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Insurgency in Iraq after US withdrawal
Part of Iraq War
Date December 2011 - present Location Iraq (mostly central, including Baghdad) Result ongoing
Belligerents
Sunni factions: Islamic State of Iraq al-Qaeda al-Qaeda in Iraq Iraqi Ba'ath Party Loyalists Ansar al-Sunna Islamic Army of Iraq Sunni tribes Other Sunni insurgents and militia	Shi'a factions: Mahdi Army (and Special Groups) Asa'ib Ahl al-Haq Kata'ib Hezbollah Promised Day Brigades Badr Brigades Rogue elements among the Iraqi security forces Soldiers of Heaven Shia tribes Other militias	Public security: Iraqi security forces Private Security Contractors Peshmerga
Commanders and leaders
Ishmael Jubouri	Muqtada al-Sadr	Jalal Talabani Ibrahim al-Jaafari Nouri al-Maliki Massoud Barzani Ahmad Abu Risha
Strength
		Contractors ~7,000 Iraqi Security Forces 618,000 (805,269 Army and 348,000 Police) Awakening Council militias - 103,000
Casualties and losses
Total: hundreds killed

The Iraqi insurgency after US withdrawal relates to the terror activities engaged by Iraqi, primarily radical Sunni, insurgent groups against the central government and the warfare between various factions within Iraq, in the aftermath of the US withdrawal. The events of violence succeeded the previous insurgency in Iraq, prior to December 2011, but showed different patterns.

Insurgent groups

Because of its clandestine nature, the exact composition of the Iraqi insurgency is difficult to determine, but the main groupings are:

• Ba'athists, the supporters of Saddam Hussein's former administration including army or intelligence officers, whose ideology is a variant of Pan-Arabism.
• Iraqi nationalists, Iraqis who believe in a strong version of Iraqi self-determination. These policies may not necessarily espouse a Pan-Arab ideology, but rather advocate the country's territorial integrity including Kuwait and Khuzestan. Historical figures of this movement include the pre-Ba'athist leader of Iraq Abd al-Karim Qasim and his government.
• Iraqi Salafi Islamists, the indigenous armed followers of the Salafi movement, as well as any remnants of the Kurdish Ansar al-Islam: individuals with a Salafi-only policy opposed to non-Salafis though not aligned to one specific ethnic group. Though opposed to the US-led invasion, these groups are not wholly sympathetic towards the former Ba'ath Party as its members included non-Salafis.
• Shi'a militias, including the southern, Iran-linked Badr Organization, the Mahdi Army, and the central-Iraq followers of Muqtada al-Sadr. These groups neither advocate the dominance of a single ethnic group, nor the traditional ideologies behind the Iraqi state (e.g. these particular Shi'as do not support the capture of Khuzestan or other border areas with Iran, but rather promote warm relations with Iran's Shi'a government).
• Foreign Islamist volunteers, including those often linked to al Qaeda and largely driven by the Salafi/Wahhabi doctrine (the two preceding categories are often lumped as "jihadists");
• Possibly some socialist revolutionaries (such as the Iraqi Armed Revolutionary Resistance, which claimed one attack in 2007).
• Non-violent resistance groups and political parties (not part of the armed insurgency).

Casualties

Further information: Casualties of the conflict in Iraq since 2003 and Iraq Body Count project

See also

• Challenge Project
• Civil war in Iraq
• Fallujah during the Iraq War
• List of modern conflicts in the Middle East
• Sunni-Shia relations