Black Banners on the Two Rivers: The Story of the Iraqi Insurgency (2005)

In the second installment of a multi-part series, Rob Ashlar continues a survey of the history of the Iraqi Insurgency, this time recounting the events of 2005.¹

Post-Fallujah II State of Affairs

Insurgency Dispersed

As discussed in part one of this series, the Second Battle of Fallujah was a major defeat for the insurgency, forcing reorganization elsewhere in Iraq. The strategy to open a second front by dispersing half of Fallujah’s garrison to neighboring cities failed. This contributed to the massive manpower losses during the battle, which exceeded 4,000 killed or captured, including key commanders like Umar Hadid. Further, the loss of Fallujah removed an important insurgent operating base. With the city under firm Coalition control, the surviving fighters had to disperse and regroup, primarily to Baghdad, Babil, Ramadi, and the Haditha corridors.

A byproduct of insurgent dispersal from Fallujah was the radicalization of local fighters in other regions, who began to adopt Salafi Jihadism. As its new main base, Al Qaida in Iraq (AQI) opted for Ramadi and the Hit-Haditha Corridor, where Coalition support and presence was weak due to the insurgent murder and intimidation campaign since the summer of 2004. This effort was likely led by Hamid Dawud al-Zawi, the Haditha AQI commander, whom we will meet further below. After rebasing, AQI’s recovery promptly proceeded. They set up a training camp in Haditha to replace the lost fighters from Fallujah, while funding from the Gulf, particularly Saudi Arabia, rebuilt networks in Anbar. Financing flowed from prominent clerics and NGOs, through the UAE into Iraq, specifically Ramadi and Baghdad. These efforts soon showed success: “An event held at the end of January 2005 was a testimony to AQI’s recovery. AQI leadership felt secure enough to hold a memorial service for Umar Hadid in Amariyah on January 27. It was even attended by the leadership of AS [Ansar al-Sunnah], Jaysh Mohammed, and some smaller Iraqi Salafist groups.” (4)² Note the presence of non-AQI representatives in the memorial. As discussed before, a key feature of the insurgency was permeability across groups. One could ideologically sympathize with one group while holding membership in another, although in this case, the groups all shared a similar ideology.

Another major result of the defeat at Fallujah was the emergence of the Sunni Arab Resistance (SAR), or insurgent forces open to reconciling with Baghdad. The defeat led some insurgents to reconsider their opposition to the Coalition-backed Iraqi government. They continued to fight the Coalition and its Iraqi allies but were willing to negotiate a political solution. The Coalition officially dubbed these insurgents the SAR. This was part of a broader, though temporary, trend where Sunni leaders hoped to protect Sunni interests through official channels. The most prominent SAR leader was Muhammad Mahmud Latif (MML), head of the Ramadi Shura Council and highly respected insurgent commander.

In early 2005, Latif left Ramadi for Hit to convince other insurgent leaders to press for a political solution after their defeat in Operation AL FAJR. Contacting senior leaders of the Dulaymi tribal confederation, MML asked them to serve as intermediaries between the insurgency, the Coalition, and the Iraq Interim Government (IIG). This decision may have been prompted as much by his own perceived weakness as by a desire to negotiate with the Coalition. Like many SARs, MML feared the rise of AQI and Zarqawi’s extremist interpretation of Islam. (5)

The Ramadi Shura was not united on this skepticism towards AQI. As mentioned in the previous part, Ramadi Shura leader Mohammed Daham had replaced Umar Hadid as Zarqawi’s top lieutenant, which caused tensions with Latif. Further, at the grassroots, many SAR fighters continued to collaborate with Sunni Religious Extremists (SRE) like AQI:

Nevertheless, of the 10,000 Sunni insurgents estimated to be active by the Coalition at this time, 30% are believed to have been SREs, 45% SARs, and 25% criminal. It is important to note that the attitude of individual groups varied a great deal depending on the local environment. SRE/SAR differences did not rule out mutual collaboration. In many cases, membership within insurgent groups was fluid, with street-level insurgents moving easily between different groups. (5-6)

This insurgent permeability will continue to be a major motif in our study. The author’s classification of ‘criminal’ insurgents is uncharacteristically imprecise. Almost every insurgent group financed themselves through criminal activities, especially cross-border smuggling, so technically all insurgents were ‘criminal.’ The author is likely referring to those fighters whose criminality was strictly self-serving as opposed to serving a political end. However, this distinction is admittedly often unclear because in many cases, Salafi Jihadism is an expression of organized crime and warlordism. For example, in the Gaza Strip during the 2000s, several Salafi Jihadi groups, the most prominent being Jund Ansar Allah, formed and began to challenge Hamas. At the root of their animosity and ideological fervor was a desire to control organized crime in the Strip.³ Similar disputes would later be central in AQI’s, and then its successors’, fraught relationship with the Sunni tribes. 

Election Troubles

In the run-up to the January 2005 elections, the political outlook in Anbar was gloomy despite improvements for the Coalition since Fallujah II. Based in Ramadi, the provincial government was largely immobilized by the insurgent murder and intimidation campaign, while governor Fasal Gaoud was weak and ill-respected. Of all settlements, Fallujah was the only one under firm Coalition control, but it was also affected by the widespread Sunni apathy for the elections and politics writ large:

The Coalition and the IIG also sought to engage Sunnis in the political process by encouraging participation in the elections. This was no easy feat, as the elections were opposed not only by insurgents and Anbaris angry over Operation AL FAJR, but also by local Sunni leaders and incumbent officials at nearly every level. There were two main reasons for this opposition from local leaders: 1) fear they would lose their current standing and influence, and 2) concerns about insurgent violence. As a result, the individuals who should have supported the political process (the incumbents) were instead trying to depress turnout in the belief that it would protect their jobs.

 

Individual cities had additional issues that would keep participation in the elections low. Many Fallujah residents were completely ignorant of which parties and candidates were running for office, believing that their only option was to pray that the right people were elected. In Khalidiyah as in much of Anbar, residents regarded basic necessities like electricity and water as more important to them than abstract concepts like elections. There was serious concern that if they voted under their real names, the insurgents would get the voting registers and target them for supporting the elections. A further concern was that the Shi’a would impose their “distorted” views of Islam on the country. (7-8)

The Coalition attempted to circumvent this by meeting with tribal leaders to obtain their political support for the elections. Although some expressed sympathy, most of them were too intimidated by the insurgents or had already lost significant support from their own tribesmen due to real or perceived closeness with the Coalition. Meanwhile, the Shia parties – the Dawa, Islamic Dawa, and Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) – formed a large bloc, called the United Iraqi Alliance. This alliance only worsened Sunni perceptions of the political process: “For many Anbaris, the absence of any major Sunni candidates appeared to confirm insurgent claims that the elections were an American plot to install a Shi’a dictatorship in Iraq, further contributing to the boycott.” (9)

The influence of the insurgency on the Sunni boycott of the elections and the political process cannot be understated:

While SAR insurgents were open to reconciliation with the IIG [Interim Iraqi Government] in theory, MML [Latif] urged boycotting or sabotaging the January elections to demonstrate Sunni influence in Iraq. His view was seen by many as extremely radical at the time, but came to be accepted by other insurgents later in 2005. (6) 

Zarqawi’s opposition to the elections went farther than Latif’s:

[H]e denounced the elections, referring to the candidates as “demi-idols” and declaring those who voted as kuffar (unbelievers) a clear threat to the security of those who took part in the election. In keeping with insurgent propaganda themes, Zarqawi stated that the Coalition was holding the elections in order to bring the Shi’a to power in Iraq. As a demonstration of his power, Zarqawi released a video [see screenshots] of Salem Jaafar al-Kanani, Prime Minister Allawi’s political director, who was forced to read a statement urging Iraqis not to cooperate with the Coalition before being killed. (9)

In response to Zarqawi’s threats and his continued attacks on Shias, the Badr Corps (paramilitary of SCIRI) formed the Mukhtar Battalion, a Shia death squad which ostensibly targeted the worst SREs, but in reality targeted ordinary Sunnis.⁴ This organization and others like it were soon integrated into the Ministry of Interior–which itself was soon led by a key Badr affiliate, Jabr al-Solagh–whose activities mainly consisted in extreme sectarian violence against Sunnis.⁵ The most infamous form of this was the electric drill torture-execution. All of this was backed, protected, and overseen by the US, per The Guardian:

The Pentagon sent a US veteran of the “dirty wars” in Central America to oversee sectarian police commando units [such as Badr] in Iraq that set up secret detention and torture centres to get information from insurgents. These units conducted some of the worst acts of torture during the US occupation and accelerated the country’s descent into full-scale civil war.⁶

This violence later culminated in the mass sectarian cleansing of Baghdad, where US-backed Iraqi security forces and Shia militias systematically expelled Sunnis, ending decades of mixed coexistence in many neighborhoods.⁷ It should go without saying that this violence did nothing to protect Shia civilians, end the occupation, or rebuild Iraq–but it did contribute to Sunni antipathy for the Iraqi government.

AQI’s and other groups’ threats against the elections were thwarted by the Coalition’s effective counter-terror measures, but they successfully dissuaded the Sunni population from voting. Of the ~750,000 expected votes in Anbar, only 16,588 were actually cast, with the single largest turnout being in a Shia-majority city. The lowest turnout was in Karmah where not one vote was cast. The election results showed strong performance for Shia and Kurdish parties, which together took over 70% of the vote, while the most ‘Sunni-friendly’ party, Ayad Allawi’s Iraq List, took only ~13% of the vote. Allawi’s weak performance is no surprise given his role in the destruction of Fallujah and his resolute opposition to the insurgency, both of which severely weakened his legitimacy among Sunnis. Indeed, one need not look beyond the candidates on the ballot to understand the Sunni boycott. The Shia and Kurdish parties were out of the question, while the ‘Sunni’ party was led by a man who had killed many Sunnis. At the provincial level, the Iraqi Islamic Party (the local Muslim Brotherhood branch) won in a landslide, taking 34 of 41 seats. This reflected the above-mentioned trend where Sunni elites were temporarily open to the political process: “Despite the widespread Sunni boycott in Anbar, many Anbari political parties adopted a ‘wait and see’ approach toward the new national government.” (12) Even the insurgency largely followed suit after the elections:

Interestingly, the insurgency as a whole also adopted a “wait and see” approach, some because of logistical difficulties and others due to a desire to participate in the political process. Those who wished to continue the fight had the necessary manpower and munitions to surge attacks but now lacked the necessary planners and expertise because of losses suffered during Operation AL FAJR. The result was a lull in fighting across Anbar, suggesting that insurgent capabilities had temporarily peaked during the period of attacks in the run up to the elections. (14)

Stirrings on the Euphrates

Coalition Strikes

In February and March 2005, the Coalition respectively launched Operations River Blitz and River Bridge to disrupt known insurgent networks. Coalition forces preceded the first operation with a series of raids in the Husaybah-Baghdad corridor. Once River Blitz commenced, they launched another series of raids around the Haditha area. This successfully disrupted the insurgent groups active in those areas, leading to the arrest of 117 detainees, including senior AQI battlefield commanders. One of these commanders was Hamid Dawud al-Zawi, better known as Abu Umar al-Baghdadi, first Emir of the Islamic State.⁸ Zawi had been a long-time member of the native Iraqi Salafi underground and fierce opponent of the Baath Party. In 1993, he was fired from the Haditha Police due to his Wahhabi views. After the invasion, Zawi took arms and formed his own group, Jaysh al-Taifah al-Mansurah, which became an AQI-affiliate group in 2004 when he was recruited by JTJ founders Abu Anas al-Shami and Abu Muhammad al-Lubnani.⁹ Zawi’s group continued to exist, but his formal membership switched to JTJ/AQI, in which he rapidly became a key battlefield leader. His arrest temporarily weakened AQI presence in Haditha, which was affected by the region-wide insurgent dispersal from cities raided by Coalition forces. Fighters and leaders alike fled to remote parts of Anbar or entirely different provinces, like Diyala, Salahuddin, or Ninawa. Operation River Bridge was even more disruptive since it targeted key leaders and facilitators of the insurgency. Planned attacks were canceled, networks weakened, and leaders either escaped or detained. Further, in two major cities, the population became much more pro-Coalition than prior to the raids:

The most notable improvement was in Hit and Haditha, where residents became far more pro-Iraqi government and pro-MNF after the operations. This may have been because the situation in the two cities had deteriorated so severely due to intermittent troop presence before RIVER BLITZ and RIVER BRIDGE. Insurgents had enforced on both cities all the trappings of an Islamist totalitarian theocracy: secret police, shari’a courts, hadd punishments, intense propaganda, concentrations of foreign fighters, and an oppressive murder and intimidation campaign to deter local resistance. (21)

Recall Bernard Fall’s two key insights into revolutionary warfare.¹⁰ First: “revolutionary warfare equals guerrilla warfare plus political action.” Second: “When a country is being subverted it is not being outfought; it is being out-administered.” The insurgency’s goal was not merely the end of Coalition occupation, but the creation of a Salafi Islamist government. It aimed to do this through the measures stated above. Thus, ‘totalitarianism’ aside, the author’s assessment of residents’ views is likely correct. The ouster of the insurgents’ Salafi Jihadi reign would have been a welcome relief, especially as the Coalition operations had not caused much damage to the cities, so the population did not suffer as it had in Fallujah. However, the Coalition’s further attempts at re-stabilization encountered issues from the Ministry of Interior. The provincial governor fired the deputy provincial police chief, who was viewed as sectarian against Sunnis, but the Ministry forced the governor to rehire him. Similarly, the “Shi’a Public Order Brigade in Fallujah, accused by the largely Sunni population of heavy-handed tactics and disrespect for local women, purged several members in an effort to address these local concerns.” (21-22) This effort did not succeed as the Public Order Brigades (and the Ministry of Interior) had been heavily infiltrated by Shia sectarian forces:

