The Islamic Army in Iraq is an Islamist and Iraqi nationalist militant group founded in 2003 at the start of the Iraq War to drive the United States out of Iraq. With a strength of 10,400 fighters in 2007, the group was mostly active in Diyala Governorate and Saladin Governorate, and it fought against the Iraqi government, Shi'ite militias, and the MNF-I coalition forces.
History[]
Islamic Army in Iraq fighters in a propaganda video
The Islamic Army in Iraq was founded in the summer of 2003 as a result of the United States' invasion of Iraq and the overthrowing of Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi Ba'ath Party. The group's leader Ismail Jubouri allowed for all types of Iraqis, being Sunnis, Shi'ites, Arabs, and Kurds, to join the group and force the coalition out of Iraq; most of the militant group's members were Sunnis, but a small congregation of Shi'ites also fought alongside it. The IAI was responsible for several attacks, including the 2004 attempted assassination of Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmed Chalabi, several IED attacks against US Army forces in the country, and the sniper attacks of Juba, an infamous sniper and a propaganda tool.
Despite being a militant group with an Islamic title, the Islamic Army in Iraq was labelled as a "resistance" group by the government, and it combined Iraqi nationalism and Ba'athism with Islamism. The group actually voted against the 2005 referendum instead of pressuring people not to vote at all like al-Qaeda had done, and in 2007 the Islamic Army in Iraq fought against al-Qaeda in clashes in Iraq. After the United States withdrew from Iraq in 2011, the group turned towards politics instead, but in 2014 the group was active in the violence in Anbar Governorate and northern Iraq against the sectarian government.