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For a variety of reasons, rural migrants have been particularly drawn to Baghdad, the country’s political, economic, and communications hub. First, to minimize the danger of riots in the capital city, the Baʿath regime—in addition to a variety of security measures—made special efforts to maintain a minimal level of public services, even in the poorest neighbourhoods. This was especially important after the UN imposed an extended embargo on Iraqi trade in response to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990, making food rationing more necessary than ever before. Distributing rations was more efficient in the capital area. Second, chances for employment typically have been better in Baghdad than in other cities. This was true as early as the 1930s, when migrants began to move to the city. Since that time, Shiʿi Arabs from the south have been the largest migrant group in the city, a trend that was enhanced during the Iran-Iraq War as many refugees fled the southern war zones. Efforts to limit this influx, and even to reverse it, met with only limited success, and, by the beginning of the 21st century, Shiʿi Arabs represented a majority in the capital. The poor Shiʿi Arab Al-Thawrah (“Revolution”) quarter—known informally since 2003 as Sadr City after Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr, a murdered Shiʿi cleric—alone houses more than a million people. Prior to the Iraq War, many Baghdad neighbourhoods contained a mix of Sunni and Shiʿi residents. These neighbourhoods became homogeneous as residents moved to safer areas amid the sectarian bloodshed that peaked about 2006. It is estimated that one-fifth of the country’s people live in the governorate of Baghdad, almost all of them in the city itself.
It is no coincidence that Baghdad’s celebrated predecessors, Babylon and the Sasanian capital, Ctesiphon, were located in the same general region. Baghdad, itself a city of legend, is located at the heart of what has long been a rich agricultural region, and the modern city is the undisputed commercial, manufacturing, and service capital of Iraq. Its growth, however, has necessitated costly projects, including elaborate flood-prevention schemes completed largely in the 1950s, the rehousing of hundreds of thousands of inhabitants of squalid shantytowns (ṣarīfahs) in the 1960s (and, on a much smaller scale, in 1979–80), and the construction of major domestic water and sewerage projects. The city was damaged during both the Persian Gulf War and the Iraq War and required major reconstruction of all parts of the infrastructure.
Regional centres
Basra, on the west bank of the Shaṭṭ al-ʿArab and formerly Iraq’s main port, is the centre of its southern petroleum sector and the hub of the country’s date cultivation. One of the great cities of Islamic history and heritage, it was badly damaged and largely depopulated during the Iran-Iraq War and, though partially reconstructed following that conflict, again suffered during the Persian Gulf War and subsequent fighting between Shiʿi rebels and government forces. Much of the city’s infrastructure (sewerage and potable water and health care facilities) remained in a state of disarray, with dire results for public health. Basra’s function as a port was taken over by Umm Qaṣr, a small deepwater port on the gulf.
Iraq’s third city, though now its second largest in terms of population, is Mosul, which is situated on the Tigris near the ruins of the ancient Assyrian capital of Nineveh. Mosul is the centre for the upper Tigris basin, specializing in processing and marketing agricultural and animal products. It has grown rapidly, partly as a result of the influx of Kurdish refugees fleeing government repression in Iraqi Kurdistan. By the end of the 1990s, Mosul too had suffered from government neglect, and, relative to Baghdad, its infrastructure and health care facilities were in poor condition.
Demographic trends
The population of Iraq is young. About two-fifths of the population are under 15, while two-thirds are under 30. Its birth rate is high, and it has a low death rate due to its much smaller elderly population; less than one-seventh of Iraqis are over the age of 45. Women have a life expectancy of about 76 years, while men’s life expectancy is 73.
Iraq has the fourth largest population in the Middle East, after Iran, Egypt, and Turkey. Yet demographic information since 1980 has been difficult to obtain and interpret, and outside observers often have been forced to use estimates. From 1990 a UN embargo on Iraq, which made travel to and from the country difficult, contributed considerably to the lack of information, but most important was the rule of more than 30 years by the Baʿathist regime, which was intent on controlling the flow of information about the country. The former Iraqi government sought to downplay unflattering demographic shifts in its Kurdish and Shiʿi communities while highlighting the effects of the UN embargo on health, nutrition, and overall mortality—particularly among the country’s children.
