Growth of the Insurgency

• The US initially tried to restrict the development of the new Iraqi armed forces to a token force geared towards defending the country's borders from external aggressors. No police forces were created to deal with local insurgency and security challenges. The US also refused to heed warnings from military advisory teams about the problems involved in organizing and training the new Iraqi armed forces.

• Because the US failed to treat the Iraqi people as partners in the counter-insurgency efforts for nearly a year after the end of major combat or attempt to train or equip them for counter-insurgency operations until April 2004, well after the insurgency had al ready emerged.

• Policymakers and the US military initially assumed that most of the first year would be spent defeating the remnants of Saddam's followers, who would be defeated well before the Iraqi elections. They did not understand the threat that might emerge if they were unable to provide jobs or pensions for Iraqi career officers or co-opt them into the new government. As a result, the US was slow to see that some form of transition payments that were badly needed by the younger Iraqi soldiers who now faced nation-wide unemployment.

• As late as the spring of 2004, the US still refused to acknowledge the true scope of the insurgent threat and made little steps to rebuild a convincing mixture of Iraqi military and security forces, thereby cementing the impression of the US as a conqueror rather than a liberator.

• The US failed to establish the proper political conditions to reduce Iraqi resentment of the occupation and create the climate that would eas e the task, such as making clear that neither the US or UK had any economic ambitions towards Iraq or desire to keep the new Iraqi military weak to prevent them from challenging Coalition control of the country. Nor did the US immediately react to the crime wave and looting that occurred throughout Iraq almost immediately following the war, acting as though it had years rather than months to shape the post-war Iraqi political climate.

Failure to Admit the Scope Through Mid-2004

• Because the US was slow to react to the growth of the insurgency in Iraq, its largely domestic character, and its popular support base amongst Iraq's Sunni Arabs. The military and intelligence effort to understand the terrorist threat posed by the insurgency did not even begin until the fall of 2003.

• From 2003 to early 2004, senior US officials did not plan or respond effectively to the insurgency, referring to the insurgents as scattered terrorist cells and conti nued to issue estimates that their total number could not exceed more than 5,000 and that they had no popular support. In doing so, the US ignored the earlier warnings by Iraqi opinion polls and claimed that all political, economic, and security efforts were either completely successful or would soon become so in a manner eerily reminiscient of Vietnam. As late as July 2004, senior administration officials were still talking about there being only 5,000 even when many experts on the grounds estimated that there might be as many as 12-16,000. Signs of Shi'ite-Sunni tension as well as ethnic tensions in the north were likewise ignored.

• The official assessments of the insurgency ignored the fact that the US was dealing with a mixture of Iraqi nationalism, Sunni resentment, and popular Sunni opposition to any form of Western occupation. The problem within the Sunni Arab community was that the insurgency had broad support rather than a small group of "dead-enders."

• From the beginning, there were a large number of mercenaries and criminal elements that operated in tandem with the insurgency, creating an environment in which volunteers could easily be recruited and trained for street fighting as well as sabotage and terrorist operations. Insurgent spies in the Iraqi government, the new Iraqi military, as well as amongst Iraqis working for the US, media, and NGOs provided excellent HUMINT to the insurgent leadership while saboteurs were able to easily penetrate both the government and the Iraqi economy.

• Iraqi and foreign journalists have provide both an inadvertent and a deliberate propaganda arm to the insurgency, with the heavy media coverage of insurgent attacks and activities providing a command and communications network to the insurgency. This network provided warnings, told insurgents what attacks were and were not successful (both tactically and from a propaganda perspective), and helped them to coordinate with other insurgent cel ls and groups. This led to a race between the insurgency and the US to see whose strength grew the fastest and who was able to learn more about their enemies.

Evolving Threat Tactics

• Through the summer and fall of 2003, Iraqi insurgents emerged as an effective fighting force with significant popular support among the Sunni Arabs and were able to adopt a more sophisticated array of tactics. Native and foreign Islamists also developed into a threat that eventually sought to divide Iraq's Sunni and Shi'ite populations that by the fall of 2004 had taken on the characteristics of a low-level civil war.