PUBLIC ORDER BRIGADES: 2005: In January 2005, after the election, the new government led by Ibrahim al-Ja’fari, the Ministry of Interior (the Ministry responsible for national-level police forces) came under the control of SCIRI and its Badr Corps when former SCIRI and Badr Corps (Organization) commander Bayan Jabr became Minister. Using a purge of officers, SCIRI increased its control. In early May 2005, three brigades of counter- insurgency commandos (the Wolf and Volcano Brigades–paramilitary commandos) and the Scorpion Brigade (intelligence search and destroy forces) operated in a number of areas. Allegations exist that as a Shi’a dominated (and Muqtada al-Sadr controlled) force these commandos operated as death squads [cf. above and notes 3-6]. Most of the commandos were trained in [REDACTED – I suspect this originally said ‘Iran’]. (22)

One can observe a subtle difference in the orientations of the Sunni and Shia insurgencies when it came to the invaders. The radical Sunni insurgent view was one of absolute rejection and opposition. Nothing short of the end of the post-2003 order and the expulsion of the Coalition – in other words, national liberation – would suffice. It is therefore no surprise that Sunni militias were responsible for a staggering 90% of attacks against Coalition forces.¹¹ In contrast, the radical Shia insurgent view was more ambiguous. For them, the Coalition was a vehicle through which Sunni political power could be destroyed and Shia political power cemented. Badr’s and SCIRI’s hijacking of the Ministry of Interior is highly illustrative. The 110,000-strong personnel of the Ministry of Interior could have been used to great effect against the Coalition, but they instead were deployed against Sunni civilians. Rather than fighting the Coalition as such, SCIRI and Badr made sure to secure their own place in the post-2003 order, which they then used against their main rivals, the Sunni forces. The intersection of sectarian politicking and great power militarism would have disastrous consequences for Iraqi society. Once known as a highly pluralistic and multicultural country, Iraq would descend into unspeakable violence, from which it still has not recovered, as can be seen in demographic maps of Baghdad.

Effects on the Insurgency

The successes of Operations River Blitz and River Bridge were temporary and even self-defeating to an extent. For example, AQI implemented new operational-security measures in response to the raids. Fighters were each issued three ‘kuniyat’ or aliases to be used among fellow insurgents and on false IDs. Mid-level leaders also entered into regular rotation of region and position (e.g., ‘cell leader to commander to planner to supervisor to facilitator’). The group also expanded its information operations, which consisted in:

• recruitment efforts
• “winning hearts and minds”
• anti-Coalition propaganda
• published speeches and statements by insurgent leaders like Zarqawi
• claims of responsibility for attacks to include releasing videos of the attacks
• explanations of the goals and strategies of the groups (28)

These activities often extensively overlapped, but the fifth was the most striking in the context of global Jihadism. Although attack and execution videos were already an element of Jihadi movements – particularly the Chechen Jihadis – AQI was at the forefront when it came to its media, which was regularly released, spectacular, and well-edited. There is a clear through-line from the camcorder footage (see the header image of this article) of the Iraqi insurgency to the feature-length films of Islamic State, most infamous of which is the Salil al-Sawarim (Clanging of the Swords) series. Already in the 2000s, other jihadi movements found themselves having to mimic the content released by AQI, which raised the standard for sympathizers across the globe. AQI and its successor organizations would constantly raise the bar by obsoleting its own media practices, even within a series–the fourth entry of Salil al-Sawarim is far more sophisticated than the first.¹²

Another response from AQI was to worsen and utilize Anbaris’ frustration with persistent power outages by prioritizing attacks against power lines, pipelines, and substations. The electricity sector was already in severe distress due to the ongoing war and to government incompetence which exacerbated the issue. Although not located in Anbar, AQI’s war on Baghdad’s fuel supply is illustrative. In 2004, the insurgency had attacked oil infrastructure 264 times. By late February 2005, it had done over 30 sabotage attacks on oil and gas lines that fed Baghdad.¹³ Indeed,

in November, December and January, in widely scattered attacks, insurgents simultaneously struck all three crude oil pipelines feeding the Doura fuel refinery in Baghdad [thus isolating the city from all sources of oil and oil products]. The refinery is the nation’s largest producer of gasoline, kerosene and other refined products. During that period, more than 20 attacks occurred on a set of huge pipelines carrying things like oil, kerosene, gasoline and other fuels to Baghdad from oil fields and refineries in the north.¹⁴

This created a highly perverse cycle in which the lack of oil reduced electrical power, while the lack of electrical power reduced oil production. A key byproduct of this cycle was to sabotage the Coalition’s plans to privatize Iraqi oil production. If the physical means of extracting, refining, and transporting oil were destroyed, these plans would be rendered impotent, or at least significantly hampered. So effective were the attacks that the Coalition and Iraqi government officials alleged that former regime specialists and holdovers aided the sabotage. The electricity minister even said: “Their intelligence is much better than the government’s.”¹⁵ By the same token, AQI’s new campaign thus accelerated the destruction of Iraqi productive forces, and with it the material basis for pluralist Iraqi society. One key cultural benefit of modern industrialism is that it forces diverse peoples to set aside their differences and live together in peace. People cannot care too much about tribe, sect, or ethnicity when everyone works on the same assembly line and lives in the same neighborhood. The steady dismantling of Iraq’s industrial apparatus brought tribal and sectarian allegiances to the forefront as there were increasingly no other ties left. This could only benefit groups like AQI.

Further, the effects of Operations River Blitz and River Bridge went much deeper than AQI’s surface-level responses:

Because neither RIVER BLITZ nor RIVER BRIDGE was designed to permanently clear, hold, or build Anbar province, they had three unintended consequences. First, some insurgents simply kept quiet or fled only until Coalition forces left. They then resumed their murder and intimidation campaigns. Second, the displacement of insurgents into previously untouched territory gave them the opportunity to build new terrorist networks. And third, the disruption of financial networks led to a considerable rise in criminality throughout the region, as insurgents scrambled to find alternative funding for their activities. (23)

The first consequence was especially felt in Hit and Haditha, whose populations we noted were glad to see the insurgents suppressed and dispersed. Once they returned, the insurgents exacted their revenge against notable collaborators, while attracting new recruits through major financial incentives. The second consequence was felt in western Anbar, to where the insurgency had been displaced and established new networks:

The increasing concentration of insurgents in western Anbar led AQI leader Ghassan Amean to coordinate with Quwwat Allah al-Tharib to regain influence in Haditha and then expand their operations to a larger area. In addition to Quwwat Allah al-Tharib, AQI also enlisted al-Asa’ab al-Iraq and Salafia Takfiria to assist in these efforts, leading to increased coordination between insurgents in Husaybah, Haditha, and Rawah. As many as 1,000 AQI fighters were reportedly active in Husaybah, armed with mortars, RPGs, and AK-47s. (24)

This issue was especially pronounced in the small towns and villages, which up to this point had been largely ignored by both the insurgents and Coalition. For example, Ramana became a new AQI transit hub, while Dulab and Albu Hayat became staging areas for AQI’s attacks. Some towns, like Akashat, fell under total insurgent control. With active assistance from local leaders, including the local ING commander, AQI set up a VBIED production site and used the city as a meeting area for insurgents from Al Qaim.¹⁶

At the same time that AQI was rapidly establishing in western Anbar, Muhammad Mahmud Latif also gained major influence in the region. The existing tensions between Latif and AQI over his openness to political reconciliation were worsened by the latest fatwa of the  Association of Muslim Scholars’ (AMS)–with whom Latif was allied. They forbid attacks on Iraqi National Guard [ING] forces, to which AQI’s response was unsurprising: “AQI increased dramatically their kidnapping and murders of ING soldiers. The Special Police Commandos in particular were targeted with car bombs and all but one company deserted the unit.” (24-25) It is worth underscoring the insurgent radicalization shown here. In 2004, it was still taboo to wantonly attack Iraqi police and government troops since they were considered fellow countrymen. By early 2005, this taboo was being swept aside, while it would be entirely gone at the end of the year. This reflected the collapse of the formally Former Regime Element (FRE) insurgent forces and their consolidation into the SREs, specifically AQI. The death of the FRE segment in the insurgency can be dated to June 2005, when the last FRE leader–Atheer Nassif Turki–was arrested and his group subsequently disbanded.

Lastly, the third consequence of the operations, the insurgency’s increasing criminality, was felt throughout Anbar and the insurgency writ large.

The most significant shift in the insurgency was a general turn toward criminal activity to finance attacks on the Coalition. From the very beginning, the two activities had been linked. Smugglers, for instance, facilitated the entry of foreign fighters and weapons as well as more traditional goods that could be sold to finance insurgent groups. RIVER BLITZ and RIVER BRIDGE, by disrupting established financial networks throughout the province, pushed insurgents to find other means for funding their movements, generally through kidnapping, extortion and robbery. […]

 

Ordinary corruption as at the Syrian border crossings-benefited the insurgency elsewhere. In Habbaniyah, insurgent leader Sheikh Abdul Hamid was able to bribe the police in order to lure the Coalition into a false sense of security, ordering Iraqi National Guard commanders to use “more force” in clearing out the streets to prevent the Coalition from returning to the area. And, when insurgents attempted to ambush Iraqi National Guard troops that were transporting their monthly payroll from Baghdad in March, the lieutenant in charge reported the money stolen and then kept it for himself. Mohammed Daham’s brother Issa found one of the more ingenious quasi-criminal methods for raising funds. His Ramadi gas stations inflated gas prices and used the proceeds to fund his groups’ activities. Some Ramadi residents were willing to pay for the higher prices at insurgent gas stations rather than waiting in longer lines for the cheaper government fuel, either out of sincere support for the insurgency or in order to escape intimidation. This led to conflict between 1920 Revolution Brigade and a small group of Syrian, Egyptian, and Sudanese AQI fighters over which group would control the gas station money. (25-26)

The dispute over the Ramadi gas stations was a sign of things to come–control over fuel would later be an extremely important source of financing and power for AQI. In turn, this conflict incited another in Ramadi, with the Albu Diab tribe on the one side, and the Albu Aitha and Albu Faraj on the other. This was rooted in a 

series of kidnappings of Albu Diab tribesmen by the Albu Faraj in an effort to solicit money from the families of the kidnapped to support the insurgency. In response, the Albu Diab began actively thwarting efforts by the Albu Faraj to plant IEDs and threatened to inform on them to the Coalition if they refused to return al-Shokha [member of the Albu Diab]. (26) 

Another tribal rivalry also broke out into open fighting:

There had always been tension between the Albu Mahal and the Albu Salman. The Mahalawis resented the fact that the Salmanis were the “princely” section of the Dulaymi confederation and therefore given a cut from the proceeds of all illegal tribal smuggling. The leader of the Mahalwis (and an SAR insurgent), Sheikh Sabah Sattam, with the help of his brother-in-law Raja Farhan, the mayor of al-Qa’im, hired displaced insurgents into the al-Qa’im police and used it as his personal security force. He placed Mahalawis in the local Iraqi National Guard. He also attempted to take over the Husaybah police force, but found himself blocked by the rival Salmanis, who resented this intrusion into their area of influence. The result was an outbreak of low-level fighting between the two tribes that would intensify throughout the spring and result, in the summer of 2005, in a full-blown tribal war. (26-27)

The pre-existing tribal rivalries and dynamics were the necessary conditions for all of these episodes of bloodshed, but the sufficient condition was the insurgency.

Political Developments

In the spring of 2005, the new Iraqi federal government was formed, which coincided with segments of the insurgency entering into political negotiations with Baghdad. Recall that Operations River Blitz and River Bridge followed Shia political victory in the January elections and the massive insurgent defeat in Fallujah II. Many ordinary Sunnis and insurgents alike now favored some form of political engagement, which forced even hardline organizations like the Association of Muslim Scholars (AMS) to partake.

Towards this end, near the end of March 2005, Harith al-Dhari [leader of the AMS], MML [Latif], and Mohammed Daham formed the Sunni Shura Council, a committee designed to represent Sunni concerns in Anbar while maintaining and advancing AMS interests in the province. The Council enlisted the support of prominent former Ba’athists and Sunni tribal leaders and initiated a series of talks that signaled their willingness for political engagement. (33)

Discussions between the Council and Baghdad began in late March and continued through April:

The common goal of many of these insurgents was the creation of Sunni Iraqi security forces in Anbar that would not only provide security and stability but also act as a bulwark against the rise of Shi’a power in the province. Members of the Sunni Shura Council thus continued to meet with senior Anbari police officials, suggesting that Anbaris be hired by the Iraqi government to fill the gaps in the police and security forces. (34)

AQI’s response to all of this was to begin targeting its former allies in the Ramadi Shura Council. In a troubling development, this did not deter SAR insurgents from working in general with AQI and SREs. In fact, cooperation substantially increased. The SAR and SRE insurgent wings began to coalesce, which necessarily benefitted AQI, as it was the undisputed SRE leader with no SAR counterpart. AQI’s resolute opposition to the Coalition and Baghdad effectively turned it into a vehicle for Iraqi nationalism. An average Anbari who hated the invaders would naturally gravitate towards AQI, even if this Anbari was personally moderate in faith. Although it’s battlefield credentials were pristine, the SAR wing was by definition closer to the Coalition than AQI. Its openness to political settlement made its commitment to Iraqi national liberation suspect. Had Latif and other SAR leaders maintained a similar opposition to the Coalition as had AQI, it is possible that the insurgency would not have radicalized as extremely as it did. Islamic State may have been thwarted. Unfortunately, the history which actually took place was one where AQI won out over the other insurgents.

