The insurgency began shortly after the 2003 Coalition invasion of Iraq and before :-e establishment of a new Iraqi government. From at least 2004, and as of May 2007, the insurgency has primarily targeted Coalition armies and, latterly, Iraqi security forces seen as collaborators with whom they consider the enemy. During this period, only 10% of significant a:acks have targeted Iraqi civilians. Many militant attacks have been directed at the police a-d military forces of the new Iraqi government. They have continued during the transitional reconstruction of Iraq, as the new Iraqi government tries to establish itself. As in most guerrilla warfare, civilians on all sides bear the brunt of the violence. According to a February-March 2007 poll, 51% of the Iraqi population approve of the attacks on Coalition forces When broken down along sectarian lines, over 90% of the Arab Sunni approve of the attacks.
Iraq’s deep sectarian divides have been a major dynamic in the insurgency, with spport for the insurgents varying amongst different segments of the population.
Composition
The Iraqi insurgency is composed of at least a dozen major organizations and Derhaps as many as 40 distinct groups. These groups are subdivided into countless smaller cells According to the Chief of the British General Staff, General Sir Richard Dannatt, speaking in September 2007,
The militants (and I use the word deliberately because not all are insurgents, or terrorists, or criminals; they are a mixture of them all) are well armed — probably with outside help, and probably from Iran. By motivation, essentially, and with the exception of the Al Qaeda in Iraq element who have endeavoured to exploit the situation for their own ends, our opponents are Iraqi Nationalists, and are most concerned with their own needs — jobs, money, security — and the majority are not bad people.
Because of its clandestine nature, the exact composition of the Iraqi insurgency is difficult to determine, but the main groupings are
- Ba’athists, the armed supporters of Saddam Hussein’s former regime, e.g. army or intelligence officers.
- Nationalists, mostly Sunni Muslims, who fight for Iraqi self-determination.
- Anti-Shi’a Sunni Muslims who fight to regain the prestige they held under the previous regime (the three preceding categories are often indistinguishable in practice).
- Iraqi Sunni Islamists, the indigenous armed followers of the Salafi movement, as well as any remnants of the Kurdish Ansar al-Islam.
- Shi’a militias, including the southern, Iran-linked Badr Organization, the Mahdi Army, and the central-Iraq followers of Muqtada al-Sadr .
- Foreign Islamist volunteers, including those often linked to al Qaeda and largely driven by the Sunni Wahhabi doctrine (the two preceding categories are often lumped as “Jihadists”).
- Various socialist revolutionaries (such as the Iraqi Armed Revolutionary Resistance).
- Nonviolent resistance groups and political parties (not part of the armed insurgency).
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