As of February 2003 the United States appears to be moving towards a war on Iraq while charging that Iraq's is in non-compliance with UN resolutions. The United Nations neither supports or opposes this action. This article provides a brief summary of the background of this situation, with pointers to articles where more detailed coverage is available.

The Middle East has been an unstable part of the world for many years. (See Israel, Palestinian territories, Islamism). In particular, Iraq, under the Ba'ath Party government of its leader Saddam Hussein, has been involved in a succession of regional conflicts.

• The Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988)
• The Iraqi civil war against the Kurds (when?)
• The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990 led to the Gulf War in 1991, where the allied forces of the UN, led by the United States liberated Kuwait, but stopped short of toppling Saddam Hussein.

Following the Gulf War:

• Iraqi Shi'ites revolt of 1991 300,000 killed or executed
• in 1992 Iraqi Kurdistan achieved de-facto autonomy from Baghdad

Since the end of the Gulf War, the Iraqi government has continued work on the production of weapons of mass destruction, including long-range missiles and biological weapons. UN attempts to disarm Iraq by weapons inspections were unsuccessful.

The events of the September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attack on New York by al-Qaida led to a U.S. determination to attack the issue of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. The U.S. government declared a "war on terrorism".

In 2002 the U.S. president George W. Bush named Iraq as part of "the Axis of Evil" with Iran and North Korea. A series of UN resolutions on Iraq culminated in UN Security Council Resolution 1441, which called upon Iraq to destroy its weapons of mass destruction.

The failure of the UN initiative led to the U.S. developing a plan to invade Iraq. As time passed without resolution of the weapons issue, the U.S. made increasing diplomatic moves to secure UN authorization for a new war on Iraq, with threats that it would invade unilaterally, if necessarily. This was accompanied by the mobilization of U.S. forces.

As an attack appeared imminent, there were political reactions around the world. American popular opinion of war on Iraq is mostly in favour of attacking Iraq, with a significant minority in opposition. In the rest of the world, majority opinion is opposed to the war, at least until all diplomatic measures have been exhausted.

Some of the U.S plans to invade Iraq have stated that they are really about oil imperialism, or the first stage in imposing a Pax Americana on the world. The U.S. government denies this.

Other opponents of the U.S. plans are puzzled that the U.S. is planning to attack Iraq, whose secular government appears not to have any links to al-Qaida, who attacked the U.S., and that the U.S. seems not to be taking any action against North Korea, which is taking active measures to create atomic weapons, and has announced that it is willing to declare war on the U.S.

The American government position on war on Iraq remains determined, and appears not to have been swayed by worldwide government positions on war on Iraq. There is significant United Nations opposition to the U.S. war plans. The U.S. is employing all diplomatic and public relations measures to try to bring world opinion behind it. See The UN Security Council and the proposed Iraq war for more details.

Starting in January 2003, there have been a series of huge public protests against war on Iraq around the world.

January 18, 2003

• Global protests against war on Iraq in cities around the world, including Tokyo, Moscow, Paris, London, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Cologne, Bonn, Goteborg, Istanbul, and Cairo. NION and ANSWER hold protests in Washington D.C. and San Francisco, California.

February 5

• At the United Nations US Secretary of State Colin Powell presents the US government's case against the Saddam Hussein government of Iraq, as part of the diplomatic side of the U.S. plan to invade Iraq. The presentation includes tape recordings, satellite photographs and other intelligence data, and aims to prove WMD production, evasion of weapons inspections and a link to Al-Qaida.

February 7

• The chief United Nations arms inspector Hans Blix said Iraq appeared to be making fresh efforts to cooperate with U.N. teams hunting weapons of mass destruction, as Washington said the "momentum is building" for war with Iraq.

February 8

• Sections of a 'dossier' issued by the UK government, which purported to present the latest British intelligence about Iraq, and which had been cited by Tony Blair and Colin Powell as evidence for the need for war, were criticized as plagiarisms. They had been copied without permission from a number of sources including Jane's Intelligence Review and a 12-year-old doctoral thesis of a Californian student that had been published in the US journal Middle East Review of International Affairs. Some sentences were copied word-for-word, and spelling mistakes had been reproduced from the original articles. Downing Street responded by saying that the government had never claimed exclusive authorship and that the information was accurate.

February 10

• France and Belgium broke the NATO procedure of silent approval concerning the timing of protective measures for Turkey in case of a possible war with Iraq. Germany said it supports this veto. The procedure was put into operation on February 6 by secretary general George Robertson. In response Turkey called upon Article 4 of the NATO Treaty, which stipulates that member states must deliberate when asked to do so by another member state if it feels threatened.