Insurgency Strikes Back

Recovery

By April 2005, the insurgency, especially AQI, was in full recovery from Operations River Blitz and River Bridge. 

The resilience of the SRE insurgency lay in its continued ability to exert ideological and financial influence in Anbar, with the survival of larger groups dependent upon the ability of their leadership to issue broad operating guidelines to far-flung autonomous cells, enabling them to conduct attacks over an extended time period. (40-41)

 AQI began to recover immediately after the operations, starting with the creation of a new training site in a village south of Amariyah–trainees later attempted a major prison break at Abu Ghraib, thwarted by the Coalition. Although many key AQI leaders were captured or killed during the operations, Ghassan Amin was not, so he returned to work as soon as the Coalition withdrew:

He used his cells to hijack cars traveling to Jordan and then employed the cars in suicide bombings in Baghdad, Mosul, Samarra, and Bayji. Amean also stole munitions from a Coalition supply point in Dulab, and intensified attacks throughout the Hit-Haditha corridor. One of his main responsibilities–facilitating the entry and housing of foreign fighters in western Iraq–was helped by his creation of a supply depot between Rawah and Husaybah, and the use of the area north of the two cities to house foreign fighters. (41)

AQI’s resurgence was displayed in a series of suicide bombings which began in late March and continued through April. Most of these bombings were by foreign fighters. Based on the Sinjar Records, it is likely that the majority were Saudis, who formed the biggest bloc (41%) of foreigners in AQI’s ranks.¹⁷

Saudi over-representation is unsurprising for two reasons. First, the Saudi state targeted the original Al Qaida in Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) in a ruthless counter-insurgent campaign beginning in 2004.¹⁸ This forced many members and sympathizers to flee, so the natural alternative was to join the Iraqi jihad. Indeed, Saudi state-media outlet Al Arabiya wrote in 2005: “The recent successes achieved by the Saudi security forces in the battle against Al Qaida members may prompt more fighters to go to Iraq.” Even top AQAP leaders like Abdullah al-Rashud–who was among the 26 most wanted terrorists in Saudi Arabia–fled to Iraq, where he died in AQI-controlled Al-Qaim in June 2005. In the same report, Al Arabiya quotes a statement from AQAP leader Salih al-Awfi to AQI: “We will send you fighters and martyrdom fighters [i.e., suicide bombers] whenever you need them, and you will find us to be an impregnable fortress and a solid shield. By God, we will make them know the word “terrorism” well and then translate it into all of their languages.”¹⁹ To this day, Salih al-Awfi and Abdullah al-Rashud have Islamic State approval. They both appear in the IS pantheon of heroes.

Second, AQAP (both original and current) was and perhaps remains the closest Salafi Jihadi organization to AQI and its successors. The two groups have had considerable overlaps in ideology, membership, and allegedly even operations, so an AQAP member/sympathizer would have felt at home in AQI–the second IS spokesman Abu al-Hassan al-Muhajir was originally an AQAP fighter.²⁰ For example, both organizations are genocidally sectarian against Shias, whom they view as the ultimate threat to Islam. Likewise, both are extremely focused on attacking Western targets. The brilliant analyst Mr0rangeTracker has gone so far as to claim that these overlaps “likely still shape [Islamic State] more than its relation to [Al Qaida Central] ever did.”²¹ It is striking that the revered AQAP preacher Anwar al-Awlaki was highly supportive of the Islamic State in Iraq once it was declared in 2006. Later, Islamic State used these statements to great effect in the feud with AQ.

In 2011, AQAP formed the front-group Ansar al-Sharia, which acted as a militant outreach body to Sunni tribes in Yemen. In 2012, the BBC noted that veterans from Taliban-controlled Afghanistan and crucially the Islamic State of Iraq (AQI’s successor) played a key role in Ansar: “In the areas where it is active, the Ansar al-Sharia movement borrows the concepts of ‘sharia rule’ from the Taliban movement in Afghanistan, and from what is known as the ‘Islamic State of Iraq,’ by relying on ‘old mujahidin who were there.’”²² I suspect Ansar al-Sharia may have even borrowed some of its tribal outreach strategy from IS, which by this point had a well-established tribal engagement effort.²³ Further, Islamic State did not excommunicate the current AQAP (with similar overlaps with IS as the original) until late 2015 because it viewed it as a brotherly, albeit “flawed,” organization.²⁴ Once the AQAP–UAE collaboration was exposed, IS Central leadership denounced its onetime brothers.²⁵

Returning to AQI’s recovery, independent insurgent groups increasingly fell under its influence and became affiliates:

Local groups like al-Asa’ab al-Iraq in western Iraq were drawn more and more into AQI’s orbit, attracted by the notoriety of Zarqawi and access to external financial support as well as local concerns in this case a desire to limit infrastructure damage to their area. Al-Asa’ab al-Iraq served as an AQI support organization, facilitating the smuggling of foreign fighters and helping AQI to operate in Ramana, Rawah thanks to its SAR members from the al-Rawi tribe as well as local tribesmen and criminals with close ties to many local communities.

 

Another local group now affiliated with AQI, the Abu Harun Group in Ramadi, emerged as the primary threat to the Coalition in the city after RIVER BLITZ and RIVER BRIDGE. IED and VBIED attacks by Sheikh Abu Abdullah Abdul Nassir’s cell of the Group spiked during RIVER BLITZ in response to the Coalition disrupting their activities and they then began employing suicide bombers during RIVER BRIDGE. The radicalization of the Abu Harun Group was due in part to the influence of their close ally AQI leader Sheikh Rafa al-Rawi. (40-41)

Recall my previous analysis of the role of inter-insurgent group permeability in radicalizing the insurgency as a whole: 

Fighters frequently fought for several groups, depending on which one(s) was present for a particular skirmish or battle, or held influence in a particular settlement. […] As the more ideological groups (such as JTJ) grew, so too did their influence over the overall recruiting pool, on members of other militias, and on the general ideology of the insurgency. In part, this explains the control which AQ in Iraq eventually exerted over other groups. They shared the same fighters–who were often more loyal to AQ than to their rivals.²⁶ 

Consider the return of insurgent presence in Fallujah and Hit. Leaders loyal to Abdullah al-Janabi infiltrated back into Fallujah, bringing with them SAR military officers who were loyal to the insurgent-controlled Fallujah Brigade.²⁷ These forces were already AQI-sympathetic but they soon became members. Likewise in Hit, Ansar al-Sunnah (an AQ affiliate, henceforth ‘AS’) controlled most insurgents in the city by mid-April. AQI’s network of affiliate and sympathizer groups carried its ideological influence far beyond its own membership, making it easier to expand and repeat the process anew.

In early April 2005, AQI staged two major attacks against Abu Ghraib Prison and Camp Gannon with mixed results. On 2 April, “One hundred fifty fighters led by Sheikh Abbas Khalifa Thumil al-Essawi combined indirect fire, small arms fire, IEDs, and VBIEDs in a complex attack. The purported goal of the attack was to execute tha’ar ([specifically tribal] blood vengeance) against the Coalition for killing several of Sheikh Abbas’s family members and to liberate those of his followers who were being held at the prison.” (42) Allegedly, Zarqawi himself helped plan the attack. His close lieutenants Abu Anas al-Shami and Abu Muhammad al-Lubnani participated and were killed in the raid.²⁸ Note the convergence of interests between AQI and Shaykh Abbas’ tribe. After the attack, AQI published four statements that claimed responsibility, described the planning, vowed further strikes, and revealed combat footage. Despite its failure, the attack had great propagandistic value:

Following reports of the Abu Ghraib attack, insurgent propaganda led to an increase in donations, morale and momentum for Anbari insurgent groups, particularly for those that cited minimal insurgent casualties and numerous Coalition soldiers killed. The target audience for this propaganda was Iraqis already disposed towards the insurgency in order to embolden them to conduct similar attacks. Even though the attack was repulsed, insurgents were killed and detained, and their objective not achieved, the Arab satellite media portrayed it as a brave attempt to free abused prisoners, which only added to the propaganda value of the attack. (43)

The following attack against Camp Gannon on 11 April was far less successful. Indeed, it planted the seeds for the mass tribal revolt, or the Sahwa, against AQI. The group targeted Camp Gannon for three reasons:

First, AQI needed to show the tribes of the area that it was in charge of the region, and Camp Gannon was a constant reminder of the Coalition’s permanent presence. Second, although Camp Gannon’s reach along the border was limited, it severely restricted the insurgents’ ability to move foreign fighters and other support into Iraq. Finally, as Camp Gannon restricted the flow of goods and resources from Syria, it accounted for a loss of monthly revenue to the insurgents.²⁹

The attack began with mortar fire, followed by “three suicide vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices (SVBIED), preceded by a breaching vehicle and followed by a film crew/media van [already in 2005 major strike teams had their own media squads].”³⁰ Despite the complexity and sophistication, the attack killed no Marines. AQI attempted to hide this failure by claiming it had been a great success. The Husaybah population quickly figured out the truth and began to mock the fighters, who retaliated by killing one disrespectful local. The Marines detected a real break between the tribes and AQI, of which they could take advantage. Indeed, the Albu Mahal tribe would soon erupt into open revolt against AQI. We will return to this rebellion against AQI further below, for it would have an immense impact on the future relationship between the tribes and AQI and its successors. Indeed, it would impart key lessons on none other than Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

Blitz

For the rest of April, AQI waged a campaign with the aid of several militias across Iraq to end SAR attempts to politically resolve the insurgency. The campaign aided AQI in replacing the Ramadi Shura Council as the leading insurgent group due to several factors. It highlighted AQI’s substantial internal and external funding, military competence, and fighting zeal. This contrasted with the SAR groups’ persistent issues with recruitment and retention, which in turn reflected the broad perception of SAR weakness: “the decision to negotiate with the Coalition indicated SAR groups were losing the battle and no longer possessed the necessary money, power, and resolve to continue the fight.” (44) As already stated, AQI’s intransigence turned it into a vehicle for Iraqi nationalism, albeit in a new idiom. Rank-and-file SAR fighters soon began to defect en masse to AQI or its ally AS. All of this accelerated the insurgency’s ongoing ideological shift from religious nationalism to Salafi Jihadism.

Further, AQI actively pursued cooperation with SAR groups to exert even greater influence over them. For example, Zarqawi personally met with the leader of the 1920 Revolution Brigades to plan future attacks by using loyal Zobai tribesmen to conduct operations in Baghdad and Abu Ghraib. Likewise, AQI began to work with the Green Battalion by financing their top emir and issuing instructions on abducted collaborators. Further, in Fallujah, AQI paid two local SAR leaders to conduct attacks in the city, while it rebuilt its network by sending new cells and consolidating control over peripheral settlements.

During the April offensive, two operations highlight AQI’s revolutionary, rather than strictly military, aims. First, AQI sent a large deployment of fighters to Haditha to bolster the local intimidation campaign, which more closely resembled general repression. They assassinated the Haditha police chief and a major Ministry of Interior employee, then censored all television and radio broadcasts. Likewise, the fighters murdered 19 fishermen suspected of collaboration and began to target workers of reconstruction projects, government departments, and military bases. In short, AQI systematically destroyed the pro-Coalition base in Haditha, not unlike the Viet Cong’s assassination campaign as reported by Bernard Fall.³¹ Second, the departure of the Iraqi National Guard commander Fahad in Hit created an opportunity for AQI to reestablish its presence in the city with the aid of AS. AQI intimidated Fahad’s replacement into collusion despite the Ramadi Shura’s promises to ensure his personal safety. This was another example of the Shura’s weakness relative to AQI, which soon took firm control of the city:

After Fahad left Hit, AQI set up their own amirs as rulers of the city and created shari’a courts while retaliating against residents suspected of cooperating with Coalition forces. This assertion of control enabled AQI to take control of key government offices and two gas stations, even confiscating the ID cards of some city employees. (45)

AQI’s position shifted from subversion (or ‘out-administering’) to overt control. In turn, this allowed AQI and AS to cooperate at a very deep level (e.g., street operations) in the Hit-Haditha corridor, which was unusual elsewhere in Iraq.

Despite these successes, popular perception of AQI’s blitz and the Coalition’s responses was largely negative due to the escalating violence and odious control from both forces. In many settlements, the population felt caught:

The intermittent Coalition presence in towns like Hit and Haditha led to some communities being trapped in a vicious cycle of insurgent domination through murder and intimidation, the Coalition asserting presence, and insurgents reentering the community to reassert influence following Coalition departure. In extreme cases, insurgent domination meant the seizure of government buildings, the creation of shari’a courts, and the implementation of hadd punishments. Parties sympathetic to the Coalition were put at risk, purges were conducted by the insurgency, and fewer residents were willing to cooperate with the Coalition during its next operation in the area. As a result, Coalition departure bred resentment and the mood in many communities worsened with each cycle. (47)

Iraqi security forces were especially despised and resented. The routine abuses of the Public Order Brigades–theft, beatings, torture, and extrajudicial killings–had spread to all security forces. Further, this was not an issue of undisciplined units going rogue, but of active complicity at the highest levels. The Public Order Brigades and other Iraqi forces were under the control of the highly-compromised Ministry of Interior, which was itself controlled by ultra-sectarian Shia militias. As discussed before, this was all empowered by the Coalition. AQI took advantage of these perceptions by expanding its attacks against Iraqi security forces and Shia civilians while somewhat restricting attacks against Sunni civilians and their property.

