Iraqi civil war (2006–2008)
The Iraqi civil war was an armed conflict from 2006 to 2008 between various sectarian Shia and Sunni armed groups, such as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Mahdi Army, in addition to the Iraqi government alongside American-led coalition forces. In February 2006, the insurgency against the coalition and government escalated into a sectarian civil war after the bombing of Al-Askari Shrine, considered a holy site in Twelver Shi'ism. US President George W. Bush and Iraqi officials accused Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) of orchestrating the bombing. AQI publicly denied any links. The incident set off a wave of attacks on Sunni civilians by Shia militants, followed by attacks on Shia civilians by Sunni militants.
| Iraqi civil war | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of the Iraq War | ||||||||
A city street in Ramadi heavily damaged by the fighting in 2006 | ||||||||
| ||||||||
| Belligerents | ||||||||
|
Iraq United States United Kingdom Other coalition forces Private Security Contractors Peshmerga Sons of Iraq |
Mahdi Army
|
Al-Qaeda and allies: Ansar al-Sunna Ba'athist insurgents and allies: Iraqi Ba'ath Party Jeish Muhammad | ||||||
| Commanders and leaders | ||||||||
|
Jalal Talabani Masoud Barzani Ibrahim al-Jaafari Nouri al-Maliki Tommy Franks Abdul Sattar Abu Risha † Ahmed Abu Risha |
Muqtada al-Sadr Abu Deraa Akram al-Kaabi Qais al-Khazali (POW) Arkan Hasnawi † Abdul Aziz al-Hakim Hadi al-Amiri Abu Mustafa al-Sheibani Dia Abdul Zahra Kadim † Ahmed Hassani al-Yemeni † |
Abu Omar al-Baghdadi Abu Musab al-Zarqawi † Abu Abdullah al-Shafi'i (POW) Abu Ayyub al-Masri Abu Suleiman al-Naser Ishmael Jubouri Saddam Hussein Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri Mohammed Younis al-Ahmed Fakri Hadi Gari (POW) | ||||||
| Strength | ||||||||
|
Iraqi Security Forces 618,000 (805,269 Army and 348,000 Police) Coalition ~49,700 Contractors ~7,000 Awakening Council militias 103,000 |
Mahdi Army: 60,000 (2003–2008) Badr Organisation: 20,000 Soldiers of Heaven: 1,000 Special Groups: 7,000 (2011) |
Sunni insurgents: 70,000 (2003–2007) Foreign Mujahedeen: 1,300 | ||||||
|
69,760 recorded civilian deaths (2006–2008) 151,000–1,033,000 Iraqi deaths (2003–2008) | ||||||||
The UN Secretary General stated in September 2006 that if patterns of discord and violence continued, the Iraqi state was in danger of breaking up. On 10 January 2007, Bush said that "80% of Iraq's sectarian violence occurs within 30 miles (48 km) of the capital. This violence is splitting Baghdad into sectarian enclaves, and shakes the confidence of all Iraqis." By late 2007, the National Intelligence Estimate described the conflict as having elements of a civil war. In 2008, during the Sunni Awakening and the U.S. troop surge, violence declined dramatically. However, an insurgency by ISI continued to plague Iraq following the U.S. withdrawal in late 2011. In June 2014, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, the successor to Islamic State of Iraq, launched a major military offensive against the Iraq government and declared a self-proclaimed worldwide Islamic caliphate. This led to another full-scale war from 2013 to 2017, in which the government declared victory.
In October 2006, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the Iraqi government estimated that more than 370,000 Iraqis had been displaced since 2006, bringing the total number of Iraqi refugees to more than 1.6 million. By 2008, the UNHCR raised the estimate to about 4.7 million (~16% of the population). The number estimated abroad was 2 million (a number close to CIA projections) and the number of internally displaced people was 2.7 million. The Red Cross stated in 2008 that Iraq's humanitarian situation was among the most critical in the world, with millions of Iraqis forced to rely on insufficient and poor-quality water sources.
According to the Failed States Index, produced by Foreign Policy and the Fund for Peace, Iraq was one of the world's top 5 unstable states from 2005 to 2008.