• There are no reliable unclassified counts of insurgent attacks or incidents, just as there are no longer counts of casualties on either side since only the US publicly reports its casualties, the Iraqi government classifies its own casualty figures, and estimates of insurgent casualties are tenuous at best.

• From September 2003 to Octobe r 2004, insurgent tactics were balanced between IEDs, direct fire, and indirect fire in the form of car and suicide bombings with the number of attacks significantly increasing per month. The distribution of insurgent attacks varies, though it has been steadily rising in Mosul since the fall of Fallujah. Baghdad receives 300-400 attacks a month, more than twice as many attacks as other provinces. Al-Anbar, Salahuddin, and Nineveh receive 1/3-1/2 as many, while Babil and Diyala average 100 a month and far lower levels occur in Tamin and Basra.

• With the defeat of Sadr and the Mahdi Army, insurgent activities in Karbala, Dhi Qar, Wassit, Missan, Muthanna, Najaf, and Qaddisiyyah have declined. Irbil, Dohuk, and Sulaymaniyyah have long been administered by the KDP and PUK and have long been relatively peaceful.

• 60% of insurgent attacks take place at unspecified times, 10% are in the morning, 11% in the afternoon, and 19% are at night.

Political, Psycholo gical, and Information Warfare Lessons

• The goals, strategies, and tactics used by insurgents have steadily evolved since the fall of 2003. Focusing on the fact that the media tends to focus on dramatic high casualty attacks, little analysis was performed on the insurgency to note that there were different groups of insurgents and terrorists that steadily evolved a wider range of tactics that they utilized whenever it was convenient.

As a result, insurgents sought to focus on the following methods and tactics:

• Attacking structures of governance and security by political, ideological, and violent means to wear down Western nation-building efforts, intimidate and subvert the Iraqi security forces, and demonstrate to the general population that the new government cannot deliver either essential economic services or personal security.

• Forming alliances of convenience and informal associations with other groups to attack the US, the new Iraqi government, and any further efforts at nation-building by operating on the basis that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" and creating a franchise of terrorist cells and independent units that creates a diverse mixture of enemies that are difficult to identify or track.

• Attack Iraqi elites along ethno-sectarian fault lines in order to prevent nation-building and proper governance by inciting a civil war.

• As the US played down its role and the new Iraqi government grew in influence and power, insurgents shifted their attacks towards going after Iraqi government, military, police, and security forces. They also stepped up efforts to prevent Sunni participation in the government and to provoke tensions along Sunni-Shi'ite and Arab-Kurdish lines.

• There are no clear divisions within the insurgency, but Baathists tended to focus on targeting the emerging Iraqi government while Islamist utilized suicide bombings in mass casualty attacks against Iraq's Sh i'ite and Kurdish populations in order to undermine the new government and to provoke a civil war as well as targeting Shi'ite and Kurdish politicians, commanders, and clerics.

• The scale upscaling of Sunni attacks against Shi'ites after the Iraqi elections led some Shi'ites to talk about Sunni ethnic cleansing. Similar attacks have been carried out against Kurds, but both Kurdish groups maintain far better security in their areas than exist in the rest of the country. Since May 2005, the unending wave of Sunni attacks had begun to provoke Shi'ite reprisals and Sunni bodies are now being discovered in unmarked graves.

• The insurgents have linked their war against the US with crime and looting, thereby enlisting the criminal element to support attacks on infrastructure and reconstruction efforts, raise funding for the insurgency, and exploit the unemployment to by tapping into the criminal element in order to strengthen local insurgent and terrorist cells.

• Al-Qaeda and the Baathists have mounted attacks on petroleum and oil facilities in order to deny the Iraqi government revenue, affect local power supply and the Iraqi ability to obtain fuel, attract media attention, and deter foreign investment and development in Iraq's most valuable resource. The impact of these actions can be seen in the fact that from January 2004 to April 2005 electric power generation remained far below the projected US goals and usually under prewar levels. Iraqi exports only 1.3-1.4 MMBD from January to April 2005 in large part because of pipeline and facility sabotage by insurgents.