February 12

• An audio tape attributed to Osama bin Laden is released by al-Jazeera television. It recounts the battle of Tora Bora and urges Muslims to fight the United States and to overthrow the Iraq regeme of Saddam Hussein.
• February 13: A UN panel reports that Iraq's al-Samoud 2 missiles, disclosed by Iraq to weapons inspectors in December, have a range of 180 km (above the 150 km limit allowed by the UN), splitting opinion over whether they breach UNSCR 1441.
• Austria bars USA military units involved in the attack on Iraq from entering into or flying over its territories without a UN mandate to attack Iraq.
• United States military officials anonymously confirm to the Washington Post that two Special Forces units have been operating on the ground inside Iraq for over a month, making preliminary preparations for a large-scale invasion.

February 14

• A very large demonstration was held in Melbourne to protest against the Australian government's support for the USA's policy on Iraq. Organisers estimated that 200,000 people came out on to the streets, while some news sources put the number at "up to 150,000". [1]
• UNMOVIC chief weapons inspectors Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei presented a report to the United Nations Security Council. They stated that the Iraqis had been co-operating well with the inspectors and that no weapons of mass destruction had been found, but that the Saddam Hussein regime had still to account for many banned weapons believed to have been in his arsenal. Mr Blix also expressed doubts about some of the conclusions in Colin Powell's Security Council presentation of February 5, and specifically questioned the significance of some of the photographic evidence that Mr Powell had presented.

February 15

• Global protests against war on Iraq: People around the world demonstrated against the planning of war against Iraq. In Rome one million people were on the streets, in London one million. In Berlin there were half a million in the largest demonstration for some decades. There were also protest marches all over France as well as in many other smaller European cities. Protests were also held in South Africa, Syria, India, Russia, Canada and in the USA, in around 600 cities in total.

February 18

• *Hours before the first ships transporting heavy United States military equipment to Turkey were supposed to reach port, the Turkish government announces that it will withhold approval to dock unless the United States increases a reciprocal $6 billion foreign aid grant to $10 billion. The Bush administration indicated that no substantial changes will be made to the proposed aid package. [2]

February 24

• General Colin Powell states at a meeting in Beijing that "It is time to take action. The evidence is clear ... We are reaching that point where serious consequences must flow." His speech appears to imply that military action is likely to follow within three weeks, based on previous Pentagon briefings.

February 25

• The United States, Britain and Spain present to the UN Security Council a much-anticipated second resolution stating that Iraq "has failed to take the final opportunity" to disarm, but does not include deadlines or an explicit threat of military force. Meanwhile, France, Germany, and Russia offer a counter-proposal calling for peaceful disarmament through further inspections.
• Both major parties of Kurdistan, an autonomous region in Northern Iraq, vow to fight Turkish troops if they enter Kurdistan to capture Mosul or interfere in Kurdish self-rule. Between them the two parties can mobilize up to 80,000 guerillas - most likely no match for the modern Turkish army, but a severe blow to the unity of U.S. allies on the Northern front expected in the U.S. plan to invade Iraq.

February 26

• Hans Blix stated that Iraq still has not made a "fundamental decision" to disarm, despite recent signs of increased cooperation. Specifically, Iraq has refused to destroy it's al-Samoud 2 long range missiles - a weapon system that was in violation of the UN Security Council's resolutions and the US treaty with Iraq. These missiles are deployed and mobile. Also, an R-400 aerial bomb was found that could possibly contain biological agents. Given this find, the UN Inspectors have requested access to the Al-Aziziyah weapons range to verify that all 155 R-400 bombs can be accounted for and proven destroyed.
• Gerorge Bush commits publicly to a post-invasion democracy in Iraq, says it will be "an example" to other nations in Arabia
• Tony Blair passes a motion in the UK House of Commons supporting a new resolution at the UN Security Council and presumably authorizing a war (although the motion carefully avoids saying so). 120 UK Labour Party MPs dissent and vote against it - double the number who opposed the previous such motion - but the UK Conservative Party backs the government's motion.
• Saddam Hussein, in an interview with Dan Rather, rules out exile as an option.

February 27

• UN Security Council meeting on Iraq ended without forming an agreement on timeline for further weapons inspections or future reports.

The items in this list are taken from Current events -- please feel free to keep it up to date.