Islamic Emirate of Al Qaim

Reign

Amidst the April offensive, AQI solidified its non-military base of operations in Al Qaim region and dubbed it an Islamic Emirate. After the defeat at Fallujah, AQI had shifted its core base to Al Qaim due to its highly strategic location. It was a major smuggling route for goods coming into the Iraqi black market and for foreign fighters, money, and materiel into the insurgency. Initially, AQI ingratiated itself with the local tribes by offering to partner together and provide resources to fight the Coalition. Since the tribes were collectively too weak to defeat the invaders, they agreed to join arms. Partnership quickly gave way to AQI’s unilateral control. It soon exerted enormous control over the region.

Al Qaim was one of the few areas that AQI openly governed, making it a template for shadow government elsewhere in Sunni Iraq.

Zarqawi set up shari’a courts in town, began implementing Islamic law and the hadd punishments, took over all the mosques, and killed anyone suspected of collaborating with the Coalition of central Iraqi government. AQI operatives drove around the city and its environs in trucks making certain that young men were cutting their hair and growing beards [these patrols were called the hisba]. They set up green Islamic flags on the government buildings that they controlled, publicly whipped a woman who was accused of prostitution, and created a system of volunteers to monitor violations of shari’a. (48)

Most importantly, AQI took over the smuggling networks, claiming the profits for itself, thus securing a major source of funding and materiel. In Fall’s analysis, AQI had gone beyond subversion into open administration, replacing any semblance of Iraqi government control. This had major consequences for the insurgency and AQI’s future history. Indeed, in many respects, the Islamic Emirate of Al Qaim was the embryonic Islamic State. Nearly all of the above practices would be repeated, either wholesale or lightly altered, during the ‘caliphate’ era.

Further, in the AQI administration, there was a jurist called Abu Dua, in charge of enforcing sharia through local committees, of which he was the overall leader.³² For several reasons, I believe this jurist was Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi (who was first called Abu Dua) before he gained prominence within the Islamic State movement.³³ First, this period remains a gap in Abu Bakr’s biography, despite the periods before and after it being well-known, suggesting that IS is withholding information about this time. Second, Abu Dua’s role as a jurist matches Abu Bakr’s overall profile and background. The latter was a trained theologian in Islamic studies and sharia, meaning he had the education necessary to be a jurist.³⁴ Moreover in 2006, he became the overall emir for sharia committees in the Islamic State of Iraq, suggesting he had previous leadership experience in this capacity–perhaps in Al Qaim.³⁵ Third, both Abu Dua and Abu Bakr were primarily administrative, rather than military, figures. As a jurist, Abu Dua was in a specifically non-military capacity. This matches the known biography of Abu Bakr, which shows some battlefield experience, but no combat leadership, unlike his predecessor Abu Umar al-Baghdadi. Craig Whiteside put it bluntly: Abu Bakr was not a fighter, but Abu Umar was, having become a senior leader early on, likely by late 2004.³⁶ Fourth and last, the lessons Abu Dua would have learned from the tribal revolt in Al Qaim (discussed below) would have directly informed Abu Bakr’s ‘tribal policy’ and general relationship with the tribes.

Revolt

Indeed, the Al Qaim tribes soon regretted their partnership with AQI for several reasons, most important of which was AQI’s hijacking of smuggling routes. Contrary to popular myth, the tribes did not ideologically reject AQI’s ultra-extremism. While it discomforted many tribesmen, just as many found it appealing. Many more considered it a lesser evil to the Coalition and Baghdad. What angered almost all was AQI’s supplanting of tribal control over smuggling networks, thus threatening tribal power:

To protect their equities and control the population, AQI had not been allowing the tribes to arm and protect themselves. Security in Al Qaim, and in particular, in Husaybah, had become untenable. The Albu-Mahal appointed one of their own, Major Ahmed Adiya Asaf, as the new chief of police.

 

On 2 May 2005, MAJ Ahmed was walking along Main Street in the market area of Husaybah when seven men attacked, shot, and beheaded him. AQI was publicly reinforcing its earlier declaration that AQI—not the tribes of Al Qaim—would be in charge of security, and that it would not tolerate competition of any sort. The beheading of MAJ Ahmed proved to be the last straw. The Albu-Mahal became the first tribe to openly revolt against AQI. Some would say the Sahawa began that day.³⁷

The infuriated Albu Mahal tribe began its reprisal on the day of Ahmed’s murder. The Hamza Battalion, the tribe’s 1,000-strong militia, conducted several major attacks on AQI and its local tribal allies, the Karbuli and Salmani.³⁸ The significance of this cannot be overstated. This was the first Sunni tribal revolt against the AQI, which rightly considered it a severe threat. In effect, the Albu Mahal represented dissent from AQI’s core base of support. The problem would have to be solved soon. In the background, Muhammad Mahmud Latif re-emerged as a key player. As early as March 2005, he and several leaders from disgruntled tribes and the Association of Muslim Scholars (AMS) issued a fatwa, calling on tribes in western Anbar, where Al Qaim is located, to fight AQI’s foreign fighters. By May, with Latif’s aid, the Hamza Battalion had fighters from several rival insurgent groups, tribes, and even former Iraqi security forces, all under the leadership of Shaykh Sabah, a highly competent foe:

Sheikh Sabah was the head of the Mahalawi tribe and a former member of the Fallujah Mujahideen Shura. As such, he had ties of his own to both the insurgency and local tribes that he was able to use as a force amplifier in his fight against AQI. Exploiting these connections, he was able to convince al-Asa’ab al-Iraq to turn against AQI in Husaybah and begin capturing their fighters traveling between Husaybah and Barwanah. Exploiting tensions between AQI and the Jughayfah tribe in Haditha, Sheikh Sabah persuaded the Jughayfah tribe to begin training 200 tribesmen to fight AQI in Albu Hayat and Dulab (the Jughayfah tribe later declined to carry out any attacks due to a lack of leadership) and enlisted the Albu Alwan tribe to begin attacking the group in Ramadi. Taking advantage of the differences between AQI and the Ramadi Shura Council leadership, Sheikh Sabah requested that they send fighters to al-Qa’im to reinforce his tribesmen. (50)

The tribal revolt soon coincided with a major Coalition operation against AQI, called Operation Matador, which commenced on 7 May to address the large insurgent presence in the region. The Coalition deployed 1,000 troops alongside tanks and aircraft, mainly around Ubaydi settlement, while the Albu Mahal fought around Husaybah. One Coalition success was the arrest of Ghassan Amean. Many AQI fighters regrouped in Karabilah. Coalition forces were struck by the high organization, training, discipline, and equipment of the fighters, underscoring insurgent control of Al Qaim.

Like previous operations, Matador only temporarily suppressed the insurgency. Fighters evaded Coalition forces by withdrawing into regions where they were not present. Once Coalition troops departed, the insurgents returned and restored their influence. Local fighters remained under the AQI or AS umbrella, while leaders relocated to maintain attacks and prepare for war against the Albu Mahal. For example, AQI established a major training camp near the Iraqi-Jordanian border, housing up to 250 fighters and training dozens of suicide bombers (mainly foreigners). Similarly, in Baghdadi (not to be confused with Baghdad), AQI captured the military housing complex of the 503rd Iraqi National Guard, whose commander was so intimidated that he fired any guardsmen who collaborated with the Coalition. By 30 May, the 503rd had abandoned their base. Further, the insurgency reestablished itself in eastern Anbar due to several reasons, such as “the Albu Diab tribe beginning to relax its opposition to the insurgency in the Jazira area near Ramadi, the continued lack of employment, and irrigation problems that led to a low yield harvest among the tribesmen.” (53) Thus, insurgents were able to restart their attacks and freely move in the region.

Growing Strength and Trouble

Tribal Warfare Worsens

On 10 May 2005, the Iraqi government began drafting the new constitution, but negotiations over this would be interrupted by the abductions of Anbar provincial governor Farhan and of Ramadi Shura Council leader Mohammed Daham. After Operation Matador, the Albu Mahal’s Hamza Battalion continued attacking AQI, over which it was gaining strength. In response, AS abducted governor Farhan on AQI’s orders. Since Farhan was Shaykh Sabah’s brother-in-law, this forced the Albu Mahal to cease its attacks and negotiate his release. Negotiations decidedly failed once AQI killed Farhan during a Coalition raid. His death demoralized many rank-and-file of the Hamza Battalion, leading to an informal truce. Around the same time, Coalition forces arrested Daham for instigating a riot in Ramadi. Efforts to secure his release failed due to lack of popular sympathy. His arrest led the Ramadi Shura Council to splinter. Potential infighting was prevented by AMS uniting many fighters under a new organization, to which AQI contributed money and arms. Likewise, to save what remained of the Ramadi Shura, Muhammad Mahmud Latif reforged his alliance with AQI, which he assisted by smuggling foreign fighters and armaments into Ramadi.

In late May, the Coalition launched Operation New Market to end the insurgent reign over Haditha and to maintain the pressure from Operation Matador. Roughly 1,000 Coalition and Iraqi security forces deployed to Haditha, around which they set up checkpoints to prevent insurgents from escaping. At the same time, they systematically searched through the city to locate and detain insurgents, armaments, and ammunition. Intra-insurgent fighting soon began again. The Hamza Battalion renewed its attacks on AQI, ending the informal truce after Operation Matador: “The feud between the AQI and the Hamza Battalion had led to the de facto partition of Husaybah between the two groups, with AQI holding Karabilah and the area east of the Husaybah hospital and the Hamza Battalion holding everything to the west.” (58-59) In Hit, Jaysh Muhammad and the Albu Nimr started attacking AQI and its allies, who responded in kind. AQI used its control of Haditha to stage attacks on Jaysh Muhammad in addition to the Coalition and Iraqi security forces. Uninvolved insurgents moved south to regroup in Rutbah, which was under the control of highly insurgent-sympathetic municipal leadership.

In June, AQI ramped up its efforts against the Albu Mahal while the Coalition launched another operation of dubious value. While feigning negotiations, AQI quietly assembled thousands of fighters from Baghdad, Ninawa, Diyala, and Salahuddin Governorates–that is, all of Sunni Arab Iraq–to Al Qaim area in June and July to prepare for a major battle against the Albu Mahal. Zarqawi allegedly took personal interest in the operation,³⁹ corroborated by his sightings in several settlements. (61) This is no surprise as the Albu Mahal revolt was the first Sunni resistance against AQI, posing a major threat from within its own base. Meanwhile, it continued attacking Jaysh Muhammad and allied tribes.

However, these attacks did not preclude defections, as occurred in Fallujah, where the local insurgency illustrated the broader dynamics of AQI’s relationships to local groups. AQI reintroduced cells into Fallujah while it worked with local fighters, who fell under its umbrella. These forces all loosely united under a shaykh who aided key insurgent leader Abdullah al-Janabi’s return to Fallujah:

Janabi had sworn allegiance (bay’at) to Zarqawi in 2004. Yet his local fighters in Fallujah had sworn allegiance to Janabi, not to AQI itself. However, there was only a surface distinction between the two groups without ideological, motivational, or operational significance. The double bay’at meant that the individual insurgents were bound to obey Janabi who was bound to obey Zarqawi, making them AQI affiliates through their leader. This was apparently a common phenomenon affecting the insurgency throughout 2005 and would culminate in early 2006 with the nearly complete al-Qaedization of the Sunni anti-Coalition Iraqi insurgency. (62)

By the same process, tribesmen became AQI fighters. They followed their shaykh, who in turn followed Zarqawi. Likewise, if a tribal shaykh broke off, so too did the tribesmen. In Fallujah, AQI’s resurgent strength encouraged defections from other insurgent groups, including their rival Jaysh Muhammad. This ongoing trend would accelerate especially in the latter half of 2005. While the city’s residents were apathetic towards the insurgency, they widely disliked the city government and security forces, especially the local Public Order Brigade.

Insurgent Tensions

The insurgency continued to undermine the Iraqi government by systematically infiltrating Iraqi security forces at all levels. Muhammad Mahmud Latif’s influence on the highest ranks was especially pronounced. He had intimidated the Anbar police chief into providing information on how best to infiltrate the police forces. Similarly, an unnamed Anbari official attempted to reduce Coalition presence in Ramadi to allow the Ramadi Shura Council to more freely operate: “One of the most successful examples of insurgent infiltration was [REDACTED] who worked both for MML [Latif] to spy on top-level Iraqi military meetings as a bodyguard for a commanding officer in the Iraqi armed forces in Anbar.” (72) While intimidation was a major ‘push’ factor in infiltration, funding was an equally major, if not greater, factor:

Access to funding, coupled with the inability of many Anbaris to support their families, was a major factor in the success of insurgent infiltration. The starting salary of an Iraqi police officer, facilities protection worker, or soldier was $150 a month, whereas insurgents were paid $100-200 per small arms, IED, mortar, or RPG attack. Civilians were paid $10 a day to spy on Coalition bases and checkpoints. Much of the day-to-day funding for these payments were collected or extorted from local Iraqis, though some chose to donate funding to support the insurgency at mosques, relying on anonymity to let them provide money without fear of detention. (73)

In June 2005, the Coalition launched another operation against AQI, which at the same time faced escalating attacks from the tribes and even ideological denunciations from major jihadi clerics. Coalition forces targeted AQI fighters in the Hit-Haditha corridor, which forced most to flee to Ramadi, Baghdad, or Jubbah. Perhaps encouraged by the Coalition operation, the Jughayfah tribe mounted attacks against AQI, which was now fighting tribes in three settlements: Husaybah, Hit, and Haditha. One major Coalition success was in Zaidon, where insurgents could not openly recruit anymore, instead having to offer money and support to their families as enticement. Perhaps the biggest challenge to AQI was Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi’s (Zarqawi’s mentor) denunciations of the group’s mass terror against Iraqi civilians in general and Shia civilians in particular. Zarqawi’s battlefield credentials allowed him to rebuff this criticism–especially among ‘average’ Salafi Jihadis–but it still raised concerns.⁴⁰ Yet, despite all of these troubles, AQI was materially stronger than it had ever been and it continued to grow stronger–its main issue was the perception of weakness.

