al-Qaeda in Iraq

al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), militant Sunni network, active in Iraq after the U.S.-led invasion of 2003, comprising Iraqi and foreign fighters opposed to the U.S. occupation and the Shiʿi-dominated Iraqi government.

Al-Qaeda in Iraq first appeared in 2004, when Abū Muṣʿab al-Zarqāwī, a Jordanian-born militant already leading insurgent attacks in Iraq, formed an alliance with al-Qaeda, pledging his group’s allegiance to Osama bin Laden in return for bin Laden’s endorsement as the leader of al-Qaeda’s franchise in Iraq. Al-Zarqāwī, who quickly came to be regarded as one of the most destructive militants in Iraq, organized a wave of attacks, often suicide bombings, that targeted security forces, government institutions, and Iraqi civilians. Intending to deepen the sectarian component of the Iraq War, al-Qaeda in Iraq especially targeted Iraqi Shiʿis, sometimes during religious processions or at Shiʿi mosques and shrines. A 2006 attack widely attributed to al-Qaeda in Iraq destroyed the golden dome of Al-ʿAskariyyah Mosque in Sāmarrāʾ, one of Shiʿism’s holiest mosques, amplifying the existing cycle of violent retribution and provoking some of the worst sectarian violence of the post-invasion period.

After al-Zarqāwī was killed by U.S. forces in 2006, Al-Qaeda in Iraq remained active but faced significant local opposition. Many Iraqi Sunnis who had previously participated in the insurgency were alienated by the group’s often brutal treatment of civilians, as well as its efforts to replace local tribal power structures with one imposed by al-Qaeda in Iraq’s foreign components. In an attempt to shed its image as an exogenous imposition, it merged with smaller, more local insurgent organizations and rebranded itself as the “Islamic State of Iraq.” Still, the organization was severely weakened in 2007 after Sunni tribes, aided and rewarded by the United States, began to form militias known as “Awakening Councils” to expel the organization from their territories. Although those militias, coupled with an increasingly successful effort by U.S. and Iraqi forces to kill al-Qaeda in Iraq leaders, greatly diminished the organization’s power, the network continued for several years to operate on a reduced scale, targeting Shiʿis, Christians, members of the Awakening Councils, and the Iraqi government.

In 2013 the group began enjoying a resurgence as Iraqi Sunnis confronted the increasing sectarianism of the country’s predominantly Shiʿi government. Bolstered further by the recruitment of militants in Syria, it declared itself the “Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant” (ISIL; also called the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria [ISIS]) and broke direction with the broader al-Qaeda franchise. In June 2014, after making significant territorial gains in Iraq, the group proclaimed the establishment of a caliphate led by the leader of ISIL, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.