The well-respected Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies recently published a report on the developing Iraqi insurgency (PDF, 248 KB). The report is dated December 22, 2004. It's thoroughly fascinating reading.
Cordesman's entire essay is only twenty-three pages long, but I thought that I would post some excerpts. I've inserted report page numbers after each chunk of text that I've quoted. Here and there I've silently corrected typographical errors.
Okay, let's begin:
The US assumed for the first year after the fall of Saddam Hussein that it was dealing with a limited number of insurgents that Coalition forces would defeat well before the election. It did not see the threat level that would emerge if it did not provide jobs or pensions for Iraqi career officers, or co-opt them into the nation building effort. It was slow to see that some form of transition payments were necessary for the young Iraqi soldiers that faced massive, nation-wide employment. As late as the spring of 2004, the US still failed to acknowledge the true scale of the insurgent threat and the extent to which popular resentment of Coalition forces would rise if it did not act immediately to rebuild a convincing mix of Iraqi military and security forces.The US failed to establish the proper political conditions to reduce Iraqi popular resentment of the Coalition forces and create the political climate that would ease the task of replacing them with effective Iraqi forces. It did not make it clear that the US and Britain had no economic ambitions in Iraq and would not establish permanent bases, or keep Iraqi forces weak to ensure their control. It did not react to the immediate threat that crime and looting presented throughout Iraq almost immediately after the war, and which made personal security the number one concern of the Iraqi people. It acted as if it had years to rebuild Iraq using its own plans, rather than months to shape the climate in which Iraqis could do it.
As a result, the US failed to come to grips with the Iraqi insurgency during the first year of US occupation in virtually every important dimension. It was slow to react to the growth of the insurgency in Iraq, to admit it was largely domestic in character, and to admit it had significant popular support. For all of 2003, and most of the first half of 2004, it referred to the attackers as terrorists, kept issuing estimates that they could not number more than 5,000, and claimed they were a mixture of outsider elements and diehard former regime loyalists (FRLs). It largely ignored the warnings provided by Iraqi opinion polls, and claimed that its political, economic, and security efforts were either successful or would soon become so. In short, it failed to honestly assess the facts on the ground in a manner reminiscent of Vietnam.
As late as July 2004, the Administration's senior spokesmen still seemed to live in a fantasyland in terms of their public announcements, perception of the growing Iraqi hostility to the use of Coalition forces, and the size of the threat. They were still talking about a core insurgent force of only 5,000, when many Coalition experts on the ground in Iraq saw the core as at least 12,000-16,000. (pp. 1-2)
Well, as this blog has documented from time to time, the Bush administration has been slow to acknowledge facts that don't fit with its agenda. Consequently, it's hardly surprising that the occupation suffered from the same blindness.
The present level of the threat in Iraq is all too real, and Iraqi Interim Government claims that some 16 of Iraq's provinces are secure are clearly untrue. There is a significant level of security in 12 provinces, and the US and IIG have won significant victories in Najaf and Fallujah. Even most areas where insurgents do operate, and have significant local influence, have divided populations and are not areas the insurgents' control. Moreover, if one looks at the total population of all the scattered cities and areas where insurgents and terrorists largely dominate the area, it does not exceed 6-9% of Iraq's total population.The battle of Fallujah in November 2004 is a particularly striking example of a tactical victory. It is reported to have killed some 1,200 insurgents and led to the capture of nearly 2000, at the cost of 54 American and eight Iraqi lives. Fallujah remains a troubled city, and insurgents are still active at low levels in parts of Fallujah, but the loss of the city has deprived Sunni insurgents and terrorist groups of their one true sanctuary inside Iraq.
At the same time, the Iraqi Interim Government and US can scarcely claim that they are clearly moving towards victory. The number of incidents has declined somewhat since Fallujah, but major insurgent attacks have occurred in Baghdad, Mosul, Kerbala, and Najaf. The US lost some 24 dead and 60 wounded in one attack on a mess tent in Mosul on December 21, 2002. Some 68 Iraqis had been killed in attacks in Kerbala and Najaf a few days earlier, and some 175 wounded. The Sunni triangle, area along the Tigris, and "triangle of death" south of Baghdad are all areas of intensive Sunni insurgent activity, and the stability of Shi'ite and Kurdish areas remains uncertain. (p. 11)
Let me add an observation that I haven't seen elsewhere in the aftermath of the battle for Fallujah, which is not to imply that someone else has not said the same thing somewhere else.
