Iraqi Insurgency

The Iraqi insurgency refers to an ongoing warfare in Iraq, which began after the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

The first phase of insurgency began shortly after the 2003 invasion of Iraq and prior to the establishment of the new Iraqi government. From around 2004 to May 2007, the insurgency primarily targeted Coalition armies, while latterly, Iraqi security forces, seen as collaborators with the coalition also became targeted. During this period, only 10% of significant attacks have targeted Iraqi civilians.

With the full scale eruption of the civil war in February 2006, many militant attacks had directed the Iraqi police and military forces of the Iraqi government. The attacks had continued during the transitional reconstruction of Iraq, as the Iraqi government tried to establish itself.

Despite the fact that civil war violence decreased in late 2008, the insurgency kept going on since and until the United States withdrawal in 2011. Since the U.S. withdrawal in December 2011, a renewed wave of sectarian and anti-government insurgency has swept Iraq, causing nearly 1,000 mortal casualties by March 2012.

The insurgents in Iraq have been composed of a diverse mix of militias, foreign fighters, all-Iraqi units or mixtures opposing the U.S.-led multinational force in Iraq and the post-2003 Iraqi government. During the height of the Iraq War in 2006 to 2008, the fighting was appearing both as armed conflict against the U.S.-led military coalition, as well as a sectarian violence among the different ethnic groups within the population. The insurgents were involved in asymmetric warfare and a war of attrition against the U.S.-supported Iraqi government and U.S. forces, while conducting coercive tactics against rivals or other militias.

As in most guerrilla warfare, civilians on all sides bear the brunt of the violence. Iraq's deep sectarian divides have been a major dynamic in the insurgency, with support for the insurgents varying amongst different segments of the population. However as of August 2011, the insurgency went from about 130,000 size-force in 2003 after the U.S. government disbanded the original Iraqi Army, into only a few thousand fighters since the vast majority of the insurgent groups have been either defeated or switched to the Iraqi Government during and after the U.S. troop surge of 2007.