9781422284353

D uring the first six months of 2014, an organization calling itself the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) launched a major offensive against the government of Iraq. ISIL mili- tias, armed with weapons from the civil war in neighboring Syria, captured numerous villages and cities in northern Iraq from gov- ernment forces. These included the Sunni Muslim strongholds of Fallujah and Ramadi, as well as the city of Mosul, with more than a million inhabitants. On June 29, 2014, ISIL’s leaders declared that the group had established a caliphate, based in Iraq, that would henceforth have religious, political, and military authority over all Muslims throughout the world. The threat of ISIL worried Iraq’s neighbors, such as Saudi Arabia and Jordan, who feared that the violence would spill over into their borders. In August 2014, the United States decided to intervene in the conflict in order to prevent ISIL from carrying out a program of genocide against the Kurdish people of northern An aerial view of Mosul, one of Iraq’s largest cities, which was captured in June 2014 by a terrorist organization calling itself the Islamic State. Iraq has not been stable or peaceful since the 2003 invasion by an international coalition led the United States to topple dictator Saddam Hussein. Since 2011, religious and ethnic tensions among Iraqis have been made worse by the ongoing civil war in neighboring Syria and the rise of the Islamic State. I RAQ ’ S P LACE IN THE W ORLD

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