WikiPortallus: Al-Qaeda in Iraq.html

The group is a direct successor of al-Zarqawi's previous organization, Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad (Group of Monotheism and Jihad). Beginning with its official statement declaring allegiance to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda terrorist network in October 2004, the group identifies itself as Tanzim Qaidat al-Jihad fi Bilad al-Rafidayn (QJBR) ("Organization of Jihad's Base in the Country of the Two Rivers").⁵

AQI is one of Iraq's most feared militant organisations and many experts regard it as the United States' most formidable enemy in the country.⁶⁷ Others suggest that the threat posed by AQI is exaggerated and some scholars claim that a "heavy focus on al-Qaeda obscures a much more complicated situation on the ground."⁸⁹

Goals and umbrella organizations

In a July 2005 letter to al-Qaeda deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Zarqawi outlined a four-stage plan to expand the Iraq War, which included expelling U.S. forces from Iraq, establishing an Islamic authority (caliphate), spreading the conflict to Iraq's secular neighbors and engaging in battle with Israel.¹⁰ Consistent with their stated plan, the affiliated groups were linked to regional attacks outside Iraq, such as the Sharm al-Sheikh bombings in Egypt.

In January 2006, AQI created an umbrella organization, the Mujahideen Shura Council (MSC), in an attempt to unify Sunni insurgents in Iraq. However, its efforts to recruit Iraqi Sunni nationalists and secular groups were undermined by its violent tactics against civilians and its extreme Islamic fundamentalist¹¹ doctrine. Because of these impediments, the attempt was largely unsuccessful.⁷

AQI used to claim its attacks under the MSC, until mid-October 2006 when Abu Ayyub al-Masri declared the self-styled Islamic State of Iraq (ISI), another front which included the Shura Council factions. The AQI now claims its attacks under the ISI,¹² and claims it's answering to the supreme emir (leader) of the organization, Abu Abdullah al-Rashid al-Baghdadi. According to a study compiled by US intelligence agencies, the ISI have plans to seize power and turn the country into a Sunni Islamic state.¹³

Strength and activity

The group's strength is unknown, with estimates that have ranged from 850 to several thousand full-time fighters.¹⁴¹⁵ In 2006, the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research estimated that AQI’s core membership was in a range of "more than 1,000."¹⁴ (These figures do not include the other six¹⁶ AQI-led Salafi Jihadi groups organized in the Islamic State of Iraq.) The group is said to be suffering high manpower losses (including from its many "martyrdom" operations), but for a long time this appeared to have little effect on its strength and capabilities, implying a constant flow of volunteers from Iraq and abroad.

According to both the July 2007 National Intelligence Estimate and the Defense Intelligence Agency reports AQI accounted for 15 percent of attacks in Iraq. However, the Congressional Research Service noted in its September 2007 report that attacks from al-Qaeda are less than two percent of the violence in Iraq and criticized the Bush administration’s statistics, noting that its false reporting of insurgency attacks as AQI attacks has increased since the "surge" operations began.¹⁷¹⁴ In March 2007, the U.S.-sponsored Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty analyzed al-Qaeda in Iraq attacks for that month and concluded Al-Qaeda in Iraq had taken credit for 43 out of 439 attacks on Iraqi security forces and Shiite militias, and 17 out of 357 attacks on U.S. troops.¹⁴ They seemed to favor suicide and improvised explosive device (IED) attacks, typically using cars and other motor vehicles.

According to a 2006 U.S. Government report, this group is most clearly associated with foreign terrorist cells operating in Iraq and has specifically targeted international forces and Iraqi citizens. According to the report, most of AQI's operatives were not Iraqi, but instead were coming through a series of safe houses, the largest of which is on the Iraq-Syrian border. AQI's operations are predominately Iraq-based, but the United States Department of State alleges that the group maintains an extensive logistical network throughout the Middle East, North Africa, Iran, South Asia, and Europe.¹⁰

