The Iraq War began in 2003 and involved a two-phase conflict comprising an initial invasion of Iraq led by U.S. and UK forces and a longer, eight-year phase of occupation and fighting with insurgents.
Various wars and insurgencies have engulfed large parts of Iraq almost continuously for many decades. Since the breakup of the Ottoman Empire, each of the following wars killed at least one thousand persons in less than one year or resulted in hundreds of thousands of refugees or internally displaced persons: