The number is far higher than the US military has so far admitted and paints a much grimmer picture of the challenge facing the Iraqi authorities and their British and American backers as elections loom in four weeks.
"I think the resistance is bigger than the US military in Iraq. I think the resistance is more than 200,000 people," General Muhammad Abdullah Shahwani, director of Iraq's new intelligence services, said....
General Shahwani said that there were at least 40,000 hardcore fighters attacking US and Iraqi troops, with the bulk made up of part-time guerrillas and volunteers providing logistical support, information, shelter and money.
"People are fed up after two years without improvement," he said. "People are fed up with no security, no electricity, people feel they have to do something. The army [dissolved by the American occupation authority] was hundreds of thousands. You'd expect some veterans would join with their relatives, each one has sons and brothers."
Monday, January 03, 2005
More insurgents than U.S. soldiers?
At least one Iraqi expert thinks so. The head of Iraq's intelligence service estimates that more than 200,000 Iraqis are involved in the insurgency against the U.S.:
My point behind the posting was not to endorse Shinseki's argument that we need more troops in Iraq. Rather, I wanted to communicate the scale of the insurgency that we face.
ReplyDeleteWith that said, Zak, I do think the U.S. would have been fucked in Iraq no matter how the war had been executed, with the possible exception that if it had been done with the full support of the international community, it might have had a small chance of success, in that the international legitimacy would have had massive morale (and moral) implications.