Estimates of Insurgent Size

• Estimates of the exact size of the Iraqi insurgency have varied widely since it was first recognized as an
  insurgency in August 2003 due to differences of opinion over levels of insurgent activity and dedication, with virtually everyone involved in making such estimates acknowledging that they are little more than sophisticated "guesstimates."

• While a few outlying estimates put the number of core insurgents at as low as 3,500, most US military estimates range between 8-18,000 with occasional swells to as many as 20,000 during major operations. Iraqi intelligence officials by contrast estimate the total number of insurgents and sympathizers at as high
  as 200,000. Newsweek quoted US sources as placing the total number of insurgents at 12-20,000 as
  of June 2005 with other sources claiming that there were as many as 1,000 foreign jihadis, 500 Iraqi jihadis, 15-30,000 Baathists, and some 400,000 sympathizers and support personnel.

• The true number of insurgents probably lies somewhere within the range of 3,500 and 200,000 but it is also irrelevant to whether or not the insurgency enjoys enough popular support among Iraqi Sunnis to continue the fight and whether the violence favored by al-Qaeda and its allies can paralyze efforts at Sunni inclusion and national unity or even trigger a civil war. In practice, the mass casualty suicide bombings favored by al-Qaeda are far more dangerous to Iraqi stability than the far lower levels of violence carried out by Baathists.

• Political developments also effect the cycles and nature of the insurgency, with some experts believing that the success of the Iraqi elections led some Iraqi insurgent groups to be more open towards negotiating with the government and playing a role in the political process while events in and outside Iraq have led al-Qaeda and its allies to view the country more and more as a center for the war against the US because they perceive a strong likelihood that they can successfully "defeat" the US there in such a manner that will gain them significant public support and popular legitimacy throughout the Middle East.

• Iraq has 2 more elections during 2005: the October constitutional referendum and the full national election at the end of the year. Insurgents have every incentive to create as much political turmoil as possible during these periods and to continue their attacks against Iraqi government, economic, intelligentsia, security forces, and coalition targets.

Comparisons of the Insurgent Threat and the new Iraqi forces

• There is no measureable way to quantify how the development of the Iraqi military, security, and police forces has kept pace with the development of the insurgency. There have also been no meaningful casualty estimates as far as how many members of the new Iraqi military have been killed in action though MNSCT-I has issued reports of over 1,000 dead and one US commander has mentioned upwards of 15,000 in terms
  of insurgent casualties. Numerical comparisons are rather pointless, however, since the ratio of security forces to insurgents sometimes has to reach levels of between 12-30:1 in order to provide effective security
  to a given area if there is no political solution to the problems that create either the climate for the insurgency or an active presence on the ground for the new government. In such cases, intangibles like the battle for political perceptions and "hearts and minds" is often far more critical than the actual numbers of insurgents and defenders.

• While the insurgents have grown in capability and size, they have also suffered major defeats in Fallujah, Mosul, and Samarra that greatly reduced their capabilities towards the end of 2004. However, the insurgents have also learned a great deal with respect to improving their weaponry, IEDs, how to plan attacks and ambushes, setting up their own security, and both locating and attacking "soft targets" that yield political and media impact with relatively little risk. Insurgents also deployed 6 suicide bombers on foot in February 2005 alone, indicating that they are learning how to get around security restrictions that make traditional car bombings more difficult.

The Meaning of Coalition Victories and Insurgent Defeats

• Insurgents have suffered serious and continuing defeats since early 2004 in An Najaf, Baghdad, Samarra, Fallujah, and Mosul and are increasingly coming under attack in their previous "safe zones" in the Sunni Triangle, the "Triangle of Death," and along the Iraqi-Syrian border.

• US-Iraqi attempts to root out the insurgency have so far had a very limited impact and while some US officers regarded the fall of the insurgent stronghold in Fallujah as a turning point, US military experts were far more cautious on this scale. While insurgents lost a key sanctuary and suffered upwards of 1,000 dead (with a similar figure captured) including key leaders and cadres, the most prominent insurgents appear to have fled the city prior to the beginning of the attack and many others seem to have escaped during the fighting.

