in the area.


title: Sinjar massacre

text: In a statement on 14 August 2014, The Pentagon said that the 20 US personnel who had visited the previous day had concluded that a rescue operation was probably unnecessary since there was less danger from exposure or dehydration and the Yazidis were no longer believed to be at risk of attack from ISIL. Estimates also stated that 4,000 to 5,000 people remained on the mountain, with nearly half of them being Yazidi herders who lived there before the siege.


title: Sinjar massacre

text: Kurdish officials and Yazidi refugees stated that thousands of young, elderly, and disabled individuals on the mountain were still vulnerable, with the governor of Kurdistan's Dahuk province, Farhad Atruchi, saying that the assessment was "not correct" and that although people were suffering, "the international community is not moving".


title: Sinjar massacre

text: After August 2014, ISIL held the town of Sinjar. Several thousand Yazidis remained in the Sinjar Mountains located to the city's north, sustained by airdrops from a lone Iraqi helicopter, while an escape road from the mountains northward to Kurdish areas was under Kurdish/Yazidi control. American officials said that some of those Yazidis considered the Sinjar Mountains a place of refuge and home and did not want to leave; while a report from "The New Yorker" said some were afraid to return to their homes. Other Yazidis also came to the mountains after the August evacuations.


title: Sinjar massacre

text: On 21 October 2014, ISIL seized territory to the north of the mountains, cutting the area's escape route to Kurdish areas. The Yazidi militias then withdrew into the Sinjar Mountains, where the number of Yazidi civilian refugees was estimated at 2,000–7,000. The mountains had once again been partially besieged by ISIL.


title: Sinjar massacre

text: On 17 December 2014, Peshmerga forces, backed by 50 U.S.-led coalition airstrikes on ISIL positions, launched an offensive to liberate Sinjar and to break the partial siege of the Sinjar Mountains. In less than two days, the Peshmerga seized the mountain range. After ISIL forces retreated, Kurdish fighters were initially faced with clearing out mines in the area, but quickly opened a land corridor that enabled Yazidis to be evacuated. The operation left 100 ISIL fighters dead.