• By attacking US and other aid projects, the insurgents hope to undermine local acceptance of both the US and the new Iraqi government. As of March 31, 2005 276 civilians working on US aid projects and 2,582 wounded while the number of contractors killed by insurgents rose 19% following the Iraqi elections, with a total of 303 US and foreign contractors killed from March 2003 to May 2005.

• Islamists and other insurgent groups have learned how to capture maximum exposure to their cause using the regional media, the Internet, and above all else the Arab satellite news channels. As a result, the insurgents have paid close attention to media reactions and tailored their attacks in order to cultivate high-profile coverage.

• While maintaining a strategy of constant attrition, insurgents have struck hard at major calendar turning points and/or targets with high political, social, and economic impact. By learning the importance of a constant low-level body count they have worked to create a steady climate of violence that keeps the US in a constant security effort, makes it difficult for new Iraqi forces to protect their country, pressures US and Iraqi forces to disperse them, and ensures that Iraq remains a source of constant media coverage. In addition, the Islamist insurgents have demonstrated an improving capability to target holidays, elections, and political events.

• As insurgent organization improved, they shifted from hit-and-run attacks to larger and better-organized raids that could capture major media attention even if they failed, such as the major Zarqawi raid on Abu Ghraib prison in April 2005 as are continual attacks on the "Green Zone" in Baghdad and major US military facilities like those in Mosul, often using Iraqi uniforms, vehicles, fake IDs, and intelligence provided by moles in the new Iraqi government.

• By pushing "hot buttons," insurgents utilize attacks that provoke maximum political and psychological reactions similar to those used by Hamas and Islamic Jihad in order to provoke an over-reaction. An example of these types of attacks are the near-constant assaults on the "Green Zone" and along the road to Baghdad airport. The airport road in particular passed right through a hostile Sunni area and hence was a perfect staging ground for mounting IED, car bomb, rocket, and mortar attacks against other parts of the Iraqi capital.

• Using regional, Western, and other media insurgents have been able to use interview access, tapes, taking journalists as well as their drivers and assistants hostage, politically-led and motivated crowds, and timed or targeted attacks to manipulate Western and other external media. Insurgents have also manipulated US official briefings with planted questions.

• Using American civilians as proxies for their government as well as going after American businessmen in ways aimed at achieving maximum political and media attention in the US.

• By attacking the UN, NGOs, embassies, aid personnel, and foreign workers (particularly women) insurgents are able to gain media attention and force some organizations to abandon the country. Kidnapping and killing foreign workers puts pressure on their governments and sometimes leads governments from preventing their citizens from working in Iraq. There have been 264 kidnappings between April 2004 and January 2005 with 47 of the kidnapped being killed, 56 still missing, 150 released, 5 escaped, and 6 rescued. Given that there are 100,000 foreigners in Iraq during this period, this means they had a 1 in 380 chance of being kidnapped and a 20% of being killed or beheaded if they were.

• Kidnapping and murdering Iraqi professionals, media, and intelligentsia offer the insurgents a soft target that cannot be defended against, make successful governance by the new government difficult, create problems for police and security forces, weaken the economy, and exacerbates the general feeling of insecurity. 80 professors, 50 physicians, and 31 journalist and media assistants were kidnapped and murdered during the course of 2004.

• By desecrating corpses and beheading kidnap victims, Iraqi insurgents have discovered a potent political and psychological weapons to divide the West from the Islamic world in order to provoke a "clash of civilizations."

• Unlike previous terrorist groups, Islamist terrorists do not seek to negotiate with those they terrorize but rather to create conditions from which they can drive the West away, undermine secular and moderate regimes, and create the conditions under which they can build Islamist theocracies according to their own design. For this reason, Islamists seek to carry out mass casualty attacks, execute hostages, and engage in macabre beheadings even if the result is provoking anger and hostility against fellow Muslims. Bin Laden and his followers do not seek to persuade but rather to alienate the US from Arab regimes in order to undermine them and curtail Western influence. The goal of most Baathists is limited to driving the US out of Iraq but involves many of the same methods. As a result, it must be understood that from the insurgents' perspective, the more horrific the attack the better. Simple casualties do not receive the same media attention as large bombs set off the mi ddle of a crowd, desecrating corpses, beheading hostages, ect. These actions also breed more anger and alienation against the US for its failure to provide security, leading to more stringent security measures and hasty violent responses that play into the enemy's hands.

