<Li> Shi'ite - 65%: Mainly Arabs with a very small minority of Kurds and Turkomans . </Li> <Li> Christian, Mandaeans and Yazidi ~ 5%: These groups have a minor role in the civil war situation . </Li> <P> The main two participants in the violence were the Arab Sunni and Arab Shia factions, but conflicts within a single group also occurred . The Kurds were caught between the two religious groups, but as they were an ethnicity as opposed to a religious movement, they were often at odds with the Arabs that were settled in Iraqi Kurdistan by Saddam's Arabization policy . Blurring this cohesion, though, were division of social, economic, political and geographic identities . </P> <P> A multitude of groups formed the Iraqi insurgency, which arose in a piecemeal fashion as a reaction to local events, notably the realisation of the U.S. military's inability to control Iraq . Beginning in 2005 the insurgent forces coalesced around several main factions, including the Islamic Army in Iraq and Ansar al - Sunna . Religious justification was used to support the political actions of these groups, as well as a marked adherence to Salafism, branding those against the jihad as non-believers . This approach played a role in the rise of sectarian violence . The U.S. military also believe that between 5 - 10% of insurgent forces are non-Iraqi Arabs . </P>

The primary ethnic factional groups fighting each other in iraq after the invasion were