ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that insurgency in Iraq is really part of broader and deeper phenomena of Islamist activities and reactions to outside intervention, this is the case in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East. It aims to provide a conceptual-historical framework with which to understand the range of Islamist responses to foreign domination, and then to understand Iraq's insurgency through this framework. The chapter presents a typology of different "clusters" of Islamism that the Muslim world has experienced over the past two centuries. The chapter examines Iraqi insurgency following the March 2003 US invasion of Iraq. It focuess on the insurgencies that developed, and how they have shifted over time and in response to external events and actors. The chapter argues that the broad characteristics of the Iraq case strongly indicate that the insurgency was durable, even through ebbs and flows, and was predictably persistent for the duration of the American presence.