This perception led Ramadi tribal and religious leaders to join Muhammad Mahmud Latif in negotiating with the Coalition, which ended up considerably weakening his power. Latif had ceased demanding Mohammed Daham’s release since he realized he could obtain more from negotiations for a ceasefire in Ramadi. His goal was to run as a political candidate in the December 2005 elections. This led many rank-and-file fighters in the Ramadi Shura Council to break off from Latif and to join AQI, which promptly requested that they begin attacks throughout the city. This sabotaged Latif’s efforts at negotiation, which had been supported by the leaders of the Ramadi Shura’s constituent groups. Thus, AQI had created a fault line within the insurgency in Ramadi. On the one side were most insurgent leaders who wished to negotiate with the Coalition, while on the other side were these leaders’ own fighters (and some of their fellow leaders) who wished to continue fighting and sided with AQI. In other words, Salafi Jihadism represented genuine popular-democratic sentiments (paradoxical as it seems), while negotiations represented distinctly elitist impulses. As a result, the main insurgent groups in Ramadi were AQI, AS, and Islamic Army of Iraq, whose members soon began defecting en masse to AQI. This situation raises troubling questions for the Marxist movement. What to do when a deeply reactionary force becomes the vehicle for popular-democratic politics? In my view, in extreme situations such as invasion or genocide, any force fighting against the aggressor is preferable. As Arghiri Emmanuel once said, “when it is a question of physical survival, there is no long term.”⁴¹ Likewise, the duty of anti-imperialists within the aggressor country is to sabotage the war effort no matter what, even if we may not like the defending force. We must not repeat the left’s failure in combating the Global War on Terror.

Returning to Ramadi, in July 2005, Latif had given up attempts at negotiations due to his much weakened influence and AQI’s threats against his life. Later that month, AQI targeted Fallujah city council member and Albu Issa tribal leader Shaykh Khamis for his opposition to the insurgency. He had originally supported the Fallujah Mujahideen Shura, but began to oppose it after the destruction in the Second Battle of Fallujah, which he blamed on the fighters. AQI thus had two reasons to kill Khamis. First, his city council membership legitimized the municipal government to the Albu Issa, who accordingly did not partake in insurgent activities. Second, the AQI-aligned Zobai tribe sought to exact revenge against the Albu Issa, which assassinating Khamis would fulfill. For both reasons, tribal dynamics were at the center. Khamis soon fled to Jordan, as did similarly-minded Albu Issa tribal leaders, so rank-and-file tribesmen began to join AQI without reservation.

Further, AQI formed a Sunni death squad, called the Umar Brigade, to target ordinary Shia and the Badr Brigade. The squad’s name was provocatively Sunni as it was named after the Caliph Umar, who is reviled by most Shia. Membership criteria were hardline Salafi Jihadi beliefs, most pertinent of which was ultra-sectarianism. The Umar Brigade soon began striking Badr, including high-level assassinations, and publicizing all attacks. Indeed, the Brigade’s formation coincided with a major AQI media effort to tailor propaganda for Anbar by setting up media committees in all major settlements, each staffed by media-savvy recruits. Disturbingly, the Brigade’s activities had popular support: 

Many Anbaris quietly supported the creation of the ‘Umar Brigade as a means to protect Iraq from Shi’a domination, enabling Zarqawi to further develop his image as ‘Defender of the Sunnis’ inside Anbar without putting his supporters there at any immediate risk, since most of the Umar Brigade’s actions took place in Baghdad or southern Iraq. (77)

This was very likely in response to the Ministry of Interior’s own Shia death squads (like Badr). Iraq’s march to sectarian civil war thus accelerated.

AQI and AS attempted to formally merge in mid-2005, but this failed due to personal rivalries and petty squabbles. Despite both groups adhering to AQ-style Salafi Jihadism, there had always been tensions. The two organizations accused each other for being poorly-organized, inexperienced, and strategically shortsighted. In addition, AS harshly criticized AQI’s brutality and disregard for civilian casualties. In fact, AS repeatedly raised these concerns to AQ Central Leadership, through escalating measures, from letters to formal representatives to Usama bin Ladin and Ayman al-Zawahiri. The latter largely echoed AS’s criticisms in a lengthy letter to Zarqawi, discovered 9 July, 2005. Zawahiri especially criticized Zarqawi’s ruthless targeting of ordinary Shia, arguing that AQI should instead focus on the Coalition to create an emirate in Iraq that could conquer nearby Sunni countries. Zarqawi ignored these points and continued his two-front war on the Coalition and the Shia. This portended the tensions between AQ Central and its Iraqi branch.

AQI Defeats the Tribal Rebellion

Tribal Warfare Continues

Through June and most of July, AQI pretended to negotiate with the Albu Mahal while it built up its forces in Al Qaim region, bringing in thousands of fighters from all four provinces of Sunni Iraq. Neither AQI nor the Albu Mahal took these talks seriously. By late June, the tribes of western Anbar openly regarded AQI as a greater threat than the Coalition, though the Coalition would not realize this until later that summer: “As a first step towards reestablishing their traditional influence over their respective cities, these tribal leaders backed an attempt by residents to expel all foreign fighters. On June 22 local residents succeeded in doing just that in Husaybah, and then turned the city over to the Hamza Battalion.” (84) However, this did not mean that all tribesmen fell in line with their shaykhs’ opposition to AQI.

In fact, many members of the Karbuli, Rawi, ‘Ubaydi, Salmani, and even the Albu Mahal remained indecisive about whether to support AQI or the Hamza Battalion. AQI was able to ensure the neutrality of many Albu Mahal tribesmen in Husaybah and Rawah by paying them off. (84)

As already stated, AQI held real authority among the grassroots of the Sunni tribes, even if the war with the Albu Mahal revealed a significant fault-line. In addition, its financial and military resources far exceeded those of the Albu Mahal’s Hamza Battalion, which suffered from arms shortages and an inability to infiltrate or adequately strike AQI’s internal structure. Further, the Hamza Battalion’s already meager resources were split thin:

In order to maintain its dominance of these necessary and lucrative smuggling routes, the Battalion was forced to dispatch 130 fighters from Husaybah to Akashat under the command of former members of the Iraqi National Guard. The Battalion leadership apparently believed that the Coalition presence in Husaybah would keep AQI at bay. In retrospect this would prove to be a fatal mistake, since the reduction in fighters, combined with shortages in weapons and ammunition, allowed AQI to overpower the Battalion in Husaybah. By the beginning of August, AQI had largely defeated the Battalion in the city, setting up their banners over public buildings and moving freely about the city without fear of attack from residents [discussed further below]. (85)

In other words, the smuggling networks at the root of the Albu Mahal-AQI war were also at the root of the Albu Mahal’s defeat by AQI. Nearly two decades later, long after AQI’s (later IS’s) defeat in Iraq, what remains are these very networks, which still operate today, perhaps with some of the same men. Class struggle persists even if the idiom through which it is expressed continues to change.

Throughout the summer, foreign fighters continued to come into Iraq, which increasingly concerned the Coalition. Although foreigners were never a large part of the insurgency or AQI (I estimate they comprised ~6% of the membership, see Appendix 2), their experience, leadership, and fanaticism gave them an outsized role in AQI. Saudi foreign fighters were especially sought as they brought substantial funds and ideological zeal (see discussion on AQAP). Unsurprisingly, they composed the largest bloc (41%) of foreigners, followed by Libyans (19%), and Syrians (8%).⁴² Interestingly, although Tunisians formed a very small portion of foreigners, they disproportionately came from one town, Ben Gardane, which led Zarqawi to allegedly say: “If Ben Gardane had been next to Falluja, we would have liberated Iraq.”⁴³ The vast majority of fighters came from Arab countries, though a handful were non-Arab, whom Zarqawi did not trust. In September, paranoid that the US and Israel were infiltrating AQI through foreign fighters, he beheaded a Tajik national on suspicion of being a spy. Soon after, Zarqawi instructed his deputies to only recruit Arabs.

This highlights a latent tendency in Islamic State history and all Arab-based Salafi Jihadism–that it is an expression of Arab religious nationalism. The intense hatred of Shia Islam is heavily coded with hatred of Persian culture and Iran, which are perceived to be Zoroastrian and pagan.⁴⁴ It is telling that Salafi Jihadis call Shia majus or ‘Magi’ (a Zoroastrian cleric). Although this was not Zarqawi’s own innovation, he deployed such rhetoric to horrific effect. Indeed, writing in 2005, Nibras Kazimi concluded: “Zarqawi’s most enduring legacy, therefore, may be the transformation of anti-Shi’ism into a central tenet of the jihadist worldview. He has argued that Islam’s victory is tied to the physical eradication of the Shi’a, and there is evidence that adherence to this policy is going to expand further among jihadists.”⁴⁵ His conclusion was correct. Since then, countless Salafi Jihadi leaders (let alone fighters and supporters) have explicitly stated that they seek to defend Sunni Arabs against ‘majusi Persian’ rather than merely ‘Shia’ expansionism. This rhetoric is very common among Salafi Jihadis in Iraq, Syria, and even Yemen, where it has been used to justify countless attacks against Shias, Alawites, and other non-Sunni Muslims. This comment on a nasheed (Islamic hymn) post speaks for itself: “O God, grant victory to Ahlas Sunnah [Sunni Muslims] in all Arab countries!” Here is another comment: “By the Lord of Glory, those days will return to the entire Arab world, jihad for the sake of God!” The forces behind Arab nationalism often overlap with those behind Salafi Jihadism, even though the movements as such are completely different.

In July 2005, the Coalition conducted Operation Sayyad I to secure Iraqi borders by preventing the entry of foreign fighters and weakening the insurgency’s hold on the border towns. This forced AQI and Ansar al-Sunnah (AS) to shift major operations to the Haditha-Haqlaniyah corridor from Al Qaim and Hit, though there likely had not been much major activity there as AQI was preparing for a massive assault on the Albu Mahal. In Haditha, the insurgents brought with them yet another round of intimidation campaigns and shadow policing. Interestingly, this primarily worsened popular opinion, not of the insurgency, but of the Coalition, whom they refused to aid: “Residents stayed in their homes or fled the area rather than assist the Coalition.” (92) In other words, the Iraqi population blamed the Coalition as the ultimate cause of their woes, including insurgent repression. The implicit attitude towards the insurgency, particularly to AQI and AS, was one of resignation. Iraqis may have disliked the fighters, but they disliked the Coalition much more. As with previous operations, Sayyad I’s main product was to simply move the insurgency from one area to another, where fighters sowed deeper roots, making it more resilient to the next operation. AS controlled Haditha and AQI controlled Haqlaniyah, while both were present in Barwanah. “All major roads were under continuous surveillance and all hospitals were controlled by the insurgency, which used them. both as medical centers and as safe havens.” (92) Further, non-AQI/AS insurgents in Haditha began to join en masse to both groups, accelerating the already significant ‘Al Qaidafication’ of the insurgency.

AQI Defeats the Albu Mahal

In western Anbar, AQI yet again returned and began recouping its losses from Sayyad I. During the operation, fighters had withdrawn from the cities and re-entered once Coalition forces had left. The smuggling of foreign fighters continued into Iraq, including Baghdad. AQI was assembling a massive force of several thousand fighters from all of Sunni Iraq to defeat the Albu Mahal. In Husaybah, there were reportedly 250 fighters residing in the palace alone.⁴⁶ Also, AQI began shipping weapons from Rawah into New Ubaydi (see map of Al Qaim) to strengthen its already strong position. In late July, AQI began its offensive against the Albu Mahal: “AQI’s fighters set up curfews and checkpoints along the main road in New Ubaydi and, using computer-generated lists and photographs, searched house-to-house for Albu Mahal tribesmen in order to kill them.” (94) Having cleared New Ubaydi, AQI paused it’s offensive to avoid drawing Coalition attention. In the meantime, the Albu Mahal and Albu Nimr tribes proposed to the Ministry of Defense the setting up of a Sunni military force against the insurgents–one of many early seeds of the Sahwa. However, the prime minister and Ministry of Interior (both Badr/SCIRI-affiliates) fiercely opposed any such idea. In response, Muhammad Mahmud Latif and Ramadi tribal leaders met to discuss the formation of a Ramadi-based Sunni division to fight AQI in the city–this portended Shaykh Sattar Abu Risha’s famous Sahwa council in Ramadi in late 2006. The proposal was positively received by both the Defense Minister and the Albu Mahal but it was ineffectual.