• While no Iraqi province has been completely safe from attack, various insurgent groups were still able to operate with relative ease in places like Mosul, Ramadi, Samarra, Baquba, Balad, Baji, Tal Afar, and Hawija during the height of the fighting in Fallujah and it seems that some insurgent leaders had ordered their forces to disperse and regroup before the battle even began. The fighting in Mosul was particularly fierce immediately following the victory in Fallujah with 130-140 attacks a day in the aftermath of the battle. While US and Iraqi forces captured a large amount of weaponry and supplies in Fallujah it seems unlikely that the insurgents are going to experience any supply problems during the near future due the large amounts of weaponry that were reported missing or looted from Iraq's vast arms depots both during and immediately after the war.

• The major battles that have followed the fall of Fallujah have all been less concentrated and intensive, but an almost continuous series of raids, captures, and sudden "swarming" operations against known insurgent strongholds. While no insurgent casualty counts have been released, the figures almost certainly exceed 10,000 between May 2003 and May 2005 and are almost certainly substantially higher.

• In April 2005, the US Marine Corps mounted its largest offensive along the Syrian border and other insurgent enclaves in Operation Matador and a series of follow-up attacks that once again demonstrated that
  insurgents could not survive if they stood and and fought but only if they dispersed. Iraqi forces played a limited role in these operations, but did deploy in greater strength in other areas including the 40,000-man Iraqi security operation codenamed Operation Lightning. While this operation too was a success, it could not destroy insurgent activity in any given area on a lasting basis.

• Despite these new offensives, Sunni insurgent groups remain active in both the Sunni Triangle, Anbar
  province, and the regions southeast of Baghdad. As a result, 4 Iraqi provinces continue to have a major
  insurgency threat as well as a major insurgent presence. Since the beginning of the fighting in Fallujah Sunnis have demonstrated their ability to operate in ethnically mixed cities such as Baghdad, Tal Afar, Mosul, Basra, and even in the Kurdish areas.

• General Casey stated in March 2005 that the insurgents in the Sunni areas had enough manpower, weapons, supplies, and money to launch 50-60 attacks a day while pointing to the fact that the arrest of
  several terrorist bombmakers had degraded the insurgents' ability to mount effective car bombing attacks. The tireless efforts of US and Iraqi forces to thwart insurgent attacks have mostly been hollow victories, with the more success that is achieved in such operations only serving to drive more and more insurgents into attacking "soft targets" like Iraqi civilians.

• There has been a continuing sabotage campaign against key targets like the Iraqi oil facilities as well as a constant campaign of intimidation, kidnapping, disappearances, and mystery killings even in liberated cities like Fallujah and Samarra that have forced the redeployment of large numbers of Iraqi police and civilians to these areas.

• A violent split between Arab Shi'ites and Kurdish Sunnis remains possible, as does the possibility of a schism between Shi'ite factions within the new government. Barring such divisions, however, the insurgent is likely to remain Sunni-dominated with some 35 Sunni groups having either made announcements of their existence or claimed responsibility for insurgent attacks, though many of them may be either cells, clan or tribal groupings, or part of an effort to shift the blame for attacks by making the insurgency appear larger than it actually is. A majority of the those killed in coalition operations have been Iraqi Sunnis, as have 90-95% of those detained.

• Sunni insurgents are divided into a complex mixture of nationalists, Baathists, Iraqi Islamists, foreign Islamists, foreign volunteers with no clean alignment, mercenaries, and members of the criminal element. Some are organized into cells as small as 2-3 men that can recruit or call in larger teams, but even the loss of a significant number of cells from a single group is not likely to cripple the insurgency since several insurgent groups operate in most areas. Other groups operate in far larger groups of 30-50 men and tend to clump together into even larger groups for major attacks. The main Sunni insurgent groups are concentrated in major cities like Mosul and Baghdad, the "Triangle of Death," the Sunni Triangle, Anbar province, and the Sunni areas along the Turkish border.

• Anbar is Iraq's largest province and is roughly the size of Belgium but is also one of the least populated, serving as home to only 1,000,000 people out of Iraq's 27,000,000. It is at least 90% Sunni Arab, offers as a potential sanctuary for insurgents based in Syria, and also borders Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Aside from Fallujah, the area immediately surrounding the Euphrates and its agricultural areas continue to serve as key operating areas for insurgents, as do the roads and towns leading up to the Syrian border where insurgents take advantage of the rough terrain for smuggling and dispersal. While the central government retains a presence in most major cities, successive Iraqi governments have long exercised limited control in much of Anbar province.

