The alluvial Plain forms a quarter of Iraq's area [about , sq. This provincial capital is the eastern terminus of a highway across the desert from the Mediterranean Sea. The town was founded in by the local rulers of the Ottoman Empire in order to control the nomadic Dulaym tribes of the region. The British won an important victory over the Turks there in Ramadi was established for political reasons, but proved vital as a stop-over on the caravan routes between Baghdad and the cities of the Levant.
The arabisation of towns in northern Iraq involved the forced removal of non-Arabs - Turkmens and Kurds - to the three predominantly Kurdish northern muhafazahs provinces of Arbil Irbil , Dahuk Dohuk , and As Sulaymaniyah Suleimaniyah , which remain outside Baghdad's control; or to the south, often to the city of Ar Ramadi al-Ramadi. After the Gulf War cease-fire, a promise was made by Saddam Hussein on November 3, in Ramadi that "the mother of battles.
About 2, people arrested following the demonstrations were held without charge or trial, as were tens of thousands arrested in previous years. On February 19, , Grand Ayatollah Mohammad Sadiq al-Sadr, the most senior Shi'a religious leader in Iraq, was killed in downtown Najaf when the car he was riding in was boxed in by two other cars and hit by machine gun fire.
Outside Baghdad illegal assemblies of Shi'a took place in most of the major cities of the south in reaction to the al-Sadr killing. Nine demonstrators reportedly were executed in Ramadi. To prevent them from leading religious gatherings, the chief Shi'a clerics of Basra and Nasiriyah reportedly were arrested.
These government actions ultimately silenced the mourners and protesters, and the disturbances had ended by late February In April of about detainees from Radwaniyah prison reportedly were taken to Ramadi province where they were buried alive in a pit. As of January some 20, Iranian civilians remained held in Iraq's Ramadiyah Camp, according to the office of Kermanshah Province's governor-general, whose comments were reported in "Jomhuri-yi Islami" on 16 January An unnamed official in that office explained that "shortly after the start of the Iraqi-imposed war against the Islamic Republic of Iran, these people were rounded up along our country's western and southern border regions and taken to Iraq.
