Iraqi Insurgency - Conflict Parties

Conflict Parties

The Iraqi insurgency is composed of at least a dozen major organizations and perhaps as many as 40 distinct groups. These groups are subdivided into countless smaller cells. The Washington-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) estimates that less than 10% of insurgents are non-Iraqi foreign fighters. 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 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 U.S.-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).