The Iraq Crisis was a two-year period of escalated violence in Iraq which occurred in between the United States' termination of the Iraq War in December 2011 and before the rise of the Islamic State and the start of the Iraq War in 2013. The conflict left around 9,770 security forces, insurgents, and civilians dead.
Background[]
Starting in the winter of 2007-2008, President of the United States George W. Bush began to gradually withdraw US combat troops from Iraq as Iraqi security forces and Sunni Awakening militias gradually assumed responsibility for maintaining stability in the country. The withdrawal from Iraq was accelerated under President Barack Obama, and, by December 2011, the American withdrawal was complete, with the last 500 American troops leaving under cover of darkness and strict secrecy on 18 December, three days after the formal evacuation ceremony.
War[]
On 22 December 2011, just four days after the completion of the American withdrawal, the Islamic State of Iraq carried out a series of bombings in Baghdad (primarily targeted Shia neighborhoods), killing at least 72 civilians and wounding more than 170. Nine others died in insurgent attacks in Baqubah, Mosul, and Kirkuk. On 5 January 2012, a fresh series of bombings in Baghdad and Nasiriyah killed 73 and injured 149; on 14 January 2012, in the deadliest attack in the city since 2004, a suicide bomber killed 53 Shia pilgrims and injured 141 in Basra. Mass-casualty suicide attacks continued throughout 2012, with most of the attacks targeting Iraqi security forces or Shi'ites civilians.
The security situation was exacerbated by rising sectarian tensions due to the Shi'ite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's discriminatory policies, which included refusing to incorporate the "Sunni Awakening" militias into the Iraqi military. This led to nationwide Sunni protests from 2012 to 2014, and the Sunni-Shia friction even manifested itself in the executive branch due to the rivalry between Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi and PM al-Maliki.
The escalation of the Syrian Civil War in neighboring Syria led to a spillover in Iraq, with ISI gunmen ambushing a Syrian Arab Army and Iraqi Army convoy near the Syrian border in al-Anbar Governorate in the 4 March 2013 Battle of Akashat; 51 Syrian soldiers and 13 Iraqi soldiers were killed in the ambush. On 8 April 2013, the Islamic State of Iraq and elements of al-Qaeda's al-Nusra Front affiliate in Syria united as the "Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant", with ISI leader Abu Dua renaming himself "Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi". On 23 April 2013, an Iraqi Army crackdown on Sunni JRTN militants in Hawija led to bloody clashes and nationwide reprisal attacks. In late May 2013, the Iraqi Army launched Operation al-Shabah to sever the ISIL-al-Nusra border in al-Anbar and Nineveh Governorates, eliminating several militant camps and weapons caches. However, rising Sunni militancy, the defection of many Sunni Awakening militias to the insurgency, and the rising power of ISIL culminated in ISIL's Anbar campaign in December 2013-2014, leading to the escalation of the Iraq Crisis into the Iraqi Civil War.