According to the June 2008 CNN special report, al-Qaeda in Iraq is "a well-oiled organization (...) almost as pedantically bureaucratic as was Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath party", including collecting new execution videos long after they stopped publicising them, with a network of spies even in an American bases. According to the report, Iraqis (many of them former members of Hussein's secret services) now effectively run al-Qaeda in Iraq and "foreign fighters' roles seem mostly relegated to the cannon fodder of suicide attacks." The exception from this is the organization's top leadership, which is still dominated by non-Iraqis.¹⁸

Rise and decline

The Abu Musab al-Zarqawi-led terrorist group Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad, which had already gained notoriety for a series of indiscriminate bombings and for graphic videos of hostage executions, officially pledged allegiance to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network in a letter in October 2004.¹⁹²⁰²¹ That same month, AQI kidnapped and murdered the Japanese citizen Shosei Koda. In November, al-Zarqawi's network was the main target of the U.S. Operation Phantom Fury in Fallujah, but its leadership managed to escape the American siege and subsequent storming of the city. On December 19, al-Qaeda bombed a Shiite funeral procession in Najaf and the main bus station in nearby Karbala, killing at least 60 in the Shiite holy cities in one of its many sectarian attacks. The group also reportedly took responsibility for a September 30 bombing directed at U.S. forces that killed 35 children and seven adults in Baghdad.²²

In 2005, IQI largely focused on executing high-profile and coordinated suicide attacks, claiming responsibility for numerous attacks which were primarily aimed at Iraqi civilians. The group launched attacks against voters during the Iraqi legislative election in January, a combined suicide and conventional attack on the Abu Ghraib prison in April, and the coordinated suicide attacks outside the Sheraton Ishtar and Palestine Hotel in Baghdad in October.¹⁰ In July, Al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for the kidnapping and execution of Ihab Al-Sherif, Egypt's envoy to Iraq.²³²⁴ A July 2005 three-day series of suicide attacks, including Musayyib marketplace bombing, left at least 150 people dead and more than 260 wounded.²⁵ Al-Zarqawi also claimed responsibility for the September 14 series of more than a dozen bombings in Baghdad, including the massacre of mostly Shiite unemployed workers, which killed about 160 people and injured 570 in a single day,²⁶ as well a series of mosque bombings which killed at least 74 people the same month in Khanaqin.²⁷

The attacks blamed on or claimed by al-Qaeda in Iraq kept increasing in 2006.¹² In one of the incidents, two American soldiers (Thomas Lowell Tucker and Kristian Menchaca) were captured, tortured and beheaded by the ISI; in another, four Russian embassy officials were abducted and executed. Iraq's al-Qaeda and its umbrella groups were blamed for multiple attacks targeting Iraqi Shiites, some of which AQI claimed responsibility for. The U.S. also claimed the group was at least one of the forces behind the wave of chlorine bombings in Iraq which affected hundreds of people (albeit with few fatalities) through the series of crude chemical warfare attacks between late 2006 and mid-2007.²⁸ During 2006, several key members of the AQI were killed or captured by American and allied forces, including al-Zarqawi himself, killed on June 7, 2006, his spiritual adviser Sheik Abd-Al-Rahman, and the alleged "number two" deputy leader Hamid Juma Faris Jouri al-Saeedi.

The high-profile attacks linked to the group continued through early 2007, as the AQI-led Islamic State claimed responsibility for attacks such as the March assassination attempt on Sunni Deputy Prime Minister of Iraq Salam al-Zaubai, the April Iraqi Parliament bombing, and the May capture and subsequent execution of three American soldiers. In May, ISI leader al-Baghdadi was declared to have been killed in Baghdad, but his death was later denied by the group (later, al-Baghdadi was declared by the U.S. to be non-existent). There were also conflicting reports regarding al-Masri. In March-August, coalition forces fought a major Battle of Baqubah as part of the largely successful attempts to wrest the Diyala Governorate from AQI-aligned forces. Through 2007, the majority of the suicide bombings targeting civilians in Iraq were routinely identified by the military and government sources as being the responsibility of al-Qaeda and its associated groups, even when there was no claim of responsibility (as was in the case of the 2007 Yazidi communities bombings, which killed some 800 and injured more than 1,500 people in the most deadly terrorist attack in Iraq to date).

