26 Rebel groups in Iraq

Al-Awda is a secular organization in Iraq. Al-Awda's name began appearing in Iraq in June 2003 in anti-occupation graffiti and leaflets in Baghdad and to the north and west of the capital. The group is led by Mohammed Younis al-Ahmed, who is based in Syria.

Al-Ansar was a guerrilla force attached to the Iraqi Communist Party, active between 1979 and 1988.

The Army of the Men of the Naqshbandi Order, also called the Naqshbandi Army, is one of a number of underground Ba'athist and Sufi militant insurgency groups in Iraq. Media frequently refers to the group by the initials JRTN, a romanization of its Arabic name. Supreme Command for Jihad and Liberation, technically the name of the umbrella organisation to which JRTN belongs, is also often used to refer to JRTN specifically.

Asa'ib Ahl al-Haq, also known as the Khazali Network, is an Iraqi Shi'a political party and paramilitary group active in the Iraqi insurgency and Syrian Civil War. During the Iraq War it was known as Iraq's largest "Special Group", and is now part of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), a group of Shi’ite militias that are close to Iran.

The Assyrian Democratic Movement, popularly known as Zowaa, is an Assyrian political party situated in Iraq, and one of the main Assyrian parties within the Iraqi parliament. The Assyrian Democratic Movement states its aims are to establish equal citizenship rights with the rest of the Iraqi people without discrimination on the basis of nationality, belief, religious affiliation, culture, linguistics and other characteristics of the native Chaldo-Assyrian Syriac people of Iraq, to acknowledge the past massacres committed against them and to ensure they are never repeated again.

The Badr Organization, previously known as the Badr Brigades or Badr Corps, is an Iraqi Shia Islamist political party and military organization headed by Hadi Al-Amiri. The Badr Brigade was the Iran-officered military wing of the Iran-based Shia Islamic party, Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), formed in 1982. Since the 2003 invasion of Iraq most of Badr's fighters have entered the new Iraqi army and police force. Politically, Badr Brigade and SCIRI were considered to be one party since 2003, but have now unofficially separated with the Badr Organization now an official Iraqi political party. Badr Brigade forces, and their Iranian commanders, have come to prominence in 2014 fighting the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in Iraq. It is a part of the Popular Mobilization Forces.

The Free Iraqi Army was a Sunni rebel group formed in the western Sunni-majority provinces of Iraq from Iraqi supporters of the Free Syrian Army rebels fighting in the Syrian Civil War. The group aimed to overthrow the Shia-dominated government of Iraq, believing that they would gain support in this from Syria should the rebels be successful in overthrowing Bashar al-Assad. An Iraqi counterterror spokesman denied this, saying that the name is merely being used by al-Qaeda in Iraq to "attract the support of the Iraqi Sunnis by making use of the strife going on in Syria."

The General Military Council for Iraqi Revolutionaries abbreviated as GMCIR or MCIR, is a Ba'athist militant group active in Iraq headed by Saddam Hussein-era military and political leaders. It has been described by Al Jazeera as "one of the main groups" in the Iraqi insurgency.

Hamas of Iraq is a Sunni militia group based in Iraq, which split from the 1920 Revolution Brigade on 18 March 2007. The group claims to have released videos of its attack on US troops. The 1920 Revolution Brigade insists that Hamas in Iraq was involved in assisting US troops in their recent Diyala operations against Al-Qaeda in Iraq. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has feared the US-armed 'concerned local citizens' are an armed Sunni opposition in the making, and has argued that such groups should be under the command of the Iraqi Army or police. On October 11, 2007, the militia group joined a political council that embraced armed insurgency against American forces.

Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba is an Iraqi Shi'ite paramilitary group that is especially active in Syria. The group is considered an Iranian proxy. It openly receives training, arms, and military advice from Iran. It is part of Iraq's Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), a group of Shi’ite militias that are close to Iran.

The Hezbollah Movement in Iraq is a Shi'a Islamist, Iraqi political party that is part of the United Iraqi Alliance coalition. It is not affiliated with the Lebanese group Hezbollah or other groups using the name. Hezbollah, or more literally Hizb Allah, meaning "Party of God" in Arabic.

The Islamic Dawa Party, also known as the Islamic Call Party, is a political party in Iraq. Dawa and the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council are two of the main parties in the religious-Shiite United Iraqi Alliance, which won a plurality of seats in both the provisional January 2005 Iraqi election and the longer-term December 2005 election. The party is led by Haider al-Abadi, who was the Prime Minister of Iraq from 8 September 2014 to October 2018. The party backed the Iranian Revolution and also Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini during the Iran–Iraq War and the group still receives financial support from Tehran despite ideological differences with the Islamic Republic.

