uclear materials from Mosul University in July 2014. In a letter to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Iraq's UN Ambassador Mohamed Ali Alhakim said that the materials had been kept at the university and "can be used in manufacturing weapons of mass destruction". Nuclear experts regarded the threat as insignificant. International Atomic Energy Agency spokeswoman Gill Tudor said that the seized materials were "low grade and would not present a significant safety, security or nuclear proliferation risk".
As Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad, Al-Qaeda in Iraq and Mujahideen Shura Council (1999-2005)
On 7 June 2006, al-Zarqawi was killed in an American airstrike and was succeeded as AQI's leader by the Egyptian militant Abu Ayyub al-Masri. On 13 October 2006, the Mujahideen Shura Council (MSC), an umbrella organisation of AQI and other insurgent groups, 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. Al-Masri was given the title of Minister of War within the ISI's ten-member cabinet. According to a study compiled by US intelligence agencies in early 2007, the ISI planned to seize power in the central and western areas of the country and turn it into a Sunni Islamic state.
As Islamic State of Iraq (2006–2013)
It has been suggested that this section be split into a new article. (Discuss) Proposed since September 2014.
Strength and activity
US Marines in Ramadi, May 2006. The Islamic State of Iraq had declared the city to be its capital.
In 2006, the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research estimated that Al-Qaeda in Iraq's core membership was "more than 1,000". These figures do not include the other six[irrelevant citation] AQI-led Salafi groups in the Islamic State of Iraq. In 2007, estimates of the group's strength ranged from just 850 to several thousand full-time fighters. The group was said to be suffering high manpower losses, including those from its many "martyrdom" operations, but for a long time this appeared to have little effect on its strength and capabilities, implying a constant flow of volunteers from Iraq and abroad. However, Al-Qaeda in Iraq more than doubled in strength, from 1,000 to 2,500 fighters, after the US withdrawal from Iraq in late 2011.
In 2007, some observers and scholars suggested that the threat posed by AQI was being exaggerated and that a "heavy focus on al-Qaeda obscures a much more complicated situation on the ground". According to National Intelligence Estimate and Defense Intelligence Agency reports in July 2007, AQI accounted for 15% percent of attacks in Iraq. However, the Congressional Research Service noted in its September 2007 report that attacks from al-Qaeda were less than 2% of the violence in Iraq. It criticized the Bush administration's statistics, noting that its false reporting of insurgency attacks as AQI attacks had increased since the surge operations began in 2007. In March 2007, the US-sponsored Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty analyzed AQI attacks for that month and concluded that the group had taken credit for 43 out of 439 attacks on Iraqi security forces and Shia militias, and 17 out of 357 attacks on US troops.
According to a US Government report in 2006, this group was most clearly associated with foreign jihadistcells operating in Iraq and had specifically targeted international forces and Iraqi citizens; most of Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI)'s operatives were not Iraqi, but were coming through a series of safe houses, the largest of which was on the Iraq–Syria border. AQI's operations were predominately Iraq-based, but the United States Department of State alleged that the group maintained an extensive logistical network throughout the Middle East, North Africa, South Asia and Europe. In a CNN special report in June 2008, Al-Qaeda in Iraq was called "a well-oiled … organization … almost as pedantically bureaucratic as was Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath Party", collecting new execution videos long after they stopped publicisin