Iraqi civil war (2006–2008)

Violence in Iraq
Part of Iraq Violence and Iraqi insurgency
File:Army.mil-2007-02-14-113227.jpg An Iraqi policeman waves to a family while conducting a joint patrol in Samarra
Date Beginnings 2004 - 2006 Escalation 2006 - current Location Iraq Result Ongoing
Belligerents
Al-Qaeda in Iraq and other Sunni and nationalist ingurgent groups	Elements among the Iraqi Shiite militias (Mahdi Army, Badr Corps) and Iraqi Security Forces	Iraqi Security Forces Multi-National Force-Iraq
Commanders and leaders
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi† Abu Ayyub al-Masri	Moqtada al-Sadr, amongst others	Jalal Talabani Nouri al-Maliki David Petraeus
Strength
60,000	60,000	360,000-420,000 (April 2007)
Casualties and losses
Around 40,000 combatants and civilians killed on all sides

Following the U.S.-launched 2003 invasion of Iraq, the situation deteriorated and by 2007 the conflict between Iraqi Sunni and Shi'a factions was described by the National Intelligence Estimate as having elements of a civil war. In a January 10, 2007 address to the American people, President George W. Bush stated that "80% of Iraq's sectarian violence occurs within 30 miles of the capital. This violence is splitting Baghdad into sectarian enclaves, and shaking the confidence of all Iraqis."

A 2006 study by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health estimated that more than 601,000 Iraqis have died in this violence and that fewer than one third of these deaths came at the hands of Coalition forces.

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the Iraqi government estimate that more than 365,000 Iraqis have been displaced since the 2006 bombing of the al-Askari Mosque, bringing the total number of Iraqi refugees to more than 1.6 million. By February 16, 2007, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees raised the estimate of refugees abroad to be 2 million (a number supported by the CIA) and the number of internally displaced people to be 1.7 million.

According to the 2007 Failed States Index, produced by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace's Foreign Policy magazine and the Fund for Peace, Iraq moved from the world's fourth most unstable country in 2006 to the world's second most unstable country in 2007. A poll of top U.S. foreign policy experts conducted in 2007 showed that only 3% of the foreign policy experts believed the US would be able to achieve its goal of rebuilding Iraq into a beacon of democracy within the next 10 years and also found that about seven in 10 experts supported the redeployment of U.S. forces from Iraq.

Ethno-sectarian composition

The Sunni insurgency has used sectarian violence to capitalize on Sunni fears of the Shi'a majority and the Shi'a armed militias have shown a zeal for vigilante justice. However, there are other sectarian divisions of the population that lay in nearly a dozen distinct groups. These groups are subdivided into countless smaller factions.

The sectarian divisions can be divided into several main ideological or ethnic strands:

Ethnic groups:

• Arab : ~ 75 - 80% : The bulk of the Iraqi population that is divided along Islamic religious lines.
• Kurdish ~ 15 - 20% : De facto independent administration (mostly Sunnis, small Shi'ite, Yazidi, and other elements, but with a heavily secular government).
• Assyrian ~ 3% : This group has a minor role in the current situation.
• Turkoman ~ 2% : This group has a minor role in the current situation, although Turkey is concerned about their overall treatment in Iraq.

Religions:

• Muslim ~ 97% : This is the primary religion in Iraq and serves as one of the primary sectarian distinctions.
  • Shi'ite ~ 60 - 65% : Mainly Arabs with a very small minority of Kurds.
  • Sunni ~ 32 -37% : Split almost even with Kurds and Arabs. It is important to understand that Sunni Islam is not a monolithic force, and historic divisions between Sunni schools of religious law persist. Fault lines between Sunni schools usually runs along ethnic and tribal lines. What the media refers to as the "Sunni Insurgency" is generally a Salafist dominated, Sunni Arab group.
• Christian and Yezidi ~ 3% : These groups have a minor role in the current situation.

The Arab-Sunni faction and the Arab-Shi'ite are the main two participants in the violence, but conflicts within a single group have occurred. Iran, it has been conjectured, would assist the Shiites. A Sunni-Shiite violence in Iraq, with Iran helping the Shiite and Arab nations helping the Sunni, is a possibility. A senior American official has said that during a meeting between Vice President Dick Cheney and Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah on November 25, 2006, the king said that if US forces pulled out of Iraq, the Saudis would be forced to support the Sunni minority. Sunnis have claimed the Shiites want to establish an Iranian-style theocracy. The Kurds are caught between the two religious groups but as they are an ethnicity opposed to religious movement they are often at odds with the Sunni Arabs that were settled in Kurdish Iraq by Saddam's Arabization policy. Kurds also sympathise with Shi'ites as Saddam's Sunni regime persecuted both communities. Blurring this cohesion, though, are division of social, economic, political and geographic identities.