By late 2007, violent and indiscriminate attacks directed by AQI against Iraqi civilians had severely damaged their image and caused the loss of support among the population, isolating the group. In a major blow to AQI, many former Sunni militants that previously fought along with the group started to work with the American forces (see also below). In addition, the U.S. troop surge supplied military planners with more manpower for operations targeting the group, resulting in dozens of high-level AQI members being captured or killed.²⁹ Al-Qaeda seemed to have lost its foothold in Iraq and appeared to be severely crippled.³⁰ Accordingly, the bounty issued for al-Masri was eventually cut from $5 million down to a mere $100,000 in April 2008.³¹

As of 2008, a series of U.S. and Iraqi offensives managed to drive out the AQI-aligned insurgents from their former safe havens such in Diyala (see Diyala campaign) and Al Anbar Governorates and the embattled capital of Baghdad to the area of the northern city of Mosul, the latest of the Iraq War's major battlegrounds.³¹ The struggle for control of Ninawa Governorate (Ninawa campaign) was launched in January 2008 by U.S. and Iraqi forces as part of the large-scale Operation Phantom Phoenix aimed at combating al-Qaeda activity in and around Mosul, as well as finishing off the network's remnants in central Iraq that escaped Operation Phantom Thunder in 2007.

Other activities

Inciting sectarian violence through terrorism

Attacks against civilians often targeted the Iraqi Shia majority in an attempt to incite sectarian violence and greater chaos in the country.³² Al-Zarqawi purportedly declared an all-out war on Shiites³³ while claiming responsibility for the Shiite mosque bombings.³⁴ The same month, a statement claiming to be by AQI rejected as "fake" a letter allegedly written by al-Zawahiri, in which he appears to question the insurgents' tactics in attacking Shiites in Iraq.³⁵ In a December 2007 video, al-Zawahiri defended the Islamic State in Iraq, but distanced himself from the crimes against civilians committed by "hypocrites and traitors existing among the ranks".³⁶

U.S. and Iraqi officials accused AQI of trying to slide Iraq into a full-scale civil war between Iraq's majority Shiites and minority Sunni Arabs with an orchestrated campaign of a civilian massacres and a number of highly provocative attacks against high-profile religious targets.³⁷ With attacks like the first al-Askari Mosque bombing in Samarra, the deadly one-day series of bombings which killed at least 215 people in Baghdad's Shiite district of Sadr City, and the second al-Askari bombing, they seemed to have succeeded in provoking Shiite militias to unleash a wave of retaliatory attacks, resulting in a plague of death squad-style killings and spiraling further sectarian violence which escalated in 2006 and early 2007.⁷

Operations outside Iraq

AQI claimed an attempted chemical bomb plot in Amman, Jordan in April 2004.³⁸ On December 3, 2004, AQI also attempted to blow up an Iraqi-Jordanian border crossing, but failed to do so (in 2006, a Jordanian court sentenced Zarqawi (in absentia) and two of his associates to death for their involvement in the plot³⁹). AQI also increased its presence outside Iraq by claiming credit for three attacks in 2005. In the most deadly attack, suicide bomb 2005 Amman bombings killed 60 people in Amman, Jordan, on November 9, 2005.⁴⁰ They also claimed responsibility for the rocket attacks that narrowly missed the USS Kearsarge and the USS Ashland in Jordan and which also targeted Eilat in Israel, and the firing of several rockets into Israel from Lebanon in December.¹⁰ In addition, Lebanese-Palestinian militant group Fatah al-Islam, which was defeated by Lebanese government forces during the 2007 Lebanon conflict, was linked to AQI and led by Zarqawi's former companion who had fought in Iraq.⁴¹

Criminal enterprises

The group has long raised money through the various organized crime activities like ransoming kidnapping victims, car theft (sometimes killing drivers), counterfeiting, and hijacking fuel trucks that bring them tens of millions of dollars.³¹ According to an April 2007 statement by the rival insurgent faction, the group was demanding money in return for "protection", killing members of wealthy families when not paid.⁴² According to both U.S. and Iraqi sources in May 2008, the Islamic State of Iraq was stepping up its racketeering campaigns as their strictly militant capabilities were on the wane (with especially lucrative activity said to be coming from oil rackets centered on the industrial city of Bayji). According to U.S. military intelligence sources, the group resembles a "Mafia-esque criminal gang."³¹