• Given these facts, it is hardly surprising that Anbar has become the center of the Sunni insurgency, with 500 of the ~1,600 US soldiers killed thus far in the Iraqi insurgency dying in Anbar. It is one of the few provinces where insurgents have openly occupied towns, set up checkpoints, and murdered large numbers of Jordanian truck drivers killed along the road from Amman in an effort to break up supply lines.

• Sunni insurgents have repeatedly shown since the fall of Fallujah that they can operate in ethnically and religiously mixed cities like Baghdad, Mosul, and Basra. The road from Baghdad to the international airport, which passes through several prominent Sunni neighborhoods, has become so much a symbol of coalition problems with quelling the insurgency that it has been nicknamed "Death Street" by Iraqis and "IED Alley" by the coalition. The threat in major Sunni neighborhoods like Amariyyah, Hamra, Jihad, and Qaddisiyyah has become so bad that senior US and Iraqi official bypass it in helicopters and regular convoys of armored Rhino buses have become the only relatively secure way to travel by land.

Baathists, Saddam Loyalists, and Sunni Nationalists

• Iraq's Arab Sunnis are only beginning to forge new political identities out of the power vacuum left by the fall of Saddam Hussein. It is important to note that while most of Iraq's ruling elite during Saddam's rule were Sunni, the vast majority of these elites came from a very small subsection of the Sunni population with family backgrounds in what were originally rural families. The highest levels of the Iraqi elite belonged to Saddam's extended family, Tikriti tribesmen in general, the allied al-Bu Nasir tribe, the Bejat clan, and the Majid family. The vast majority of Sunnis received very little personal benefit to Saddam's rule and many Sunnis suffered under his oppression the same as other Iraqis.

• Most Sunni Arabs, like their Shi'ite counterparts, favored a strong, unified Iraqi state during 2003-2004, when public opinion polls covering broad areas were still possible. Like the Shi'ites, polls show Iraqi Sunnis as generally religious and view Islam as a key part of their lives but do not favor a theocratic state.

• Sunni efforts to create a new political identity includes the minority who have chosen to participate in the new government, the majority who boycotted it, and political parties like the Muslim Brotherhood and the Iraqi Islamic Party. They also include clerical bodies like the Jamaat-e-Ulema-e-Islami (Association of Muslim Scholars) led by Dr. Muthanna Harith al-Dhari, an Egyptian-educated Islamic scholar. Jamaat-e-Ulema-e-Islami claims to represent the clerics of some 6,000 Sunni mosques or roughly 80% of the total, but there is no way to verify such claims.

• US analysts at the CIA acknowledge that Baathists and Saddam loyalists represent only part of the insurgency even though they play a key role in the leadership, organization, and financing. The largest element of the insurgency, however, appears to be newly radicalized Iraqi Sunnis. According to the CIA, the loss of Sunni power, prestige, and economic influence is a key factor, as is unemployment and a loss of personal status - direct and indirect unemployment among young Sunnis has been 40-60% in many areas since the fall of Saddam Hussein. Many insurgents are also motivated by tribal or family grievances against the new government, nationalism, religious obligations to jihad, anger at the US occupation (particularly among those who lost kinsmen fighting US forces), and the economic and political turmoil that has rocked Iraq since Saddam's fall.

• The role of radicalized Sunnis should not be seen as diminishing the role of the Baathists, however. The Baath Party's organization and infrastructure did not dissolve upon its abolishment by the CPA in May 2003 and some elements of it appear to be operating from a de facto sanctuary in Syria. At the same time, many full and part-time Iraqis associated with the Baath are linked to the Party more by family, tribe, and regional loyalties than to any popular allegiance to Baathism.

• Many of the Sunni insurgent groups or cells that are not part of al-Qaeda in Iraq or aligned with it likely receive some degree of financing and leadership from the clandestine Baathist infrastructure that has emerged since Saddam's overthrow but have no meaningful ties or filial allegiance to Baathist groups or exiled members of Saddam's family. These are Sunni nationalists involved in an ethno-sectarian national power struggle rather than Baathists bent on restoring their former political hegemony over the country. This has allowed the insurgency to broaden its base of support to establish ties to Islamist groups as well the more secular Baathists.

