Iraqi civil war (2006–2008)
Middle Eastern Conflict 2006-2009 / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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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.[18][19][20][21][22] 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.[23] The incident set off a wave of attacks on Sunni civilians by Shia militants, followed by attacks on Shia civilians by Sunni militants.[24]
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.[25] 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."[26] By late 2007, the National Intelligence Estimate described the conflict as having elements of a civil war.[27] In 2008, during the Sunni Awakening and the U.S. troop surge, violence declined dramatically.[28][29] However, an insurgency by ISI continued to plague Iraq following the U.S. withdrawal in late 2011.[30] 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.[31]
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.[32] 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[33]) and the number of internally displaced people was 2.7 million.[34] 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.[35]
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.[36]