Muslim extremists known and alleged to take part in the violence

Main articles: Al-Qaeda in Iraq, Iraqi insurgency, and Private militias in Iraq

Three broad groups have been empowered by the civil war and have taken opportunities to inflict violent measures for their own ends.

1. The “industrial strength criminal gangs that terrorize what is left of Iraq’s middle class” partake in criminal or political motivated violence and kidnapping. The freedom with which many of these gangs operate in both Basra and Baghdad reveal the implications of failed state capacity across southern and central regions of Iraq..

2. A multitude of groups form the Iraqi Insurgency which arose in a piecemeal fashion as a reaction to local events and notably the realisation of the “US military’s inability to control Iraq”. Since 2005 the insurgent forces have largely merged around several main factions: The Islamic Army in Iraq, Partisans of the Sunna Army, Mujahadeen’s Army, Muhammad’s Army and the Islamic Resistance Movement in Iraq. Religious justification has been used to support the political actions of these groups as well as a marked adherence to Salafism which brands those uninvolved in the jihad as non believers. This approach has played a role in the rise of sectarian violence.

The US military also believe that between 5-10% of insurgent forces are non-Iraqi Arabs.

3. Independent militias have identified themselves around sectarian ideology and posses various levels of influence and power. The most disciplined of these are the Kurdish militias of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). There is a strand of militia who were founded in exile and returned to Iraq only after the toppling of Saddam Hussein such as the Badr Brigade. There are also militias created since the state collapse, the largest and most uniform of which is the Jaish al-Mahdi established by Moqtada al-Sadr and believed to have around 50,000 fighters.

Conflict and tactics

Non-military targets

Some analysts suspect that the aim of these attacks is to show chaos and sectarian discord. The attacks on non-military and civilian targets began in earnest in August 2003 and have steadily increased since then.

Suicide bombings

Since August, 2003, suicide car bombs have been increasingly used as weapons by Sunni militants, primarily al Qaeda targeting crowds of Shi'ite civilians. The car bombs, known in the military as vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices (IEDs), have emerged as one of their most effective weapons, along with the roadside improvised explosive devices, which are also used against coalition forces by Shi'ite militias (especially Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army) who want to drive out foreign occupational forces from Iraq, claiming that their presence is contributing to the conflict. These Sunni militants' vehicle IEDs are driven by extremist bombers mainly from Arab countries with a history of militancy such as Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Egypt, and Pakistan. Suicide bombers also direct attacks against the mainly-Shi'ite Iraqi police stations and recruiting centers.

Death squads

Killings have taken place in a variety of ways. Kidnapping, followed by often extreme torture (drilling holes in peoples feet with drills, tearing out the eyes, etc.) and execution-style killings, sometimes public (in some cases, beheadings), have emerged as another tactic. In some cases, tapes of the execution are distributed for propaganda purposes. The bodies are usually dumped on a roadside or in other places, several at a time. The death squads are often disgruntled Shi'ites who kill Sunnis to avenge the consequences of the insurgency against American occupation and the Shi'ite-dominated government.

Mosque attacks and occupations

Main article: al-Askari Mosque bombing (2006)

The Askari bombing occurred at al-Askari Mosque in the Iraqi city of Samarra, on February 22, 2006. The explosion at the mosque, one of the holiest sites in Shi'a Islam, is believed to have been caused by a bomb planted by Al-Qaeda in Iraq. Although no injuries occurred in the blast, the mosque was severely damaged and the bombing resulted in violence over the following days. Over 100 dead bodies with bullet holes were found on February 23, and at least 165 people are thought to have been killed.[1]

In the aftermath of this attack the US military calculated that the average homicide rate in Baghdad tripled from 11 to 33 deaths per day.

A Sunni mosque was burnt in the southern Iraqi town of Haswa on March 25 2007. It was in revenge for the destruction of a Shia mosque in the town the previous day. At least four people were wounded.

Sectarian desertions

Some Iraqi service members have deserted the military or the police and others have refused to serve in hostile areas. For example, some members of one sect have refused to serve in neighborhoods dominated by other sects. Kurdish soldiers from northern Iraq, who are mostly Sunnis but not Arabs, are deserting the army to avoid the civil war in Baghdad, a conflict they consider someone else's problem.

Timeline

Main articles: 2003 in Iraq, 2004 in Iraq, 2005 in Iraq, 2006 in Iraq, and 2007 in Iraq

There have been a number of spectacularly bloody attacks in Iraq. For more information on attacks in a specific year, see the associated timeline page.

Civilian deaths attributable to insurgent or military action in Iraq, and also to increased criminal violence. For the period between January 1, 2003 and July 20, 2006 as recorded by the Iraq Body Count project. Many of these type of civilian deaths are not reported. Other methods of estimating civilian deaths come up with much higher numbers. See also: Casualties of the conflict in Iraq since 2003.

