Tanzim Qaidat al-Jihad fi Bilad al-Rafidayn

Tanzim Qaidat al-Jihad fi Bilad al-Rafidayn, (TQJBR), ("Organization of Jihad's Base in Mesopotamia", تنظيم قاعدة الجهاد في بلاد الرافدين), also known as al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), or al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia was an Iraqi Salafi jihadi militant organization affiliated with al-Qaeda. It was a major combatant actor in the Iraqi insurgency and played a central role in the establishment of the Mujahideen Shura Council in Iraq and the Islamic State of Iraq.

Origins
The group was founded by the Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi under the name Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad (Arabic: جماعة التوحيد والجهاد, "Group of Monotheism and Jihad"). It became active in 2003 in reaction to the coalition invasion and occupation of Iraq. After pledged allegiance to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network in October 2004, its official name became Tanzim Qaidat al-Jihad fi Bilad al-Rafidayn.

In a letter to al-Zarqawi in July 2005, Al-Qaeda's Ayman al-Zawahiri outlined a four-stage plan to expand the Iraq War, which included expelling US forces from Iraq, establishing an Islamic authority—a caliphate—spreading the conflict to Iraq's secular neighbors, and engaging in the Arab–Israeli conflict.

2004
The same month as its October 2004 pledge of allegiance, the group, now popularly referred to as al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), kidnapped and killed Japanese citizen Shosei Koda. In November, al-Zarqawi's network was the main target of the US Operation Phantom Fury in Fallujah, but its leadership managed to escape the American siege and subsequent storming of the city. In December, in two of its many sectarian attacks, AQI bombed a Shia funeral procession in Najaf and the main bus station in nearby Karbala, killing at least 60 people in those two holy cities of Shia Islam. The group also reportedly took responsibility for the 30 September 2004 Baghdad bombing which killed 41 people, mostly children.

2005
In 2005, AQI largely focused on executing high-profile and coordinated suicide attacks, claiming responsibility for numerous attacks which were primarily aimed at Iraqi administrators. The group launched attacks on voters during the Iraqi legislative election in January, a combined suicide and conventional attack on the Abu Ghraib prison in April, and coordinated suicide attacks outside the Sheraton Ishtar and Palestine Hotel in Baghdad in October. In July, AQI claimed responsibility for the kidnapping and execution of Ihab Al-Sherif, Egypt's envoy to Iraq. Also in July, a three-day series of suicide attacks, including the Musayyib marketplace bombing, left at least 150 people dead.

‘Al-Qaida in Iraq’ (=Tanzim) claimed responsibility for a single-day series of more than a dozen bombings in Baghdad in September 2005, including bomb attacks on 14 September which killed about 160 people, most of whom were unemployed Shia workers, and a suicide bomb attack Friday 16 September outside a Shiite mosque 200 km north of Baghdad killing 13 worshippers, and its leader Al-Zarqawi 14 September on Internet declared “all-out war” on Shiites, Iraqi troops and the Iraqi government.

U.S. intelligence in October 2005 published a letter purportedly from Ayman al-Zawahiri questioning Tanzim’s (AQI's) tactic of indiscriminately attacking Shias in Iraq.

Tanzim claimed responsibility for a series of Shia mosque bombings in November 2005 in the city of Khanaqin, which killed at least 74 people.

2006: Tanzim as part of Mujahideen Shura Council
In January 2006, Tanzim's ('AQI') efforts to recruit Iraqi Sunni nationalist and secular groups were undermined by its violent tactics against civilians and by its fundamentalist doctrine. It then created an umbrella organization called the Mujahideen Shura Council (MSC), in an attempt to unify Sunni insurgents in Iraq.

The attacks blamed on or claimed by AQI continued in 2006 (see also the list of major resistance attacks in Iraq). A U.S. intelligence officer in March 2007 blamed the al-Askari Mosque bombing in February 2006 on Tanzim (or ‘AQI’); in May 2007, ‘Iraqi officials’ blamed that al-Askari bombing on Al Qaeda or ‘AQI’ or Tanzim. 3 June 2006, four Russian embassy officials were abducted and subsequently killed. Al-Qaeda in Iraq and its umbrella groups were blamed for multiple attacks targeting the country's Shia population, some of which AQI claimed responsibility for.

