Concept
Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI; al-Qā'idah fī al-ʿIrāq) or al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia (القاعدة في بلاد الرافدين), officially known as Tanzim Qaidat al-Jihad fi Bilad al-Rafidayn or TQJBR ("Organization of Jihad's Base in Mesopotamia", تنظيم قاعدة الجهاد في بلاد الرافدين), was an Iraqi Salafi Sunni jihadist organization affiliated with al-Qaeda, for two years. The group was founded by the Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in 1999 under the name Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad (جماعة التوحيد والجهاد, "Group of Monotheism and Jihad"). The group is believed to have started bomb attacks in Iraq as of August 2003, five months after the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the Iraq War, targeting UN representatives, Iraqi Shiite institutions, the Jordanian embassy, provisional Iraqi government institutions. After it 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. On 7 June 2006, the leader of AQI, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and his spiritual adviser Abu Abdul Rahman, were both killed by a U.S. airstrike with two 500 lb (230 kg) bombs on a safe house near Baqubah. The group's leadership was then assumed by the Egyptian militant Abu Ayyub al-Masri, also known as Abu Hamza al-Muhajir. In a letter to al-Zarqawi in July 2005, Al-Qaeda's Ayman al-Zawahiri outlined a four-stage plan beginning with taking control of Iraq. Step 1: expulsion of US forces from Iraq. Step 2: establishing in Iraq an Islamic authority—a caliphate. Step 3: "the jihad wave" should be extended to "the secular countries neighbouring Iraq". Step 4: "the clash with Israel". Iraq#2003–2007 At the end of October 2004, Al-Qaeda in Iraq kidnapped Japanese citizen Shosei Koda. In an online video, AQI gave Japan 48 hours to withdraw its troops from Iraq, otherwise Koda's fate would be "the same as that of his predecessors, [Nicholas] Berg and [Kenneth] Bigley and other infidels". While Japan refused to comply with this demand, Koda was beheaded, and his dismembered body found on 30 October.
