A Prelude to the Concept of Hybrid Conflict – Iran’s Role in the War in Iraq (2003–2011)

Absztrakt

The War in Iraq has been an important lesson to Western countries on the issue of counterinsurgency and counterterrorism. The emergence of the Islamic State group and other Sunni jihadist organizations has taken up much of the attention focused on this conflict. However, the lessons of the Iranian activities in Iraq got much less attention, despite the multi-layered and large efforts on the information, the political fronts as well as regarding the support for non-state armed groups. In the opinion of the author, these efforts merit closer attention in order to get a better overview on the issues related to hybrid warfare. This paper aims to show, based on the publicly available, declassified and open source information, the depths of efforts tied to Iranian actors, and the limits of these efforts. The paper will use the case study of Qais al-Khazali, who rose to become one of the important leaders of the so-called special groups, and of Asa`ib Ahl al-Haqq, a splinter group from Muqtada al-Sadr’s Jaysh al-Mahdi.