• Iraqi "body dumps" are a new variation on this theme as insurgents have dumped the bodies of dead Iraqis in rivers, soccer stadiums, and other public locations where they would be found without any clear idea of who killed them or why.

• By confusing the identity of the attacker by making multiple claims and multiple names, insurgents have made it more difficult for the US to determine who to respond against and producing more media coverage and speculation. These false flag operations have been limited to date, but insurgent attacks have frequently been accompanied by attempts to confuse the attackers' identities or attempt to blame the US for the attacks by failing to provide adequate security.

• Forming sanctuaries in cities like Fallujah, setting up bases in mosques, shrines, and other high value targets whose destruction could not be achieved with a high structural impact. The failure to immediately attack Zarqawi in Fallujah and Sadr in An Najaf has increased the suspicion that the mere existence of such sanctuaries create a temporary defensive deterrent that can be exploited to make the US appear anti-Islamic or attacking Arab culture rather than an enemy group.

• Exploiting, exaggerating, and falsifying US attacks that cause civilian casualties, collateral damage, friendly fire, etc. These insurgent claims are amplified by real incidents of misconduct by US troops (i.e. Abu Ghraib) as well as careless political and media rhetoric by US officials and military officers that only serve to benefit both bin Laden and the Baathists who are fighting not to influence Western or world opinion but rather to dominate both Iraq and the entire Islamic world.

Methods of Attack

• The use of IEDs perfected in tactics first used by Hezbollah and the Afghan Arabs against the USSR. In Iraq, insurgents have used the nation's enormous explosive, bomb, and artillery stockpiles to make IEDs as well as car bombs. Using low-grade IEDs, sophisticated IEDs, and large car and truck bombs the insurgents have a rather robust arsenal at their disposal.

• Basing their initial efforts on simple weapons designs (some of them created using Arabic translations of US field manuals on booby traps), the insurgents soon learned to use more sophisticated triggers and detonators to counter US electronic counter-measures and increased their distance away from the actual bomb. Only 10% of Iraqi IEDs are modeled after US Army Field Manual 5-31, an Iraqi translation of which was published in 1987. Insurgents also developed crude charges to attack US armored and other vehicles.

• Paying close attention to US intelligence collection and counter-IED operations, insurgents altered their behavior accordingly and began digging holes within which to place IEDs and then paving them over as well as stealing Iraqi vehicles, uniforms, and IDs to penetrate security areas and linking bombings to ambushes using rifles and RPGs as soon as the response force arrives. By September 2004, 500-600 IEDs were being detonated every month but by May 2005 coalition forces had been able to find and defuse 30-40% of IEDs even though the net number of such devices had increased. 70% of US casualties since the end of major combat have been the direct result of IEDs, though similar data is not available with respect to Iraqi casualties.

• Using mixed attacks and trying to ambush military and emergency forces in follow-up strikes, mounting complex attacks when IEDs are set off and then using either additional IEDs or follow-up strikes.

• Increasing sequential ambushes to draw US or Iraqi forces into follow-up attacks using small arms and light weapons rather than heavier anti-tank weapons and have only been able to down 1 aircraft to date using MANPADS. They have, however, improved their tactics from single fire ambushes to multiple firings mixing small arms, RPGs, and light automatic weapons.

• "Swarming" attacks on vehicles in rapid attacks in order to exploit the vulnerability of soft-skinned vehicles, in some cases firing as many as 8 RPGs into a vehicle in a single attack.

• Suicide bombings and suicide car bombings account for 60% of Iraqi police and recruit casualties and are frequently used even when not tactically necessary in order to attract media attention and emphasize dedication and commitment within the organization. Most suicide bombers are not Iraqis and have been recruited and psychologically prepare for suicide missions by external Islamist organizations. Suicide bombings also serve as a "force multiplier" for the insurgency in that they allow relatively small Islamist groups to carry out major attacks resulting in high casualties with relatively little effort.