UN studies indicate that general levels of health and nutrition declined markedly after the introduction of the embargo in 1990 and before Iraq accepted the provisions of a UN program in late 1996 that allowed Iraq to sell a set quantity of oil in order to purchase food, medicine, and other human necessities. This situation led to substantial declines in the rates of birth, natural increase, and fertility and a noticeable increase in the death rate. Overall vital statistics in Iraq during the 1990s, however, remained above world averages and by the 21st century had begun to return to their prewar levels.
Because of Iraq’s relatively low population density, in the 20th century the government promoted a policy of population growth. The total fertility rate had declined since its peak in the late 1960s. This decline apparently resulted from the casualties of the two major wars—reaching possibly as many as a half million young and early-adult men—and subsequent difficulties related to the UN embargo, as well as an overall sense of insecurity among Iraqis. For the same reasons, it is reckoned that the rate of natural increase, though still high by world standards, had dropped markedly by the mid-1990s before it likewise rebounded.
The associated hardships of the early to mid-1990s and the first decade of the 21st century persuaded a number of Iraqis—at least those who were wealthy enough—to either leave the country or seek haven in the northern Kurdish region, where, thanks to international aid and a freer market, living conditions improved noticeably during the 1990s. Moreover, an estimated one to two million Iraqis—many of them unregistered refugees—fled the country to various destinations (including Iran, Syria, and Jordan) out of direct fear of government reprisal. During the Iraq War, more than 1.6 million Iraqis fled the country, and more than 1.2 million were displaced internally.
Beyond the out-migration of a significant number of Iraqis, the major demographic trends in the country since the 1970s have been forced relocation—particularly of the Iranian population and, more recently, of the Kurds—forced ethnic homogenization, and urbanization. Eastern Iraq has traditionally formed part of a transition zone between the Arab and Persian worlds, and, until the Baʿath regime came to power in 1968, a significant number of ethnic Persians lived in the country (in the same way large numbers of ethnic Arabs reside in Iran). Between 1969 and 1980, however, they—and many Arabs whom the regime defined as Persian—were deported to Iran.
Kurds have traditionally populated the northeast, and Sunni Arabs have traditionally predominated in central Iraq. During the 1980s the Baʿath regime forcibly moved tens of thousands of Kurds from regions along the Iranian border, with many Kurds dying in the process, and subsequently relocated large numbers of Arabs to areas traditionally inhabited by Kurds, particularly in and around the city of Kirkūk. Kurds in those regions have, likewise, been expelled, and many of Iraq’s estimated half million internally displaced persons prior to the Iraq War were Kurds. Further, the regime systematically compelled large numbers of Kurds and members of smaller ethnic groups to change their ethnic identity, forcing them to declare themselves Arabs. Those not acquiescing to this pressure faced expulsion, physical abuse, and imprisonment.
Iraqis have been slowly migrating to urban areas since the 1930s. Population mobility and urban growth have, to some extent, created a religious and cultural mix in several large cities, particularly in Baghdad. (There has been little change in the overall ethnic patterns of the country, however, except through instances of forced migration.) Many Kurds have moved either to larger towns in Kurdistan or to larger cities such as Mosul or Baghdad. Few Kurds have moved willingly to the south, where Arab Shiʿis have traditionally predominated. The latter have moved in substantial numbers to larger towns in the south or, particularly during the fighting in the 1980s, to largely Shiʿi neighbourhoods in Baghdad. Sunnis migrating from rural areas have moved mostly to areas of Baghdad with majorities of their ethnic and religious affinities.
From the mid-1970s until 1990, labour shortages drew large numbers of foreign workers, particularly Egyptians, to Iraq; at its height the number of Egyptians may have exceeded two million. Virtually all foreign workers left the country prior to the Persian Gulf War, and few, if any, have returned.