The Occupation of Iraq (2003–2011) was characterized by a large United States military deployment on Iraqi territory, beginning with the US-led invasion of the country in March 2003 which overthrew the Ba'ath Party government of Saddam Hussein and ending with the departure of US troops from the country in 2011. Troops for the occupation came primarily from the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia, but 29 other nations also provided troops, and there were varying levels of assistance from Japan and other countries, as well as tens of thousands of private military company personnel.
The First Battle of Fallujah, code-named Operation Vigilant Resolve, was an operation against militants in Fallujah as well as an attempt to apprehend or kill the perpetrators of the killing of four U.S. contractors in March 2004.
Abu Ghraib prison was a prison complex in Abu Ghraib, Iraq, located 32 kilometers (20 mi) west of Baghdad. Abu Ghraib prison was opened in the 1950s and served as a maximum-security prison. From the 1970s, the prison was used by Saddam Hussein to hold political prisoners and later the United States to hold Iraqi prisoners. It developed a reputation for torture and extrajudicial killing, and was closed in 2014.
Camp Bucca was a forward operating base that housed a theater internment facility maintained by the United States military in the vicinity of Umm Qasr, Iraq. After being taken over by the U.S. military in April 2003, it was renamed after Ronald Bucca, a New York City fire marshal who died in the 11 September 2001 attacks. The site where Camp Bucca was built had earlier housed the tallest structure in Iraq, a 492-meter-high TV mast.
Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad, abbreviated as JTJ or Jama'at, was a Salafi jihadist militant group. It was founded in Jordan in 1999, and was led by Jordanian national Abu Musab al-Zarqawi for the entirety of its existence. During the Iraqi insurgency (2003–11), the group became a decentralized network with foreign fighters with a considerable Iraqi membership.
After the 2003 invasion of Iraq was completed and the regime of Saddam Hussein was toppled in May 2003, an Iraqi insurgency began that would last until the United States left in 2011. The 2003–2006 phase of the Iraqi insurgency lasted until early 2006, when it escalated from an insurgency to a Sunni-Shia civil war, which became the most violent phase of the Iraq War.
Abu Anas al-Shami was a senior leader in the Jama'at al-Tawhid wal Jihad militant group during the Iraq War. He was a Palestinian from Tulkarm city in the West Bank, born in Kuwait in 1969.
Events in the year 2005 in Iraq.
Abu Ayyub al-Masri, also known as Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, born Abdel Moneim Ezz El-Din Ali Al-Badawi, was the leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq during the Iraqi insurgency, following the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in June 2006. He was war minister of the Islamic State of Iraq from 2006 to 2010 and prime minister of the Islamic State of Iraq from 2009 to 2010. He was killed during a raid on his safehouse on 18 April 2010.
Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, born Hamid Dawud Mohamed Khalil al-Zawi was the Emir of the Islamic militant umbrella organization Mujahideen Shura Council (MSC), and its successor, the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI), which fought against the forces of the U.S.-led Coalition forces during the Iraqi insurgency.
Camp Taji, also known as Camp Cooke, is a military installation used by Iraqi and Coalition forces near Taji, Baghdad Governorate, Iraq. The camp is located in a rural region approximately 27 km (17 mi) north of the capital Baghdad.
The Battle of Ramadi was fought during the Iraq War from March 2006 to November 2006, for control of the capital of the Al Anbar Governorate in western Iraq. A joint US military force under the command 1st Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armored Division and Iraqi Security Forces fought insurgents for control of key locations in Ramadi. Coalition strategy relied on establishing a number of patrol bases called Combat Operation Posts throughout the city.
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, born Ahmad Fadeel al-Nazal al-Khalayleh, was a Jordanian jihadist who ran a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan. He became known after going to Iraq and being responsible for a series of bombings, beheadings, and attacks during the Iraq War, reportedly "turning an insurgency against US troops" in Iraq "into a Shia–Sunni civil war". He was sometimes known by his supporters as the "Sheikh of the slaughterers".
Al-Karmah, also sometimes transliterated as Karma, Karmah, or Garma, is a city in central Iraq, 16 km (10 mi) northeast of Fallujah in the province of Al Anbar.
Operation Marne Torch refers to two operations launched by U.S.-led Coalition forces in 2007 against al-Qaeda in Iraq in the Arab Jabour area of Babil province. This campaign is named after Operation Torch, the joint US/British invasion of French North Africa in 1942, presumably because of the two operations' similar thrust into the enemies' southern underbellies.
Tanzim Qaidat al-Jihad fi Bilad al-Rafidayn, more commonly known as Al-Qaeda in Iraq, was a Salafi jihadist organization affiliated with Al-Qaeda. It was founded on 17 October 2004, and was led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and Abu Ayyub al-Masri until its disbandment on 15 October 2006.
The Anbar campaign consisted of fighting between the United States military, together with Iraqi security forces, and Sunni insurgents in the western Iraqi governorate of Al Anbar. The Iraq War lasted from 2003 to 2011, but the majority of the fighting and counterinsurgency campaign in Anbar took place between April 2004 and September 2007. Although the fighting initially featured heavy urban warfare primarily between insurgents and U.S. Marines, insurgents in later years focused on ambushing the American and Iraqi security forces with improvised explosive devices (IEDs), large scale attacks on combat outposts, and car bombings. Almost 9,000 Iraqis and 1,335 Americans were killed in the campaign, many in the Euphrates River Valley and the Sunni Triangle around the cities of Fallujah and Ramadi.
Ramadi, the capital of Iraq's Al Anbar Governorate, was under U.S. military occupation during the Iraq War. It was a focal point of Iraqi insurgency, which erupted into open armed conflict in 2004 and in 2006, part of the Iraq War in Anbar Province. Operation Murfreesboro was a U.S. offensive in February 2007 intended to cut off the Ma'Laab district of eastern Ramadi from the rest of the town in order to drive out Zarqawi's Al-Qaeda in Iraq.
Adnan Ismail Najm al-Bilawi Al-Dulaimi, better known by the nom de guerre Abu Abdulrahman al-Bilawi al-Anbari, was a top commander in the Islamic State and the head of its Military Council, prior to his killing by Iraqi security forces on 4 June 2014.
During the Iraq War, occupying U.S. forces set up camps and converted existing prisons in Iraq to detain POWs, suspected terrorists, and insurgents who were opposed to the American occupation. While reports vary, from 2003 onwards U.S. troops stationed in Iraq detained more than 100,000 prisoners in the American-held detention complexes. Many of these detainments were later determined to be unlawful, and the treatment of the prisoners, inhumane. While the most prominent case of unlawful imprisonment, torture, and prisoner abuse occurred at Abu Ghraib prison, several other detainment centers were revealed to have operated in a similar fashion, most notably at Camp Bucca and Camp Cropper.
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