The Islamic Front for the Iraqi Resistance abbreviated JAMI, is an insurgent group in Iraq, fighting the U.S. led coalition as a part of the Iraqi Insurgency. The group announced itself in around May, 2004.

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, officially known as the Islamic State (IS) and also known by its Arabic acronym Daesh, is a militant Islamist group and a former unrecognised proto-state that follows a fundamentalist, Salafi jihadist doctrine of Sunni Islam. ISIL was founded by the Jordanian jihadist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in 1999 and gained global prominence in early 2014 when it drove Iraqi government forces out of key cities in its Western Iraq offensive, followed by its capture of Mosul and the Sinjar massacre.

Jaish al-Ta'ifa al-Mansurah was a militant Sunni group that participated in the Iraqi insurgency. The group was founded by Sheikh Abu Omar al-Ansari.

Jamaat Ansar al-Sunnah, also known as Jaish Ansar al-Sunna, was an Iraqi Sunni insurgent group that fought against US Troops and their local allies during the Iraq War. The group was primarily based in northern and central Iraq, and included mostly Iraqi fighters. In 2007, it split into two groups; one began operating under the name Ansar al-Islam, and the second group called itself Ansar al-Sunnah Shariah Committee, before changing its name to Ansar al-Ahlu Sunnah in 2011.

Kurdistan Islamic Group is a movement in Iraqi Kurdistan established in May 2001 by Ali Bapir, a former leader of the Islamic Movement of Kurdistan.

The Jaish al-Mujahideen is a Sunni militant group in Iraq. The group first emerged in late 2004. The Mujahideen Army is one of the founding members of the Jihad and Reform Front as well as a member of the Political Council for the Iraqi Resistance (PCIR).

Iraqi Revolutionary Communists was the name of an Iraqi political organization, founded in 1973. The group was formed as a split from the Revolutionary Committee of the Iraqi Communist Party led by Salim al-Fakhri. The group was led by Tahsin Ali Ash-Shaikhli.

The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan is a Kurdish nationalist political party in Iraqi Kurdistan. The PUK describes its goals as self-determination, human rights, democracy and peace for the Kurdish people of Kurdistan and Iraq. The PUK is currently under the leadership of co-presidents Lahur Talabany and Bafel Talabani. The PUK was founded in 1975 by Jalal Talabani, Nawshirwan Mustafa, Fuad Masum, Adel Murad, Ali Askari and Abdul Razaq Feyli.

The Peace Companies, frequently mistranslated as Peace Brigades in US media, are an Iraqi armed group linked to Iraq's Shia community. They are a 2014 revival of the Mahdi Army that was created by the Iraqi Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr in June 2003 and disbanded in 2008.

The Promised Day Brigade, originally called the Muqawimun was a Shi'a organization and was an insurgent group operating in Iraq during the war. In 2010, it was one of the largest and most powerful of what the US military call "Special Groups" in Iraq. The group was created as successor to Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army, which was Iraq's largest Shi'a militia until its disbanding in 2008, he also called on other Special Groups to join the brigade. Sadr had earlier already talked about the creation of a smaller guerrilla unit which would continue the Mahdi Army's armed activities but for the first time gave the organisation a name in November 2008 when he declared the creation of the Promised Day Brigade. Its activities have particularly increased since May 2009. The group's name is in reference to an alternate term for the Islamic Day of Judgment. The group is alleged to receive Iranian support. A crackdown against the group, in the end 2009, led to the arrest of 18 of its members including several commanders. On November 29, 2009, the group's Basra leader was arrested in al-Amarah.

Al-Qaeda is a transnational extremist Salafist militant organization founded in 1988 by Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and Abdullah Azzam, and several other Arab volunteers during the Soviet–Afghan War.

The Supreme Command for Jihad and Liberation is an Iraqi front comprising some 23 militia groups formed in October 2007 and led by former Iraqi vice president and deputy chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri. The name is also often used to refer to the largest militia in the front, the Army of the Men of the Naqshbandi Order, which is commanded by Douri himself.

The Turkmen Brigades are Iraqi Turkmen militias formed as part of the Popular Mobilization Forces in 2014.

The White Flags are an active insurgent group in northern Iraq opposed to the Iraqi government, having taken part in the Iraqi Civil War's last phase and the ongoing Iraqi insurgency (2017–present).