By this point, AQI resumed its offensive, under the personal direction of Zarqawi, highlighting how seriously he took the threat of Sunni tribal revolt. Al Qaim erupted: “Within four days, thousands of AQI fighters, heavily outnumbering the 300–400 Albu-Mahal fighters, attacked and killed 60 tribal members. They also destroyed 41 family homes by detonating each house’s propane tank, including that of Sheikh Sabah [major anti-AQI tribal leader mentioned above].”⁴⁷ The Albu Mahal paid dearly for their rebellion against AQI: “In their section of the city [Husaybah], AQI fighters reportedly began going house to house, separating out adults and adolescents from the Albu Mahal tribe and executing them in order to send a message to other Iraqi tribes about the price of fighting AQI.” (95) It is worth noting that this episode has never been discussed in Islamic State in-group history. The movement’s historians simply pretend nothing happened and for good reason: they were murdering their own base, making it an extremely embarrassing subject. Tribal dynamics added another layer to the conflict:

Exploiting the Albu Mahal’s long-standing rivalry with the Karabilah and Salmani tribes, AQI began conscripting fighters from the latter two tribes to further its influence in the al Qaim region. Karabilah, Husaybah, Sa’dah, and Ramana were now under the influence of Iraqi AQI augmented by foreign fighters. From al-Qaim, AQI was able to control western Anbar’s lucrative smuggling routes to facilitate AQAM operations throughout the Middle East and Europe. (95-96)

This led to a remarkable development. To survive, the remaining Albu Mahal tribesmen fled to local Marine outposts. Shaykh Abu Risha gets the credit for starting the Sahwa, but this was the true watershed moment. For the first time, average Sunni tribesmen considered the Coalition as not only not their enemies, but their saviors. AQI had brutally but effectively secured Al Qaim region, but this set the stage for the pro-Coalition Desert Protectors Battalion, which ultimately contributed to the Sahwa councils. In other words, the roots of AQI/ISI’s later defeat by the tribes lay in its earlier victory over the tribes. It would learn that the Sunni tribes had to be accommodated. ISI later put this lesson into terrifying practice during its 2013-14 sweep of Iraq. Interestingly, IS adopted the ‘Albu Mahal approach’ with the Shuaytat tribe. When Shuaytat tribesmen revolted after the IS conquered the tribe’s oil field, IS forces massacred up to 1,200 Shuaytat in 2014. If Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was indeed in Al Qaim during this time (under the alias Abu Dua), he would have learned many key lessons about tribal politics: flexibility of alliances, ideological independence, and importance of tribal authority.⁴⁸ Likewise, as the chief sharia jurist of the region, Abu Bakr would have personally murdered many Anbari Sunni simply because they had been tribal and followed their shaykh in rebelling against AQI. This is the most likely explanation for the odd gap in his biography during the 2005 period–note that it matches an overlapping gap in IS historiography. If this episode was embarrassing for IS, it was double so for their first so-called caliph. The sensitive nature of the Albu Mahal rebellion means it will likely never be discussed by IS sources, at least not when it comes to Abu Bakr.⁴⁹

Returning to the insurgency, in August 2005, Coalition control of Ramadi considerably deteriorated due to the release of prominent insurgent leader Abu Khattab of the Abu Harun Group.

Abu Khattab’s prominence among the Ramadi insurgents was due in part to his relationship with Anbar Ministry of Oil and Gas Deputy Director Yusif Abid Farhan al-Fahdawi. Every week, Abu Khattab or one of his lieutenants would receive a kickback from Yusif, who had turned control of his building over to the Abu Harun Group. (97)

With these resources, Abu Khattab facilitated AQI’s and AS’s penetration of the city. Under his leadership, the insurgents (Abu Harun, AQI, AS, and Islamic Army of Iraq) soon began exerting control over the city. They spread propaganda demanding the resignation of all police and Muhammad Mahmud Latif and the expulsion of all Shia. Further, they enforced sharia over the local Christian community. In response, Latif used his connections to the Dulaymi tribes to protect Shia neighborhoods from AQI–this set the stage for open warfare between Latif and AQI later on. As elsewhere in Iraq, many tribes fervently supported AQI in Ramadi:

With many Ramadi insurgent groups now working in at least tacit alliance with AQI and Ansar al-Sunna, a curious phenomenon emerged in which specific functions within the Ramadi insurgency were handled on a tribal rather than on a group or cell basis. For instance, the Albu Faraj housed foreign fighters and engaged in surveillance; the Albu Alwan acted as coordinators between the groups in the Tamim and Jazira districts and conducted small arms, IED, and kidnapping attacks; and the Albu Ghanem engaged in counterfeiting and document forgery. (97)

Rivalries in Ramadi escalated with AQI’s assassination attempt against Anbar Governor Mamoun, the goal of which was to maintain pressure against the legal political process. The attempt was during a meeting with prominent Ramadi imams to discuss Latif’s proposal of an anti-insurgent Sunni military force in the city. This was met with serious repercussions. Latif’s allies in the Numan Brigade and 1920 Revolution Brigade began hunting down AQI members who had either planned or partaken in the assassination attempt. They also urged local fighters to violently respond to AQI if they came under attack, suggesting that the rank-and-file was either too afraid of or too sympathetic to AQI to go on the offensive.

In parallel, the Coalition launched Operation Quick Strike to address its weakening grip over Haditha, where four Marine sniper teams were killed. Much like all other operations, Quick Strike involved a large force (1,000 Marines) but did not achieve any lasting success. Insurgents simply fled the affected areas (Haditha, Haqlaniyah, Barwanah), then returned once the operation was finished. Further:

Another recurring pattern, typical for insurgencies as a whole, was that local residents would assist the Coalition as long as Coalition forces were present but would also tolerate (or even support) the insurgency in their absence. At times, even the presence of Coalition forces was not enough to ensure cooperation, since recent experience had shown that they would leave and the insurgents return to exact their vengeance. (99)

As expected, the insurgency returned in great force upon Coalition departure. There were roughly 2,000 insurgents just in the Haditha-Haqlaniyah corridor, and the sharia court in the area enforced local compliance. AQI’s ‘police’ whipped a woman to death due to accusations of prostitution. Likewise: “Two men who had publicly complained about the insurgency were kidnapped within hours and decapitated, their heads displayed on spikes along the Barwanah Bridge.” (99-100) The threat was directed to the entire population of Haditha, which was placed under strict curfew. This helped expand AQI’s informal emirate.

Islamic Emirate Grows

By early September, AQI had firmly defeated the Albu Mahal tribe, which not only restored its control over the Al Qaim region but established it across western Anbar. It is worth quoting the Study at length:

Having defeated the Hamza Battalion, AQI now dominated al Qaim, Karabilah, Sadah, Ramanah, Husaybah, and ‘Ubaydi to the point of conducting armed patrols and setting up checkpoints whenever Coalition forces were not immediately present. The defeat of the Albu Mahal opened the door for AQI and its allies to consolidate their influence over a wide swath of western Anbar from the Hit-Haditha corridor all the way to Rutbah. They created a virtual “shadow government” based in Haqlaniyah and Barwanah complete with shari’a courts and a secret police force. Anticipating Coalition military action against Husaybah, AQI began contracting large numbers of Salmani and Karbuli tribesmen to serve as additional fighters in the event of a Coalition attack on the city.

 

The goal of AQI and its co-belligerents such as Ansar al-Sunna was to openly assume control of the upper Euphrates River region just as they had Fallujah in 2004 and use it as a base for further attacks east towards Ramadi and Baghdad. Hadd punishments had been implemented by AQI throughout September against suspected collaborators, Iraqi police, and any Shi’a found in the area. The frequency of these killings increased dramatically the closer the Coalition came to mounting military operations against the area. (100-101)

It is especially striking that AQI’s control did not weaken as one went east in its emirate. The group had Haditha, Haqlaniyah, and Barwanah under as tight control as the Al Qaim region:

A study of captured documents suggests that AQI had in fact created an infant “state within a state” in Haditha, Haqlaniyah, and Barwanah. The incipient state had centralized command structures, intelligence and security cells, shari’a courts, a Shura Council, and a highly developed financial infrastructure. This bureaucracy, while not fully mature, generated reports, kept meticulous records, and had set rules for conducting business.

 

The documents show several other interesting facts about AQI in this part of Anbar. First, the development of guerrilla tactics and therefore the evolution of the insurgency did not occupy much of the attention of the leadership. Second, religio-ideological justifications for their actions dominated the internal documents, suggesting that these justifications were more than simply talk, but rather speak to the deeper motivations of many AQAM members. [The author is responding to the misconception that the insurgents were using Salafi Jihadism as a mask for their ‘true’ motives.] Finally, while much time was devoted to local concerns and figures, almost no thought was focused on understanding the Coalition—its motivations, potential strategies and tactics. These documents indicate the insurgents understood the fact that insurgency is a political rather than military struggle and that all politics are based on local issues. [The author is responding to the common and ill-conceived misconception that Salafi Jihadism could not be understood as a political movement.]

 

A closer look at the situation in the Haditha region reveals some details about the larger state that AQI hoped to create in Anbar. AQI organized their insurgent cells by city block and street and enforced their version of shari’a throughout the area with their police force, security forces and court system. Reports on “immoral” residents (such as prostitutes or homosexuals) were collected and stored, as was a “black list” of people wanted by AQI for various infractions. The management of disputes and the mediation of local grievances were of special concern for AQI, which took the time, for instance, to arbitrate a dispute over land use near Haditha. (105)

The above analysis could be applied almost entirely to the later ‘caliphate’ phase of Islamic State, when it controlled vast swathes of Iraq and Syria. AQI and AS also maintained a significant presence in Ramadi, where it could deploy platoon-sized groups due to its intimidation of Iraqi security forces. However, AQI contended not only with Coalition and Iraq security forces, but Muhammad Mahmud Latif’s forces as well, which formed the other half of Ramadi’s ~1,200 insurgent fighters. Many of them regularly traveled to Khalidiyah and Habbaniyah, which “served as important safe havens and way stations for an estimated 900 insurgents traveling between Fallujah and Ramadi.” (102) This route was especially important because Fallujah remained under firm Coalition control, serving as the Iraqi government’s ideal model for Anbar. The 4,000 fighters in the city before the Second Battle of Fallujah, had now dropped to ~800. The insurgency would continue its efforts to retake the city.

Election Time

More Coalition Operations

During October 2005, amidst the intense insurgent activity, there was a major referendum on the proposed Iraqi constitution. Unsurprisingly, voter turnout was minimal in areas under AQI’s control while it was high under the Coalition’s control and Latif’s influence. This reflected the split in the insurgency, with the one side advocating total rejection, and the other side advocating cautious engagement. It is telling that the final aim for both was to prevent Shia control of Iraq. In Fallujah and other non-insurgent cities, the prestigious Association of Muslim Scholars endorsed voting against the constitution to prevent Shia parties from taking all power. Indeed, Latif claimed that voting against the proposed constitution was equivalent to jihad. This was in response to AQI’s and prominent global AQ clerics’ charges that voting was equivalent to apostasy to be punished with execution. It is difficult to determine which side was ‘correct’ (accounting for the major caveat that both were sectarian). AQI’s militant jihadism brought untold suffering upon Sunni Iraqis, but it was paradoxically the most anti-imperialist force in the country. Latif’s approach was far less painful but accepted Coalition control over Iraq. Further, AQI’s evolution into IS shows that its long-term project, after national liberation from the US, had no liberatory component. In contrast, after the defeat of IS in Iraq in 2017, the Progress Party has rebuilt and redeveloped Sunni Iraq – yet the Green Zone Regime remains and there is no credible challenge to it. This tragedy will recur through the rest of our study of the Sunni Iraqi insurgency.

Through October and November 2005, the Coalition conducted several operations to stabilize the country for the December elections. Unlike previous operations, these significantly suppressed the insurgency and turned the tide for several months. AQI had created an unofficial Islamic emirate across western Anbar, with Al Qaim as the capital. Operation Sayyad II directly targeted this emirate in order to secure Iraqi borders and reduce AQI’s attack capacity. By the end of the operation, 1,584 AQI operatives were captured, and 529 were dead, including several major leaders. However, most top- and mid-level leadership escaped and went underground. At the same time as Sayyad II, the Coalition launched Operation Steel Curtain, which

specifically targeted the insurgent networks headquartered in Husaybah. AQI had a virtual free run of this part of al-Qaim since driving the Hamza Battalion out of Husaybah in August. During September and October, the AQI leadership in the city was able to plan a major attack on Camp Gannon with the goal of seizing or destroying the base. Executed in late October, the attack, though unsuccessful at seizing Camp Gannon, was sophisticated and complex. The Coalition clearly needed to disrupt the insurgency in Husaybah. (109)

By mid-November, the Coalition had gained control over not only Husaybah but much of Al Qaim region, with 139 AQI operatives killed and 256 captured. These operations revealed the extent of AQI’s influence over Iraqi society, especially in western Anbar, and the sophistication of its bureaucratic and operational apparatus. For example, Coalition forces discovered a highly detailed record of expenditures for sixty-five fighters during Sayyad II. Likewise, they found a document that 

detailed an AQI leadership meeting focused on how to take control of a city. The document discussed Haditha and Barwanah in particular and included the names of individuals approved to take over the land in the city and what type of land they were to receive. Many of the individuals listed were still involved in local government in early 2006. (110)

They also found a transcript of an insurgent meeting about local residents who had been accused of various ‘crimes’ such as being Coalition informants or attempting to join the Iraqi police. Coalition forces seemed to realize just how powerful the insurgency had become. They substantially degraded AQI’s influence across western Anbar. Insurgent strongholds such as Al Qaim region, Haditha, Hit, and Rawah were all under meaningful Coalition control although AQI continued to stage attacks to varying degrees of severity.

