Today, the Islamic State (IS) dominates the Iraqi
insurgency. It has swallowed up opposing factions and forced others off the
battlefield. Up to 2014 however there was a range of militant groups operating
in the country. In 2005, Nicholas Haussler attempted to categorize the
insurgency into three broad groups. Those were local level actors that were usually
based upon kinship. The next were larger enterprises that had access to
weapons, independent funding, and connections to international groups and
markets. The last was the transnational Al Qaeda in Iraq that networked with Iraqis
and others across the region. These groups all interacted and competed with
each other at the local to international levels to create the country’s
insurgency. Today these different levels still exist, they just operating under
the auspices of the Islamic State.
The core of the insurgency was the local chapters. These
were usually organized along kinships, clans, occupations, mosques, etc. For
example, a person might be a former member of the secret police, be part of a
clan and tribe, and go to a specific mosque and draw
upon all of those connections to find like minded people who were willing
to fight the U.S. and Iraqi government. Ansar al-Islam for example was an
Islamist group in Kurdistan that was formed before the 2003 invasion. Most of
its core was said to come from one Kurdish clan. These groups were intimately
connected to their communities who provided them the space to operate in,
recruits, intelligence, and a means of communication. They were responsible for
the majority of killings, information gathering, and security for networks. These
groups were small and often competed with each other as much as cooperated.
They posed a serious challenge to the state with its large bureaucratic
structures that made it hard and slow to respond to this threat.
The next type of group was the enterprise. They were usually
based upon extended families and clans. Many became criminal rings during the
sanctions period. In the 1990s, the government encouraged certain officials and
preferred tribes to smuggle goods to get around the international sanctions
imposed on the country after its invasion of Kuwait. This allowed them to build
up networks into Syria, Turkey and Jordan. These groups were able to expand
with the power vacuum after the 2003 invasion. Their activities gave them
access to communications, supplies, resources, and accesses to global markets. They
also had links to institutions such as political parties, the Iraqi Security
Forces, the judiciary, and the bureaucracy through infiltration, intimidation,
and bribery. That meant these enterprises could tap into government wages,
equipment, weapons, etc. Many of these groups later joined the insurgency
providing supply networks and independent financing. They would contract out
work to the local level actors to carry out operations.
The last type of organization was the transnational, which
was represented by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s Tawhid wal Jihad, which later became
Al Qaeda in Iraq. It was made up mostly of foreign fighters, and had networks
across the Middle East. The group was organized into cells, many of which acted
autonomously. Zarqawi would bring the smaller groups together for large
operations. He would also cooperate with local Iraqi groups and enterprises out
of their shared interests in overthrowing the government and expelling the
Americans. The local groups could cooperate on attacks, while enterprises could
launder money or procure weapons. At the same time there was plenty of
competition and rivalry, which would often break out into open fighting between
them. Eventually Tawhid wal Jihad’s successor the Islamic State would subsume
almost all of the other Iraqi groups from the local level to the enterprises
after the summer of 2014.
Today the situation in Iraq has changed as the diversity of insurgent
groups has largely disappeared due to the power of the Islamic State. Up to the
summer of 2014 there was a plethora of organizations active in Iraq, but they
have mostly left the battlefield or been integrated within IS. Still elements
of these different types of organizations exist, but largely under the umbrella
of IS. There are still local Iraqi groups that provide foot soldiers for the
Islamic State. Members of certain tribes for example have sided with IS and are
likely organized along kinship lines. IS has appropriated many of the crime
rings of central and northern Iraq that were once run by independent enterprises.
Where the group was strong such as in Mosul, this happened years ago. IS has
now expanded these activities after its seizure of so much territory in Syria
and Iraq to sustain itself. It has exploited its connections across the region
to smuggle oil and antiquities amongst other illegal activities. Finally, IS
still acts as the transnational actor coordinating these smaller groups and
providing leadership. Haussler’s categories are helpful in understanding how
the insurgency was organized as it was never one monolithic group, but rather a
conglomeration of like minded people united in their opposition to the new
Iraq. It still proves useful today to breakdown the components of the Islamic
State.
SOURCES
Haussler, Nicholas, “Third Generation Gangs Revisited: The
Iraq Insurgency,” Naval Postgraduate School Thesis, September 2005
McGrath, John, “An Army at War: Change in the Midst of
Conflict,” Combat Studies Institute Press, 8/2-4/05
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