• Other Iraqi-dominated Sunni insurgent groups have a significant degree of independence from the Baathist leadership even though they cooperate with it in at least some attacks and that many different elements of the insurgency retain ties to Baathist supporters and rely on their central leadership and coordination to mount attacks. US experts refer to internal networks using the Internet to coordinate operations, exchange data on tactics, targets, and joint operations. There is evidence of such exchanges between cells in Iraq and their counterparts in Syria and Afghanistan. Insurgent groups also use the media to receive near real-time information on what their counterparts are up to as a means of learning which tactics result in the greatest amount of political and media impact.

• It is unclear how much influence the Baathists have but both US and Iraqi commanders believe that the exiled Baathist leadership in Syria coordinates operations with its loyalists inside Iraq. The Office of the Prime Minister called for the arrest of 6 senior members of the former regime in March 2005: Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri (leader of the Regional Command Council and the New Baath Party, now pledged to Zarqawi), Mohammed Younis al-Ahmad (the chief financier and operations chief for the Regional Command Council and the New Baath Party), Rashid Taan Kazim (Central Baath Party regional chairman in Anbar province), Abd al-Baqi Abd al-Karim al-Abdallah al-Saadun (chief recruiter and financier for terrorist attacks in eastern and central Iraq), Aham Hasan Kaka al-Ubaydi (a former Mukhabarat officer who had since joined Ansar al-Islam), and Fahdi Ibrahim Mahmud Mashadani (a senior financier of the New Baath Party).

• Baathist insurgents benefit from the fact that they still have access to much of the former regime's overseas cash, were already organized before the invasion began, and have steadily tightened their clandestine infrastructure and purged toadies and suspected informants. According to one report, much of the Baathist restructuring came out as a result of a meeting in al-Hasaka in April or May 2004.

• Baathist field commanders include Saddam's half-brother and former security director Ibrahim Sabawi, the deposed dictator's former aide Mohammed Younis al-Ahmad, elements of the Iraqi 5th Corps that had been stationed in Mosul prior to the war and were able to disperse before being engaged by US forces, and those regime commander that were able to seek refuge in Syria following the fall of the regime.

• The ties between Iraqi insurgents and their Islamist counterparts have been mixed, though in some cases US officials have seen evidence of secular Sunni nationalists and Baathists cooperating with the most extreme Islamists. In Mosul, Baathists worked side-by-side with al-Qaeda and its allies to derail the election process and while the two groups have very different visions for Iraq's future and sometimes even feud and attack one another, their short-term goals are largely identical and as such there is ample room for cooperation with Islamists.

The Numbers Game

• There are no recent polls as to how many Iraqi Sunnis support the insurgency, but some ABC polls by the spring of 2004 indicated that it was well in excess of 33% by the spring of 2004. Members of the Sunni establishment clergy have become more supportive of the insurgency over time and major battles like Fallujah inevitably serve to inflame Sunni popular opinion.

• US officials continued to repeat estimates of the total size of the insurgency at ~5,000 from the fall of 2003 to the summer of 2004. In October, these estimates were revised in favor of 12-16,000 insurgents, but it was never defined how many of these individuals were active combatants. US and Iraqi officials have been consistently careful to note that they are uncertain whether the number of insurgents has increased or decreased over time as a result of US-Iraqi operations on one hand and political and religious tensions that lead more Iraqi Sunnis to join the insurgency. As of the spring of 2005, US experts stated that they had no evidence of a decline in the insurgency despite the large number of captures or kills since the summer of 2004.

• Simple figures of numerical strength with respect to the insurgency is only part of the issue as insurgents have become successively more experienced, adapting tactics and methods of attack almost as fast as the coalition can counter them. Coalition troops reported that insurgents in Fallujah used improved RPGs in an effort to counter armored vehicles while the fighting from September to November 2004 indicated that the insurgency was beginning to develop central command, planning, and financing networks.

The Criminal Element

• At least some elements of the insurgency have joined forces with local criminal groups in looting and sabotage campaigns. An alliance has also formed between criminals and al-Qaeda with regard to areas like kidnappings, though the alliances between criminals on one hand and Baathists and Sunni nationalists on the other appears to be stronger, particularly in cases where smuggler and bandit tribes mix freely with insurgents and criminals.

