Long ago in the fertile valleys between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, the great civilisations of the age were born. Modern Iraq was ancient Mesopotamia, and it was here that humans first began to cultivate their land, where writing was invented and where the Assyrians, Sumerians and Babylonians all made Iraq the centre of the ancient world. The country remains rich with the resonance of its glorious history, but recent years have been hard. Under Saddam Hussein, widespread political repression and conflicts with Iran, Kuwait and the West earned Iraq worldwide infamy and alarmed international human-rights organisations and Western armies in equal measure. Indeed in recent years, few countries have experienced such external interference as Iraq has, culminating in the 2003 American-led invasion of the country.
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