the primary ethnic factional groups fighting each other in iraq after the invasion were
Sectarian violence in Iraq (2006–08) 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.[33] Blurring this cohesion, though, were division of social, economic, political and geographic identities.