Iraq

In Biblical times, known as Erech. The name Iraq is a modernized spelling of "Uruk", an ancient city state in ancient Summeria. After the collapse of the Ottoman (Turkish)empire, Europe carved up international boundaries and in the course of restructuring had created the modern country of "Iraq". Doomed to failure from the start, this artificially-created country was home to many disparate ethnicities and religions. Internal conflict was inevitable. The rise of the Baath party (and its inevitable fall at the hands of the American-led coalition) was a response to this conflict. There is no single language spoken in Iraq. Standard Arabic is most commonly used with Kurdish, Turkmen, Assyrian and Farsi spoken by a minority of the population.