On 7 June 2006, the leader of AQI, al-Zarqawi, and his spiritual adviser Sheik Abd-Al-Rahman, were both killed by U.S. bombs. The group's leadership was then assumed by the Egyptian militant Abu Ayyub al-Masri, also known as Abu Hamza al-Muhajir.

A week later, 16 June 2006, a U.S. checkpoint near Baghdad was attacked, one U.S. soldier killed and two abducted (see June 2006 abduction of U.S. soldiers in Iraq). Those two abducted, Thomas Lowell Tucker and Kristian Menchaca, were found on 19 June, “brutally killed and tortured” according to an Iraqi spokesman. The next day, Mujahedeen Shura Council of Iraq (MSC)—an organization of six groups including Tanzim Qaidat al-Jihad fi Bilad al-Rafidayn—claimed to have “slaughtered” the two Americans. Three weeks later, MSC issued a video showing the mutilated corpses of Tucker and Menchada, purportedly as revenge for the rape and murder of an Iraqi girl, in March 2006, by U.S. soldiers of the same brigade (see Mahmudiyah killings).

On 13 October 2006, the MSC declared the establishment of the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI), comprising Iraq's six mostly Sunni Arab governorates, with Abu Omar al-Baghdadi being announced as the self-proclaimed state's Emir. Abu Ayyub al-Masri, who had been the leader of the MSC, was given the title of Minister of War within the ISI's ten-member cabinet. Following the announcement, scores of gunmen took part in military parades in Ramadi and other Anbar towns to celebrate.

After November 2006: Tanzim as part of Islamic State of Iraq
In November, a statement was issued by Abu Hamza al-Muhajir announcing the disbanding of the Mujahideen Shura Council, in favor of the ISI.

A U.S. intelligence officer in March 2007 blamed the 23 November 2006 Sadr City bombings, which cost 215 deadly casualties, on Tanzim (or ‘AQI’).

The US in February 2007 suggested that ‘al Qaeda’ was involved in the wave of chlorine bombings in Iraq, October 2006–June 2007, which affected hundreds of people, albeit with few fatalities.

According to report by US intelligence agencies in May 2007, the ISI (Islamic State of Iraq) planned to seize power in the central and western areas of the country and turn it into a Sunni Islamic state.

In June 2007, the uncompromising brand of extreme fundamentalist Islam of Tanzim ('AQI'), or Mujahideen Shura Council (MSC), or Islamic State of Iraq (ISI), seemed, again, to be alienating more nationalist Iraqi strands of insurgency, like former Baathists, or Sunnis with a grudge against the US-led coalition and the new Iraqi government.

In a video that appeared in December 2007, Ayman al-Zawahiri defended the AQI, but distanced himself from the crimes against civilians committed by "hypocrites and traitors" that he said existed among its ranks.

Operations outside Iraq and other activities
On 3 December 2004, AQI attempted to blow up an Iraqi–Jordanian border crossing, but failed to do so. In 2006, a Jordanian court sentenced to death al-Zarqawi in absentia and two of his associates for their involvement in the plot. AQI increased its presence outside Iraq by claiming credit for three attacks in 2005. In the most deadly of these attacks, suicide bombs killed 60 people in Amman, Jordan on 9 November 2005. They claimed responsibility for the rocket attacks which narrowly missed the American naval ships USS Kearsarge and USS Ashland in Jordan and also targeted the city of Eilat in Israel, and for the firing of several rockets into Israel from Lebanon in December 2005. The affiliated groups were linked to regional attacks outside Iraq which were consistent with their stated plan, one example being the 2005 Sharm al-Sheikh bombings in Egypt, which killed 88 people, many of them foreign tourists.

The Lebanese-Palestinian militant group Fatah al-Islam, which was defeated by Lebanese government forces during the 2007 Lebanon conflict, was linked to AQI and led by al-Zarqawi's former companion who had fought alongside him in Iraq. The group may have been linked to the little-known group called "Tawhid and Jihad in Syria", and may have influenced the Palestinian militant group in Gaza called Jahafil Al-Tawhid Wal-Jihad fi Filastin.