• The use of suicide squads recently came into play following the Battle of Fallujah in which small groups of insurgents stay behind to defend bases they cannot hope to hold so that larger numbers of their comrades can escape.

• Islamic fighters in both Iraq and Afghanistan have recently shown to a steady improvement in their use of mortars, anti-tank weapons, rockets, and timed explosives as well as light weapons and use of armor-piercing bullets.

• While initially possessing very poor marksmanship, Iraqi insurgents soon improved their capabilities and developed their own snipers, which were mixed in with regular insurgent forces. While overall insurgent marksmanship remains very poor its sniper corps is definitely a force to be reckoned with and possesses modern sniper rifles, armor piercing bullets, and body armor obtained from outside Iraq by foreign Islamist groups.

• Striking at visible infrastructure targets including water and power plants, the Kirkuk oil fields, and the oil storage tanks at Baiji has severely damaged the government's revenue and forced it to recruit security forces devoted solely to the purpose of protecting these facilities.

• Insurgents soon found that it was far easier to kill Iraqi officials, security forces, and their families than it was to target their US counterparts. They also learned that it was easier to target mid-level officials and members of the educated elite, thereby creating a climate of instability and forcing the US to pull troops away from offensive duty towards protecting these individuals so as to tie up enemy resources and prevent them from mounting offensives against insurgent strongholds like Fallujah. By going after elections and local elected officials, insurgents sought to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the process and intimidate the general population in far wider areas than those subject to regular insurgent attacks.

• By attacking Iraqi security forces on leave, their families, and enlistees the insurgents have tended to focus the majority of their attacks on the weakest links in the new Iraqi security forces and demoralized their stronger counterparts due to the mass nature of the killings. Invariably, these attacks have focused on the Iraqi police, who are the weakest in the country's infrastructure.

• The insurgents have learned enough about COMINT and SIGINT to avoid resorting to direct communications and instead relying on human couriers, the Internet, and random methods of electronic communication to avoid detection. Smuggling, drug sales, looting, and direct fund transfer also avoid traditional financial channels and enable the insurgents to by-pass many of the traditional banking controls in order to obtain cash. Islamist groups operating in Iraq likewise have their own fundraising and distribution network spread out across several countries.

• Transforming sympathetic or partially sympathetic Sunni towns into urban sanctuaries for the insurgency, hiding amongst the civilian population and encouraging collective retaliation as a means of alienating the townspeople from US nation-building efforts.

• Using neighboring states and cross-border areas as a sanctuary, most recently seen in the establishment of an insurgent enclave in Syria from Hit to Haditha and through Ubaydi, Qaim, and Qusaybah along the road to Abu Kamal.

• Not concentrating operatives into a single command and control center but rather dispersing them throughout the country in the form of suicide and sleeper squads. The suicide squads fight against the US if the cell is uncovered while the sleepers disperse amongst the general population.

• Exploiting weaknesses in US HUMINT by concealing the total numbers of insurgent dead and wounded as much as possible.

• Using text messaging on cell phones as a means of countering US electronic intercept capabilities in addition to using more than one phone to communicate a single message. Media leaks concerning US intelligence collection methods have also led insurgents refining their communications capabilities.
  
• Exploiting fixed patterns in US or Iraqi behavior, attacking US weaknesses in terms of translators and HUMINT, and most of all dispersing under pressure and enabling a US to "pacify" an area only to return later reemerge when the US forces grow lax.

• Using the media, infiltrators and ex-detainees for counter-intelligence, in particular learning from ex-detainees' capture about the nature of US intelligence methods.

Dan's comments

There's quite a lot here about the bad guys and what they do, but it's a pretty thorough run-down of enemy tactics and their lack of regard for human life. And if the last installment of Cordesman was red meat as far as critics of the post-war planning (or absence thereof) are concerned, this installment certainly has more than enough red meat for anyone who wants to claim that the media (Arab and Western) often plays directly into the hands of the insurgency.

Cordesman's point as far as the utter disregard for human life possessed by the insurgency as well as their ultimate goals are concerned should also be required reading for anyone now calling for an immediate US withdrawl, since to do so would almost certainly leave these guys in charge.