On November 9, AQI conducted a major bombing in Amman, Jordan (Zarqawi’s native country) which provoked massive outcry among not only Jordanians but AQ Senior Leadership (AQSL). Non-Jordanian suicide bombers attacked several major hotels, killing 57 and wounding 60. The attacks killed more Jordanians than any foreigners and one attack targeted a Palestinian wedding. Popular revulsion at the attacks forced Zarqawi to provide (meek) defenses of his actions, which were unconvincing, self-serving, and laughable. He claimed “that AQI had attacked the hotel because Israeli intelligence officials were meeting there and that the roof had fallen on the wedding hall as a result of the explosion.” (112) AQSL was enraged by the attacks, which was the last straw for their growing impatience with Zarqawi’s brutality. Top leader Atiyah al-Jaziri personally wrote the rebuke to Zarqawi:

In an uncharacteristically blunt letter, AQSL Atiyah al-Jaziri scolded Zarqawi for his actions, informing him that all operations had to be subordinate to AQAM’s (Al Qaida and Associated Movements) long-term goals and rebuking him for undermining AQI’s ability to win hearts and minds in Iraq. According to al-Jaziri, Zarqawi’s widening scope of operations was alienating the Sunni community and reducing support for AQAM. Zarqawi was therefore ordered to cease killing popular Iraqi Sunni leaders, to forge strategic relationships with moderate Sunni tribal and religious leaders, and to follow all previous orders from ‘Usama bin Ladin and Ayman al-Zawahiri concerning war with the Shi’a (i.e. to cease agitating for sectarian violence) and operations outside of Iraq. Al-Jaziri then proceeded to criticize Zarqawi’s advisors in Iraq for their inadequate political and religious expertise, warned Zarqawi against arrogance, and implied that there might be someone more qualified than Zarqawi to command AQI. He closed with an order for Zarqawi to send couriers with regular reports on his activity to AQSL in Waziristan or use jihadi discussion forums to speak with AQSL directly. (113)

Before the AQ-IS split, the troubles between AQ Central and its Iraqi affiliate were well known in and embarrassing to jihadi circles. The Abbotabad Letters reveal that Usama bin Ladin himself was deeply disturbed by his Iraqi followers.⁵⁰ However, since the split, most AQ supporters and even AQ itself prefer to ignore these inconvenient facts in order to claim Zarqawi (and therefore his prestige) as ‘their own’ against IS, which (correctly) sees him as their founder.

AQI’s failure to prevent the constitutional referendum led Sunni elites, including insurgent affiliates, to prepare for the December elections. Instead of fielding independent candidates, Sunni parties pooled their resources and ran joint tickets. The Iraqi al-Tawafuq Front was an especially favorable electoral coalition as it was well-connected to Anbari provincial elites who could meaningfully threaten the insurgency. Further, Anbari Governor Mamoun engaged local imams and tribal leaders who had opposed the constitutional referendum to build confidence and establish security for the elections. At the same time, the locus of insurgent activity shifted from western to eastern Anbar, especially Ramadi, which had light Coalition presence due to their deployment to the west for Sayyad II and Steel Curtain. Still, the balance of power had shifted to the Coalition and Iraqi government, which worsened insurgent divisions. More moderate groups such as 1920 Revolution Brigade and Islamic Army of Iraq sought to join the political process to increase their power and exit the insurgency without bitter war to the end. Even AS began to open up to the idea of negotiations. In response, AQI became increasingly desperate:

Zarqawi told a senior AQI leader, who was later captured by Coalition forces, that following the group’s losses in 2005, only starting a full- fledged civil war in Iraq would convince the other insurgent groups to support his strategy for jihad in Iraq. Among those insurgents that the senior AQI leader recounted as having objected to this sectarian strategy were 1920 Revolution Brigade, Jaysh Mujahideen, Jaysh Islami, and Ansar al- Sunna. The latter was of particular concern because it was attempting to make these objections known to the al Qaeda senior leadership. (119)

Despite AQI’s major setbacks, the structural conditions of Anbar still favored them:

Corruption remained widespread among local officials and elites in Ramadi. Young men had only a limited number of ways to achieve status and financial independence. During the former regime, they could join the Iraqi army, but in Ramadi government employees were often paid late or simply not paid for months on end. […] As it sought to regroup in Anbar from 2005 onwards, AQI would exploit these financial hardships to serve its ideological goals and begin recruiting new fighters. (119)

However, for the time being, AQI’s activities would remain at a low level.

The elections and the days preceding it were largely peaceful, with the help of moderate insurgent groups, which was a major propaganda blow to AQI. After the announcement of political parties on November 5 and the formation of electoral coalitions, campaigning began in full swing. “In the most secure areas like Fallujah, this took the form of political rallies, speeches at mosques, and television advertisement blitzes, while in less secure areas like those in western Anbar the only sources of election news other than national television were the mosques and meetings of tribal leaders.” (120) The Sunni parties “stressed Sunni identity politics, opposition to federalism, condemnation of Shi’a militia activity, support for the reconstitution of the Iraqi army, and a timeline for Coalition withdrawal.” (120) AQI realized it could no longer simply murder anyone who voted and focused its attacks on the Coalition, for example in Al Qaim, Hit, and Rutbah. These were largely ineffective. For instance, in Ramadi, Muhammad Mahmud Latif’s forces drove out AQI from several neighborhoods to establish security at the polls on election day. More broadly, “Non-AQI insurgents led by [Latif] expressed their continued willingness to engage the Iraqi government and the Coalition, even to the point of providing security at polling sites, but regarded that willingness as contingent upon the results of the election and the share that Sunnis received in the new government.” (121) It is worth noting that the Sunni insurgents were not the only forces ready to exert force on the electoral process to obtain favorable results. Both the Badr Brigades and the Mahdi Army mobilized in case election results did not match what they considered to be the ‘correct’ results (i.e., those favoring Dawa and SCIRI). Despite AQI’s significant strength throughout the year, going so far as to form an emirate, the organization was now firmly on the back foot. In late 2005, one could reasonably guess that the insurgency would be defeated in the new year. In fact, it would become so strong that the US Army itself assessed that it was impossible to militarily defeat.

Appendices

1) Corrections and Considerations to ‘Monotheism and Struggle’

One of my favorite jihadism analysts, Mr0rangetracker on Twitter, read and kindly reviewed ‘Monotheism and Struggle.’ He raised many good points, the most important of which are shared here. At his request, I will not exactly reproduce his comments.

A) I uncritically cited Craig Whiteside’s assertion that the “veteran jihadists–most with experience gained in al-Qaeda’s camps in Afghanistan before 2001–put together the blueprint for the future Islamic State.” While these veteran jihadists, like Zarqawi himself, played an outsized role, the Iraqi Salafi underground was the main driving force behind the Islamic State movement. Of the Iraqi Salafi Jihadis who later joined IS (in all its forms), very few had fought in Afghanistan. Most were militants within Iraq. Umar Hadid and Abu Umar al-Baghdadi are two prominent examples.

B) I uncritically reproduce the Study’s description of Jama’at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad (JTJ) as ‘Al Qaida.’ It was certainly an Al Qaida-affiliate (through Zarqawi and Sayf al-Adl), but it was not AQ as such. Further, Zarqawi’s group cannot be called JTJ until they were well-established in Iraq in 2003. Despite common misconception, JTJ was founded some time in 2003 before the First Battle of Fallujah at the Rawah Camp (established before the invasion)–not in Afghanistan. Among its original founders were Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Abu Anas al-Shami, Abu Muhammad al-Lubnani, Abu Usama al-Tunisi, Manaf al-Rawi, Umar Hadid, Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, and Abu Ayyub al-Masri (aka Abu Hamza al-Muhajir).

C) I incorrectly portrayed Hadid as more moderate than Zarqawi due to insufficient research. In particular, I claimed that JTJ’s collaboration with the Mahdi Army in Fallujah suggested that Zarqawi’s ultra-sectarianism was not yet present among Iraqi members like Hadid. This was false. In fact, as Mr0range put it, “Hadîd belonged to the part of the pre-war underground that split from the mainstream due to their ultra-sectarianism.” In hindsight, I should have suspected this because it is unlikely that Hadid would have been an original IS founder or as close as he was to Zarqawi had he not already shared very similar beliefs. This raises even more troubling links between the Sunni Iraqi insurgency and the Islamic State movement. From his profile, Hadid would be the perfect proof against the notion that Fallujah insurgents were ‘Al Qaida extremists.’ He was born and raised in the city, belonged to a major Anbari tribal confederation (al-Dulaym), had worked a plebeian job (electrician), and was among the first insurgents to fight against the Coalition. Hadid was the chief of Fallujah city defense in both battles, yet he was a hardline Salafi Jihadi, an extremist within an already extreme movement. He was there at Rawah (IS nucleus) and was among the original twelve founders of the movement. As I stated in ‘Monotheism and Struggle,’ Umar Hadid remains the only Iraqi IS member to have ever appeared unmasked on film with Zarqawi. He still appears in their media, and across the years, they have revealed his previously unknown presence in key footage. Just recently, in an installment of War and Media dedicated entirely to Hadid, IS revealed his presence among fighters in the streets of Fallujah:

This installment was especially interesting as it reframed Hadid–not Zarqawi–as the spiritual grandfather of the IS movement. Indeed, towards the end of the film, the narrator states that Hadid lives on through IS:

Umar Hadid’s battle is not over yet. Look carefully around you to make sure of this. Wherever you look in Iraq, Syria, or even Khurasan and Africa–you will find the shaykh [Hadid] there. He chases it wherever it goes. It is no longer about a particular neighborhood in Fallujah or a street in Ramadi. Rather, it [the IS movement] has become a terrifying nightmare that crosses countries and borders.

Quite telling.

D) I uncritically cited the Study’s claim that JTJ’s “foreign fighters loyal to Hadid and Zarqawi patrolled Fallujah. They directed traffic and set up checkpoints. Imposing shari’a in the city, they required women to wear the hijab and implemented hadd punishments.” While foreign fighters certainly did this work, most of the enforcement was likely done by Iraqi fighters. This makes more sense. Despite its reputation, JTJ paid close attention to Iraqi views and expended significant effort (led by Lubnani and Shami) to ‘Iraqify’ or embed itself in Iraqi networks. Although Fallujah was a conservative city before the war, this does not mean its residents believed in anything resembling Salafi Jihadism. Thus it is unlikely that they would have passively accepted the harsh orders of foreign fighters. This would have been too flagrantly arrogant. The Iraqi fighters would have had more intimate knowledge of the local population and more legitimacy in enforcement. I am increasingly skeptical that JTJ was a foreigner-comprised organization beyond a few months in 2003. Further, the quoted claim from the Study was likely part of a long line of American propaganda (or wishful thinking) that the violence against them and most of the radicalism in Iraq was entirely from foreigners. Mr0range rightly highlighted the absurdity of this line when we really think about the category of ‘foreigners in Iraq.’ This absurdity did not escape Zarqawi, who, in May 2005, replied to the Coalition: “Who is the foreigner, O cross-worshippers?! You are the ones who came to a land of Muslims from your distant corrupt land!” He was not exactly wrong.

E) I uncritically cited sources that claimed that Abu Muhammad al-Lubnani and Abu Anas al-Shami were killed in an airstrike prior to the Second Battle of Fallujah. This is false. They were killed in the 2005 attempted prison break of Abu Ghraib. I found the claim about Lubnani in an alleged biography posted by Kyle Orton, which should have concerned me. Orton is an extremely bogus analyst who peddles neocon drivel and regularly plagiarizes actually insightful analysts, including Mr0rangetracker. I should have cross-referenced the Lubnani biography he posted. Let this be a lesson: Always check your sources.

2) Proportion of Foreigners in AQI and the Insurgency

I estimate that foreign fighters comprised ~6% of AQI. I base this on the Sinjar Records, which revealed that almost 700 foreign fighters entered Iraq between August 2006 and August 2007. In late 2006, when declaring the Islamic State of Iraq, Abu Hamza al-Muhajir boasted that the “12,000 fighters of Al Qaida declare loyalty to Abu Umar al-Baghdadi.” This figure corresponds with the US military’s estimate of insurgent fighters, which in early 2005 was ~10,000. The insurgency expanded later that year and in the following year, so this figure would have increased. As already established, by 2006, the insurgency and AQI were effectively equivalent, meaning its membership comprised the vast majority of insurgent fighters, so 12,000 can be treated as roughly the number of insurgents operating in late 2006. Therefore, the Sinjar Records suggest that foreign fighters were at least 5.83% of AQI/ISI (and the broader insurgency) in 2006-07. When accounting for higher estimates of insurgent fighter counts–which range from 20,000 to 40,000–the foreign contingent represented 1.75-3.5% of the insurgency. This proportion was likely larger during the early phases of the insurgency, particularly early 2004. In that period, I very loosely estimate that foreign fighters comprised ~10-15% of AQI (then called JTJ). For further discussion of foreign fighters in AQI/ISI, see:

• Joseph Felter and Brian Fishman, Al-Qa’ida’s Foreign Fighters in Iraq: A First Look at the Sinjar Records (West Point: Combating Terrorism Center, 2007)
• Brian Fishman, ed., Bombers, Bank Accounts, and Bleedout: Al-Qa’ida’s Road In and Out of Iraq (West Point: Combating Terrorism Center, 2008)

3) Insurgent Profile of 2005

The average insurgent of 2005 differed little from that of 2004. The rank-and-file and much of the battlefield leadership remained overwhelmingly plebeian:

In 2005, the typical street-level insurgent captured in Anbar was an Iraqi male about 28 years old, much more likely to be married than to be unmarried, and educated at a high-school level of less. Most captured detainees were associated with tribes and had some military experience. These conclusions are based on an analysis of more than 5,500 tactical interrogation reports gathered from intelligence sources. […]

Almost all of the insurgents captured in 2005 claimed to be Iraqi (98.3%), with only 1.7% claiming to be of foreign origin. Of those foreigners, the most frequent origins named were Jordan, Syria, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt.

The majority of detainees were associated with blue collar or other labor occupations. The most common occupation claimed was shepherd or farmer (21.6%), though the largest grouping of occupations was blue collar workers (23.9%), which included jobs like electrician, carpenter, and laborer. Though only 5.9% of detainees claimed to be actively unemployed, it is likely that many more detainees were actually unemployed but provided their previous job or training when asked their occupation. In addition, a noteworthy fraction of detainees (8.0%) were employed in positions of trust such as the Iraqi police or local security forces. (126)

If nothing else, these demographics reveal the Sunni Iraqi insurgency to be a classic struggle of national liberation, not unlike the one in Afghanistan or the one ongoing in Palestine. Fortunately, Hamas and Kataib al-Qassam are far less odious than either AQI or the Taliban.

