Argylls

Iraq 

Historical background to the Iraq War
Mesopotamia, known as the "Cradle of Civilisation", was home to some of the oldest civilisations in the world and is nowadays better known as Iraq. Iraq is located in the Middle East and bordered by Iran, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, Kuwait and Turkey.

Its location made it an easy target for invasion and just as Mesopotamia was ruled by a series of foreign empires, so Iraq was invaded by the Monguls, Turkmens and finally the Ottoman Empire in the 16th Century. After the fall of the Ottoman Empire in the early 20th century, the League of Nations set up the mandate system to administer its former possessions in the Middle East “until such time as they are able to stand alone”. Iraq was one of the areas for which Britain was given such a mandate; and it remained under British rule until the establishment of the Kingdom of Iraq in 1932.
In 1958, the Republic of Iraq was founded after a coup d’etat and Saddam Hussein became President in 1979, continuing to rule until deposed in 2003 following the US-led invasion. Under Saddam’s rule, Iraq became the only country in the Persian Gulf not ruled according to Islamic law (Sharia). However, Saddam also employed torture and assassination against his opponents; as well as used chemical weapons against the Kurds, Marsh Arabs and Iranian troops in the Iran-Iraq war. In 1991, Saddam’s troops invaded and annexed Kuwait, so instigating the 1st Gulf War, also known as Operation Desert Storm, which lasted six weeks. The 2nd Gulf War or Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003 was instigated by the belief that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, which Saddam intended to use. A multi-national force led by troops from the United States and the United Kingdom, invaded Iraq and within two months, President Bush of the USA had declared that the war was over.

Operation Telic
Operation Telic is the codename under which all British operations of the 2003 invasion of Iraq and after are being conducted. This Operation was one of the largest deployments of British forces since World War II. Being much larger than Operation Corporate in the Falklands War (1982) where only 30,000 troops were deployed and the Korean War where less than 20,000 military personnel were deployed. Some 40,000 troops were deployed in Operation Telic, of which some 9,500 of the British servicemen and women were reservists, mostly from the Territorial Army.
Operation Telic officially ended in 2009 with the British Troops handing over control to the United States military. A total of 179 British service personnel died while serving in Iraq. The Ministry of Defence uses a computer to generate the names for operations and as the preparations for Operation Telic took place over Christmas 2002, staff speculated that Telic stood for Tell Everyone Leave Is Cancelled!

Argylls in Iraq, 2004
In 2004, the 1st Battalion undertook a six month tour of Iraq (Maysan Province and the rural areas of Basra) primarily to mentor and train the new Iraqi security forces (Iraqi Civil Defence Corps), shaping the unit into operationally effective internal security force. Various factions violently continued to try to destabilise the country and disrupt the creation of this new force throughout the period of the tour.