The entire world knew months in advance that the U.S. military would attack insurgents in Fallujah after the November election, assuming, of course, that Bush was re-elected. Consequently, any insurgent who wanted to avoid the fighting was able to do so, simply by leaving the city.
Yet large numbers of insurgents stayed in Fallujah. They did so, however, knowing that they were greatly outgunned by the U.S. military, and thus that they would inevitably suffer massively disproportionate casualties. This means that large numbers of insurgents volunteered to die in the fight that they knew was coming.
That single fact says something about the fervor with which many of them are fighting.
The insurgency seems to remain largely Iraqi and Sunni dominated. Some 35 Sunni Arab groups have made some kind of public announcement or claimed responsibility for terrorist or insurgent attacks — although many may be little more than cells and some may be efforts to shift the blame for attacks or make the insurgent movement seem larger than it is. An overwhelming majority of those captured or killed have been Iraqi Sunnis, as well as something like 90-95% of those detained.These insurgents have suffered significant tactical defeats since early 2004, notably in Najaf, Baghdad, Samarra, Fallujah, and Mosul. Nevertheless, US and Iraqi government attempts to root out the insurgency have so far only had limited impact. There is no evidence that number of insurgents is declining as a result of Coalition and Iraqi attacks to date. The number of insurgent attacks has been consistently high since the spring of 2004, although the pattern fluctuates over time. (p. 12)
[. . .]
The Sunni insurgents are divided into a complex mix of Sunni nationalists, pro-Ba'ath/ex-regime, Sunni Iraqi Islamist, outside Islamic extremists, foreign volunteers with no clear alignment, and paid or politically motivated criminals. Most now seem organized so that there cadres are in relatively small cells, some as small as 2-3 men. These can recruit or call in larger teams, but the loss of even a significant number of such cells may not cripple a given group, and several Sunni groups operate in most areas.
There are no reliable estimates of the numbers of such insurgents, or breakdown by motivation and group. There also are no recent polls that provide a clear picture of how many Iraqi Arab Sunnis support the insurgents, although some ABC polls indicated that the number was well over 33% by the spring of 2004. Many members of the Sunni clergy have become steadily more supportive of the insurgency since that time, and battles like Fallujah have inevitably helped to polarize Sunni opinion.
US officials kept repeating estimates of total insurgent strengths of 5,000 from roughly the fall of 2003 through the summer of 2004. In October, they issued a range of 12,000 to 16,000 but have never defined now many are hard core and full time, and how many are part time, and US experts would be the first to indicate that any such numbers are guesstimates. They also are careful to note that they are uncertain as to whether the numbers are increasing or decreasing with time as a result of US and Iraqi operations versus increases in the political and other tensions that lead Iraqi Arab Sunnis to join the insurgents. (p. 13)
The important point is that despite heavy losses the insurgency continues to inflict significant casualties on U.S. and Iraqi forces.
The Sunni insurgent groups are concentrated in Sunni-populated areas like the "Sunni Triangle" and Al Ansar Province to the west of Baghdad, and the so-called "Triangle of Death" to the southeast of Baghdad. As a result, four of Iraq's provinces have both a major insurgency threat and a major insurgent presence. Sunni insurgents have also repeatedly shown since the battle of Fallujah that they can strike in major mixed or Shi'ite-dominated cities like Baghdad, Mosul, and Basra. They have also operated in Kurdish areas. No province is safe from occasional attack, and attacks are only part of the story. (p. 14)[. . .]
One broader problem is that the various Sunni insurgent groups ultimate have a nonnegotiable agenda. They cannot bring back Arab Sunni minority rule or the Ba'ath; they cannot regain the level of power, wealth, and influence they once had. They cannot reestablish the form of largely secular rule that existed under Saddam, or reestablish Iraq as a country that most Arabs see as "Sunni." (p. 14)
[. . .]
Other key insurgent elements include Arab and Islamist groups with significant numbers of foreign volunteers like the one led Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. It is unlikely that such foreign volunteers make up more 10% of the insurgent force, and probably only make up around 5%. (p. 15)
So, then, if the insurgency consists largely of Sunnis backing a nonnegotiable agenda as well as foreign volunteers, i.e., jihadists, how can the insurgents be induced to lay down their arms, short of killing all of them? At the moment no one seems to have an answer to this question.
I've only excerpted the material on the growth and composition of the insurgency. Cordesman also discusses the Shi'ites and the Kurds, the role of Syria and Iran in aiding the insurgency, and other important matters.
