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the country since the 1960s. Inspired by successful revolutions in
Tunisia and Egypt, Syrian protesters used marches, hunger
strikes, rioting, vandalism, and guerrilla attacks in an attempt to
overthrow the government of President Bashar al-Assad. The
Syrian uprising soon devolved into a full-blown civil war.
In Iraq, Arab Spring protests began in early 2012, as Sunni
Muslims boycotted the Shiite-dominated government, claiming that
it was trying to minimize Sunnis. In addition, both Iraqi Sunnis and
Shiites were galvanized by the Syrian civil war, and many militants
from both sects crossed the border to fight in Syria.
During 2013 Sunni militant groups increased their attacks, tar-
geting the Iraq's Shia population in an attempt to undermine con-
fidence in the government.
In 2014 Sunni insurgents belonging to the Islamic State of Iraq
and the Levant (ISIL) terrorist group seized control of large swathes
of land including several major Iraqi cities, like Tikrit, Fallujah and
Mosul creating hundreds of thousands of internally displaced per-
sons amid reports of atrocities by ISIL fighters.
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RAQ AT
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AR AND
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EBUILDING
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Text-Dependent Questions
1. What United Nations agency was responsible for making sure Iraq dismantled its WMD programs?
2. Where was Saddam Hussein captured? What happened to him?
3. What events helped to fuel the current conflict in Iraq that began in 2011?
Research Project
In late 2010, sparked by the self-immolation of a fruit vendor in Tunisia, anti-government protests began to erupt
throughout the Arab world. The ongoing protests are aimed at improving the political circumstances and living condi-
tions of the Arab people, and have become known in the West as the “Arab Spring.” Using your school library or the
internet, find out more about the origin of the Arab Spring protests. Take a blank map of the Arab countries (one can be
printed online from
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Arab_world_location_map.svg). Label and mark the countries
where protesters succeeded in overthrowing or changing governments.