The Iraqi Army is the ground force of the Iraqi Armed Forces of Iraq, founded in 1921 when the Kingdom of Iraq was granted independence from the United Kingdom. Under the rule of Ba'athist Iraq from 1968 to 2003, the Iraqi Army received arms and training from the Soviet Union, and during the Iran-Iraq War of 1979-1988, the Iraqi Army was armed by the United States to fight against Iran. However, in 1991 the United States defeated the Iraqi Army in one week in late February in the Gulf War after the Iraqis occupied Kuwait, and in 2003 the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Poland, Denmark, and Spain won another short war against Saddam Hussein's military in the Iraq War. Since the overthrow of Saddam, the Iraqi Army was redesgined to handle counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism operations as the Iraq War broke out with the Iraqi insurgents.
By 2016, the Iraqi Army had 1,800,000 active troops and 2,000,000 reservists, and it fought against the Islamic State in the Iraqi Civil War. The 2014 stage of the war showed the inexperience of the Iraqi Army, whose soldiers took off their uniforms and dropped their weapons to flee the Islamic State without being recognized as soldiers. The campaign showed Iraq's reliance on support from the USA, Iran, and other countries, and in 2015-2016 it launched some successful counterattacks with the aid of US airstrikes and advisers as well as by Iranian-trained Shia militias, the Popular Mobilization Forces.