Conflicts with the other Sunni militant groups

The first reports of a split and even armed clashes between AQI/MSC and other insurgent Sunni groups date back to 2005.⁴³⁴⁴ In the summer of 2006, local Sunni tribes and insurgent groups, including the prominent Islamist-nationalist group Islamic Army in Iraq (IAI), began to speak of their dissatisfaction with al-Qaeda and its tactics,⁴⁵ and openly criticized the foreign fighters for their deliberate targeting of civilians. In September 2006, thirty Anbar tribes formed their own local alliance called the Anbar Salvation Council (ASC), directed specifically at countering al-Qaeda-allied ("terrorist") forces in the province,⁴⁶⁴⁷⁴⁸ openly siding with the government and the U.S. troops.⁴⁹⁵⁰

By the beginning of 2007, Sunni tribes and nationalist insurgents had begun battling with their former allies in AQI in order to retake control of their communities.⁵¹ In early 2007, forces allied to al-Qaeda in Iraq committed a series of attacks against Sunnis critical of the group, including the February 2007 attack in which scores of people were killed when a truck bomb exploded near a mosque in Fallujah.⁵² Al-Qaeda also supposedly played a vital role in the assassination of the leader of the Anbar-based insurgent group 1920 Revolution Brigade (military wing of the Islamic Resistance Movement).⁵³ In April 2007, the IAI spokesman accused the ISI of killing at least 30 members of the Islamic Army, as well as members of the Jamaat Ansar al-Sunna and Mujahideen Army insurgent groups, and called on Osama bin Laden to personally intervene to rein in al-Qaeda in Iraq.⁵⁴⁴² The following month, the government stated that AQI leader al-Masri was killed by ASC fighters.⁴³⁷ Four days later, AQI released an audio tape in which a man claiming to be al-Masri warned Sunnis not to take part in the political process (later in May the U.S. forces announced the release of dozens of Iraqis who were tortured by AQI as a part of the group's intimidation campaign⁵⁵), but also said that reports of internal fighting between Sunni militia groups were "lies and fabrications".⁵⁶⁵⁷

By June 2007, the growing hostility between foreign-influenced religious extremists and Sunni nationalists led to open gun battles between the groups in Baghdad.⁵⁸⁵⁹ The Islamic Army, however, soon reached a ceasefire agreement with AQI (yet still refused to sign on to the ISI).⁶⁰ There were also reports that Hamas of Iraq insurgents were involved in assisting U.S. troops in their Diyala Governorate operations against al-Qaeda in August 2007. In September 2007, AQI claimed responsibility for the assassination of three people including Sunni sheikh Adbul-Sattar Abu Risha (leader of the Anbar "Awakening council"). That same month, a suicide attack on a mosque in the city of Baqubah killed 28 people, including members of Hamas of Iraq and the 1920 Revolution Brigade, during a meeting at the mosque between tribal, police and guerilla leaders.⁶¹ Meanwhile, the U.S. military began arming moderate insurgent factions on the promise to fight al-Qaeda in Iraq instead of the Americans.⁶²

By December 2007, the strength of the "Awakening" movement irregulars (also called "Concerned Local Citizens" and "Sons of Iraq") was estimated at some 65,000-80,000 fighters.⁶³ Many of them were former insurgents (including even alienated former AQI supporters), now being armed and paid by the Americans specifically to combat al-Qaeda's presence in Iraq. As of July 2007, this highly controversial strategy proved so far to be effective in helping to secure the Sunni districts of Baghdad and the other hotspots of central Iraq and route out al-Qaeda-aligned militants.

Selected key members

Al-Qaeda in Iraq.html

Contents

Goals and umbrella organizations

Strength and activity

Rise and decline

Other activities

Inciting sectarian violence through terrorism

Operations outside Iraq

Criminal enterprises

Conflicts with the other Sunni militant groups

Selected key members

See also

References

External links

Articles

Videos