Potential effects of the sectarian attacks

An article in The Washington Post, published on August 20, 2006, reported that a full-blown Iraq civil war might result in the death of hundreds of thousands of people and turn millions of people into refugees. The ethnic unrest could also spill over to the rest of the region, with "copycat secession attempts" in neighbouring countries, such as Kuwait, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon, as these countries have similar ethnic diversity. Citing the history of Taliban and Rwandan Patriotic Front as examples, the report warned that refugee camps often become a sanctuary and recruiting ground for militias, thus spreading the conflict to a wider area. Civil war could lead to increased radicalism and terrorism: Hezbollah and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam were formed as a result of civil wars. Based on lessons learned from the Lebanese and Bosnian civil wars, the report predicted that if an all-out civil war were to break out in Iraq, the US-led coalition would require 450,000 troops to quash it.

An article in The International Herald Tribune, published on November 26, 2006, paraphrased a report from a group of American professors at Stanford University that the insurgency in Iraq amounted to the classic definition of a civil war.

Growth in refugee flight

Main article: Refugees of Iraq

As a result of sectarian threats, murders, and murder attempts, 1.9 million have been internally displaced. As of late January 2007, 2 million people have fled Iraq as refugees. Roughly 40% of Iraq's middle class is believed to have fled, the U.N. said. Most are fleeing systematic persecution and have no desire to return. Refugees are mired in poverty as they are generally barred from working in their host countries. A May 25, 2007 article notes that in the past seven months only 69 people from Iraq have been granted refugee status in the United States.

Use of "civil war" label

Deputy leader of the United States Senate, Dick Durbin, referred to "this civil war in Iraq" in a criticism of President Bush's 10 January, 2007 "President's Address to the Nation".

An unclassified summary of the 90-page January 2007 National Intelligence Estimate, "Prospects for Iraq's Stability: A Challenging Road Ahead," states the following regarding the use of the term "Civil War":

The Intelligence Community judges that the term “civil war” does not adequately capture the complexity of the conflict in Iraq, which includes extensive Shia-on-Shia violence, al-Qa’ida and Sunni insurgent attacks on Coalition forces, and widespread criminally motivated violence. Nonetheless, the term “civil war” accurately describes key elements of the Iraqi conflict, including the hardening of ethno-sectarian identities, a sea change in the character of the violence, ethno-sectarian mobilization, and population displacements.

A poll of over 5,000 Iraqi nationals claimed that 27% of polled Iraqi residents agreed that Iraq was in a civil war, while 67% thought Iraq was not.

Retired US Army General Barry McCaffrey issued a report on March 26, 2007, after a trip and analysis of the situation in Iraq. The report labeled the current situation a "low-grade civil war."

From page 3 of the report:

"Iraq is ripped by a low-grade civil war which has worsened to catastrophic levels with as many as 3000 citizens murdered per month. The population is in despair. Life in many of the urban areas is now desperate. A handful of foreign fighter (500+)--and a couple thousand Al Qaeda operatives incite open factional struggle through suicide bombings which target Shia holy places and innocent civilians...The police force is feared as a Shia militia in uniform which is responsible for thousands of extra-judicial killings."

See also

• 21 April 2004 Basra bombs
• 23 November 2006 Sadr City bombings
• 22 January 2007 Baghdad bombings
• 3 February 2007 Baghdad market bombing
• Ashura massacre
• Hay al Jihad massacre
• Casualties of the conflict in Iraq since 2003
• Iraqi insurgency
• Post-invasion Iraq, 2003-2006
• Sectarianism
• Religion in Iraq
• Historical Shi'a-Sunni relations
• Religious war
• Ethnic conflict
• Ethnic cleansing
• List of civil wars

Bibliography

• Iraq Study Group, The Iraq Study Group Report: The Way Forward - A New Approach (2006)
• Nir Rosen, In the Belly of the Green Bird: The Triumph of the Martyrs in Iraq (2006)

Films

• Iraq in Fragments, documentary (2006)

External links

• Sami Ramadani interview "Iraq is not a civil war" spring 2007.
• Taheri, Amir. "There is no Civil War in Iraq, Gulf News, December 6, 2006.
• Phillips, David L., "Federalism can prevent Iraq civil war", July 20, 2005.
• Hider, James, "Weekend of slaughter propels Iraq towards all-out civil war", July 18, 2005.
• Ramadani, Sami, "Occupation and Civil War", UK Guardian, July 8, 2005.
• Phelps, Timothy M., "Experts: Iraq Verges on Civil War". Newsday, 12 May, 2005.
• Strobel, Warren P., and Jonathan S. Landay, "CIA Officers Warn of Iraq Civil War, Contradicting Bush's Optimism", Knight-Ridder, January 22, 2004.
• "US exit may lead to Iraqi civil war", November 19, 2003.
• Dunnigan, James, "The Coming Iraqi Civil War", April 4, 2003