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Car bombings are a common form of attack in Iraq during the
Coalition occupation
Major insurgent
attacks
of the Iraq War
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After the 2003 invasion of Iraq, insurgents,
militias and terrorists began launching attacks on both domestic and foreign military
targets, as well as civilian targets. In the beginning, foreign
civilian targets were attacked, like the Jordanian embassy, UN and Red Cross headquarters.
When foreigners became more protected or simply fled Iraq, ordinary
Iraqi civilians were attacked, because of sectarian divisions.
Bombings
- This is a list of major bombings of the Iraq War. For all
suicide bombings see List of suicide bombings in Iraq since
2003
Armed
massacres
Kidnappings and hostages
Beginning in April
2004, members of the Iraqi insurgency began taking hostage foreign civilians in Iraq. Since then, they have kidnapped
more than 200 foreigners and thousands of Iraqis; among them, 30
foreign hostages have been killed. The motives behind these
kidnappings include influencing foreign governments with troops in
Iraq and foreign companies with workers there, as well as ransom
money and discouraging travel to Iraq. In 2004, executions of
captives were often filmed, and several were beheaded. However, the
number of videotaped killings has decreased significantly, and now
the deaths of hostages are often announced only in a statement.
Many hostages remain missing with no clue as to their whereabouts.
The US Department of
State Hostage Working Group was
organized by the US embassy in
Baghdad in the summer of 2004 to monitor hostages in Iraq.
Assassinations
Since the beginning of the insurgency, several high-profile
people have been assassinated. These included:
During 2007, insurgents exploded several chlorine containers attacking Iraqi civilians.
Hundreds were killed and many more injured.
Awareness of US opinion on
the war
One study has compared the number of insurgent attacks in Iraq
to the number of "anti-resolve" statements in the US media,
the release of public opinion polls, and geographic variations in
access to international media by Iraqis. The purpose was to
determine if insurgents responded to information on "casualty
sensitivity." The researchers found that insurgent attacks spiked
by 5 to 10% after increases in the number of negative reports of
the war in the media. The authors identified this as an
"emboldenment effect" and concluded "insurgent groups respond
rationally to expected probability of US withdrawal."[1]
In a response, Camillo Mac Bica has expressed surprise that an
"unpublished . . . working paper" had excited as much interest as
it did among media outlets and bloggers. He argued that the
research methodology utilized in this study was flawed and that the
researchers, despite recognizing and acknowledging the inadequacies
of their argument, continued to draw conclusions not indicated by
their findings.[2]
See also
References
External
links
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Invasion and
occupation
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Aftermath
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Iraq since 2003
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