4) Study of the Insurgency in Anbar Province Links

Chapter 2: https://ahec.armywarcollege.edu/CENTCOM-IRAQ-papers/0870.%20chapter2.pdf

Chapter 3: https://ahec.armywarcollege.edu/CENTCOM-IRAQ-papers/0989.%20chapter3.pdf

Chapter 4: https://ahec.armywarcollege.edu/CENTCOM-IRAQ-papers/1000.%20Chapter%204.pdf

Chapter 5: https://ahec.armywarcollege.edu/CENTCOM-IRAQ-papers/1002.%20chapter5.pdf

Chapter 6: https://ahec.armywarcollege.edu/CENTCOM-IRAQ-papers/1007.%20Chapter%206.pdf

Chapter 7: https://ahec.armywarcollege.edu/CENTCOM-IRAQ-papers/1004.%20Chapter%207.pdf

Declassified CENTCOM Iraq Papers: https://ahec.armywarcollege.edu/CENTCOM-IRAQ-papers/

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1. Author’s Note: Page numbers in parentheses refer to Chapter 5 of the Study of the Insurgency in Anbar Province. Where necessary, administrative language has been omitted from quotations to ensure clarity. Content remains unchanged. Unless otherwise stated, all emphases and bracketed notes are mine. I encourage readers to read the Twitter links in the footnotes since these discuss Islamic State history which could not be addressed in the main body of the piece.
2. All parenthetical citations are to the following source: Multi-National Force – West, “Anbar: Insurgency Grows, Strengthens, Elections (2005),” Study of the Insurgency in Anbar Province, Iraq, June 13, 2007, https://ahec.armywarcollege.edu/CENTCOM-IRAQ-papers/1002.%20chapter5.pdf.
3. For more on Hamas’s rivalries with Salafi Jihadis, see: Editorial, “Radical Islam in Gaza,” International Crisis Group, March 29, 2011, https://www.crisisgroup.org/middle-east-north-africa/eastern-mediterranean/israelpalestine/radical-islam-gaza; See also this thread: Christopher Anzalone (@IbnSiqilli), “Hamas’ decision to participate in the 2006 Palestinian legislative elections…” X.com, October 12, 2023, https://twitter.com/IbnSiqilli/status/1712515427559960592?t=zZvG-GIMaOjC0ixN7avN_g&s=19.
4. For more on Badr’s parent organization, SCIRI, see: Editorial, “Shiite Politics in Iraq: The Role of the Supreme Council,” International Crisis Group, November 15, 2007, https://www.crisisgroup.org/middle-east-north-africa/gulf-and-arabian-peninsula/iraq/shiite-politics-iraq-role-supreme-council.
5. Of the 110,000 members of the Ministry of Interior, most were reported to have partaken in sectarian violence against Sunni Iraqis. See: Andrew Buncombe and Patrick Cockburn, “Iraq’s Death Squads: On the Brink of Civil War,” The Independent, February 26, 2006; For Muqtada al-Sadr’s and the Mahdi Army’s role, see: Nir Rosen, “Anatomy of a Civil War,” Boston Review, November 8, 2006, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/iraq-s-death-squads-on-the-brink-of-civil-war-6108236.html.
6. Mona Mahmood, Maggie O’Kane, Chavala Madlena and Teresa Smith, “Revealed: Pentagon’s Link to Iraqi Torture Centres,” The Guardian, May 6, 2013,  https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/mar/06/pentagon-iraqi-torture-centres-link.
7. Despite popular myth, sectarianism during the Iraqi insurgency was not a strictly Sunni initiative, nor was it a mere response to Sunni victimization of Shias. The cleansing of Baghdad (among other crimes) went far beyond any ‘eye-for-an-eye’ views of justice. See: Edward Hunt, “Dispatches from Baghdad: Sectarian War in Iraq, 2006–2007,” Middle Eastern Studies 56, no. 1 (2020), 100-15.
8. For Abu Umar’s official Islamic State biography, see: https://archive.is/4bryh.
9. JTJ stands for Jama’at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad, AQI’s predecessor.
10. Bernard Fall, “The Theory and Practice of Insurgency and Counterinsurgency,” Naval War College Review 18, no. 3 (1965), https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Portals/7/military-review/Archives/English/MilitaryReview_20151031_art009.pdf.
11. To be precise, 90% of attacks against Coalition forces were in the ‘Sunni triangle,’ a densely-populated and largely Sunni region of Iraq. During the war, Sunni insurgents exerted enormous influence over the triangle, most spectacularly in the form of attacks on the Coalition. See: Graeme P. Herd, “Victory is Not Possible, Defeat is Not an Option: the U.S., Iraq and the Middle East,” Marshall Center, December 2006, https://www.marshallcenter.org/en/publications/occasional-papers/victory-not-possible-defeat-not-option-us-iraq-and-middle-east.
12. At one point, I had access to all four entries of Salil al-Sawarim in the original HD resolutions but I regrettably did not download them.
13. James Glanz, “Insurgents Wage Precise Attacks on Baghdad Fuel,” New York Times, February 21, 2005, https://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/21/world/middleeast/insurgents-wage-precise-attacks-on-baghdad-fuel.html.
14. Ibid.
15. Ibid.
16. VBIED stands for Vehicle-Borne Improvised Explosive Device.
17. Joseph Felter and Brian Fishman, Al-Qa’ida’s Foreign Fighters in Iraq: A First Look at the Sinjar Records (West Point: Combating Terrorism Center, 2007), 7.
18. Not to be confused with the current AQAP founded in 2009 in Yemen.
19. “Saudi Mujahidin, “in Iraq… ‘a one-way ticket’,” (in Arabic) Al Arabiya, March 20, 2005, https://www.alarabiya.net/articles/2005%2F03%2F20%2F11400 [Archive].
20. Unfortunately, there is no formal study of the ideological and membership overlaps between AQAP and AQI (and its successors). The closest we have are Mr0rangetracker’s posts over the years on his Twitter timeline (prime example below); and Aymenn Jawad al-Tamimi’s biography translation project of Arabian jihadis who have official Islamic State approval. See: Mr. Orange (@mr0rangetracker), “This screen (~ min 44) from the latest #IS video from Yemen  shows a number of deceased #AQAP members that #IS approves of…” X.com, May 11, 2020, https://twitter.com/Mr0rangetracker/status/1259940826915975173?t=GwZQPcWLQaioZtEdsLN8yg&s=19; Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi, “‘The Pious Figures of al-Jazira’: Lives of Jihadists from the Arabian Peninsula,” Aymenn’s Monstruos Publications, January 3, 2024, https://aymennaltamimi.substack.com/p/the-pious-figures-of-al-jazira; On the two groups’ shared operations: “AQAP’s relationship with al-Zarqawi was so good that he allegedly ordered the organization to carry out a September 2006 attack on Yemeni oil installations,” see: Barak Barfi, “AQAP’s Soft Power Strategy in Yemen,” CTC Sentinel 3, no. 11 (Nov. 2010). For an extended study of the original AQAP, see: Thomas Hegghammer, Jihad in Saudi Arabia: Violence and Pan-Islamism since 1979 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). For Muhajir’s biography, see the thread in footnote 21.
21. I agree with him but a full defense of this claim is out of scope of this study. See: Mr. Orange (@mr0rangetracker), “Another aspect is the old link between the original #AQAP and #IS…” X.com, August 14, 2023, https://twitter.com/Mr0rangetracker/status/1691216907888730114?t=712n7gAbr8lBU1fttOVB5g&s=19.
22. AQAP leader Muhammad al-Rashid was one such ISI veteran (cf. Mr0rangetracker threads in note 20-21). Murad Batal al-Shishani, “Who Are Ansar al-Sharia in Yemen?,” (in Arabic), BBC Arabic, March 7, 2012, https://www.bbc.com/arabic/middleeast/2012/03/120305_ansar_yemen [Archive].
23. Craig Whiteside and Anas Elallame, “Accidental Ethnographers: The Islamic State’s Tribal Engagement Experiment,” Small Wars & Insurgencies 31, no. 2 (2020), 219-240; See also Haroro J. Ingram, Craig Whiteside, and Charlie Winter (eds.), ISIS Reader: Milestone Texts of the Islamic State Movement (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), 134-141.
24. Mr. Orange (@mr0rangetracker), “Even a year more I’d say. The point I am trying to make is that the current,” X.com, May 11, 2020, https://twitter.com/Mr0rangetracker/status/1259959558367252481?t=Hv6gbzHnTbdngBMIE4MkJA&s=19.
25. AQAP’s collaboration with the UAE was part of a much larger effort, in which AQAP fighters were the US-backed Gulf Coalition’s unofficial army against Ansarallah (colloquially, the Huthis) in Yemen. In other words, the US, KSA, and UAE directly supported a group extreme enough to have once had IS approval–this is a story which I will analyze at another time. See: Maggie Michael, Trish Wilson, Lee Keath, “AP Investigation: US allies, al-Qaida militants battle rebels in Yemen,” Associated Press, August 6, 2018), https://apnews.com/article/saudi-arabia-united-states-ap-top-news-middle-east-international-news-f38788a561d74ca78c77cb43612d50da.
26. Rob Ashlar, “Monotheism and Struggle: The Story of Iraqi Insurgency (2003-04),” Cosmonaut Magazine,  January 29, 2024, https://cosmonautmag.com/2024/01/monotheism-and-struggle-the-story-of-iraqi-insurgency-2003-04/.
27. Ibid.
28. In Part 1, I stated that Shami and Lubnani were killed in a Coalition airstrike before Fallujah II. This was incorrect. I had read mixed reports of their deaths–with some claiming Fallujah and others claiming Abu Ghraib–so I was not sure which was the case. I decided on the Fallujah story since it was stated in the Anbar Study. On Twitter, Mr0rangetracker informed me that Shami and Lubnani were indeed killed in the Abu Ghraib attack. See Appendix 1E.
29. William Knarr et al, “Al-Sahawa: An Awakening in Al Qaim,” Combatting Terrorism Exchange 3, no. 2 (May 2013), 5-30.
30. Ibid.
31. Fall, op. cit.
32. “Al Qaeda Facilitator Likely Dead in Coalition Air Strike,” Defense Visual Information Distribution Service (DVIDS), October 26, 2005, https://www.dvidshub.net/news/3496/al-qaeda-facilitator-likely-dead-coalition-air-strike.
33. I owe this theory to Craig Whiteside, who also sent me the DVIDS link about Abu Dua.
34. Aymenn Jawad al-Tamimi, “An Account of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi & Islamic State Succession Lines,” aymennjawad.org, January 24, 2016, https://www.aymennjawad.org/2016/01/an-account-of-abu-bakr-al-baghdadi-islamic-state.
35. Aymenn Jawad al-Tamimi, “’Stations’ of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s Life: Translation and Analysis,” aymennjawad.org, November 7, 2019, https://aymennjawad.org/2019/11/stations-of-abu-bakr-al-baghdadi-life-translation.
36. This was over Twitter direct messages. Whiteside informed me that he spoke to the JSOC commander who led the hunt for Abu Bakr. He also believes Abu Bakr was Abu Dua.
37. William Knarr et al, op. cit.
38. Ibid.
39. Ibid.
40. For an excellent analysis of the Zarqawi-Maqdisi rivalry, see: Nibras Kazimi, “A Virulent Ideology in Mutation: Zarqawi Upstages Maqdisi,” Hudson Institute, September 12, 2005, https://www.hudson.org/national-security-defense/a-virulent-ideology-in-mutation-zarqawi-upstages-maqdisi.
41. Arghiri Emmanuel, “White Settler Colonialism and the Myth of Investment Imperialism,” New Left Review I no. 73 (May/June 1972).
42. Felter, Fishman, op. cit.
43. George Packer, “Tunisia and the Fall After the Arab Spring,” The New Yorker, March 21, 2016, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/03/28/tunisia-and-the-fall-after-the-arab-spring.
44. Zarqawi borrowed some of this Arab-centric anti-Shi’ism from Muhammad Abdullah al-Gharib, who was an early and fierce opponent of the Khomeinist Islamic Revolution. See: Nibras Kazimi, “Zarqawi’s Anti-Shi’a Legacy: Original or Borrowed?,” Hudson Institute, November 1, 2006, https://www.hudson.org/national-security-defense/zarqawi-s-anti-shi-a-legacy-original-or-borrowed.
45. Ibid.
46. William Knarr et al, op. cit.
47. Ibid.
48. I owe this observation to Daniele Raineri, who posted it years ago on his Twitter timeline: Daniele Raineri (@DanieleRaineri), “Abu Dua experienced that first local revolt in Iraq…” Twitter.com, December 7, 2015, https://archive.ph/8YdRA; Raineri (@DanieleRaineri), https://archive.ph/GlodM.
49. For this reason, I have attempted to patch this gap with arguments, which I emphasize are not originally mine. I owe these to Craig Whiteside, who kindly explained them over Twitter direct messages. Mr0rangetracker informed me that Turki Binali’s biography of Abu Bakr suggests that he was in Diyala during the period I have argued he was in Al Qaim. I am unconvinced. As far as I know, there is no corroboration for Binali’s claim. More disturbingly, Binali was caught lying several times, making him an unreliable source. In this regard, he is an exception among IS sources. Although they certainly embellish facts, they largely and consistently tell the truth. Extremely key information about the movement’s history would not be known were it not for the various published biographies, accounts, etc.
50. In 2010, top AQ leader Adam Gadahn even proposed officially denouncing and cutting off ties with Islamic State of Iraq. See: Nelly Lahoud et al, “Letters from Abbottabad: Bin Ladin Sidelined?,” Combating Terrorism Center, May 3, 2012, https://ctc.westpoint.edu/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/CTC_LtrsFromAbottabad_WEB_v2.pdf.