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Founded as a College of Education and of Girls Education in 1987, the University of Anbar attained full university status in 2011. Its history has been defined by its location in the large western province of Iran where the Islamic State movement developed, placing it at the centre of the civil conflict which followed.

The campus in Ramadi was attacked by gunmen in 2014, then taken over during ISIS¡¯s seven month occupation of the city in 2015, with an estimated 16,000 students and many academics displaced.

After liberation, it was used as a military base until September 2016. The cost of reconstruction of a campus, which was described as "looking as if it had been hit by an earthquake" with around one third of buildings destroyed, labs looted and hundreds of explosive devices to be cleared, was estimated at $253m.

Recovery has been challenging, but rapid. The student body totals more than 20,000, with departments of engineering, administration and economics, computer science and information technology, arts, physical education, Islamic science and education for pure science operating from the main campus.

In addition the departments of medicine, pharmacy and dentistry are at a different location in Ramadi, Quranic science and Arabic language are in Qa¡¯im, basic education at Haditha and applied science at Heet.

Researchers were granted 42 patents between 2011 and 2017 and specialisms included desert studies, with a dedicated research centre established in 2005 and publications including the Iraqi Journal of Desert Studies. Anbar University academics have been strongly involved in the UN-backed project to create a national Diploma in Peace and Conflict Studies.