• The insurgents and their criminal allies take advantage of the limited ability of the new government to enforce its laws and coalition vulnerabilities. Many patterns of both coalition and Iraqi government and military operation are easily observable to the point of becoming predictable. Bases are often observed and are vulnerable at their entrances to rocket and mortar attacks as well as along their supply lines.

• The crime problem also affects Iraqi civilians on a day-to-day basis and saps popular confidence in the new government. Far more Iraqis have suffered as a result of crime than as a result of the insurgent attacks. If the problems in Iraq are to solved and Iraqi confidence in the institutions of their new government strengthened, the crime problem must be tackled along with the insurgency.

Intelligence and the Security Problems

• Baathists, Sunni nationalists, and Islamists all pose acute security and counter-intelligence problems for MNF-I and Iraqi forces. Insurgents have good sources within the new Iraqi government, its military, and sometimes even in local US and coalition units. This is inevitable and there is little that can be done to stop it, as Iraq simply lacks the necessary resources and data to vet all of its recruits. Many Iraqis only work for the government because they cannot find other employment and may in fact sympathize with the insurgency. Workers in US and government facilities and in various aid and construction projects are even harder to vet than government and military recruits. Even those individuals who do support the government may be coerced into providing information to the insurgents due to threats against their families, kidnappings, and actual murders of friends and relatives.

• US, Iraqi, and coalition HUMINT is improving but coalition efforts are hurt by high turnover and troop rotations. Most Iraqi informant networks serving the US in hostile areas have serious loyalty and quality problems, while others either use their positions to settle old scores or simply pass misinformation on to coalition troops for money. Iraqi intelligence is only beginning to establish its own network and has only a limited presence in the Sunni areas. Training and equipment for the Iraqi military has significantly improved over the last 6 months but training and organizing an effective Iraqi intelligence and counter-intelligence corps will take at least until the end of 2005 and probably into early 2006. While this training process occurs Iraqi vulnerability is all but unavoidable, aid projects are easy to infiltrate, NGO or contractor headquarters are easily observable targets, and infrastructure and energy facilities have a long line of pipes or wires and many vulnerable links. The media has to be careful and defensive, as do emergency workers and medical teams.

Inclusion or Exclusion?

• In theory, the various Sunni insurgent groups are more capable of paralyzing process and fighting a long war of attrition than actually defeating an Iraqi government dominated by the nation's Shi'ite majority that maintains good relations with the Kurds. Regardless of which estimate is used, Iraq's Sunni insurgency is still made up of a minority of the nation's population and even a minority of Sunnis. Unless the new Iraqi government collapses, the insurgency cannot restore Sunni dominance or Baathist rule, nor can they regain the level of power, wealth, and influence they once had or restore the largely secular rule that existed under the Baathists or reestablish Iraq in such a way that it will be regarded by most Arabs as Sunni.

• As noted by former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, unlike in Algeria or Vietnam the Iraqi insurgents are a strictly reactionary movement and do not offer an articulate solution as far as what they plan to do in the event they should succeed in Iraq. At the same time, insurgent groups are becoming better trained and organized and may attempt to establish themselves as the preeminent political and military force among the Iraqi Sunnis and present themselves to their kinsmen as the only viable alternative to occupation even if the fail to provide a popular agenda. They can survive as long as the government is unable to exercise its own authority in the Sunni areas and as long as a majority of Sunnis do not see a clear incentive to join the political process. An understanding of these same political and military realities may eventually drive many Sunnis away from the insurgency if the Shi'ites and Kurds act to include them in the new government and the political process. Such shifts are likely to be gradual and limited in the beginning and most insurgent groups are dedicated to doing everything and anything they can to dislodge the coalition from Iraq and break up the political process regardless of the consequences.

• Much will depend on just how willing Shi'ites and Kurds are to forget the past, refrain from overreacting to al-Qaeda attacks aimed at dividing and splintering the country, and continue to offer Iraqi Sunnis a share of the nation's wealth and power as Iraq's president and prime minister have both done by delaying the formation of the new government until Saadun al-Dulaimi could be appointed Minister of Defense. Still, Shi'ites and Kurds have both caused for purging all former Baathists from the new government and unexplained raids have been launched against Sunni parties seeking to negotiate against the government.