Seeds of Chaos
The Baghdad Files: A trove of secret intelligence reports shows how Saddam Hussein planned the current insurgency in Iraq Long before the invasion that toppled his regime was even launched
According to the report, which cited "multiple sources," the FRE s' insurgency has "grown in coordination, command and control, and lethality." Former regime elements, it says, trained in "guerrilla and terrorist tactics" and had access to small arms, mortars, rockets, and other weapons, including man-portable surface-to-air missiles. "FRE s retain access to virtually all the weapons systems and ordnance previously controlled by the Iraqi military, security, and intelligence assets," the report says, citing "unsecured arms depots and storage sites. "FRE s' prewar "operating and support structure, access to resources, and training and capabilities," the report says, "make them the greatest threat of all anticoalition groups in the near term." It concludes that the FRE s "are assessed to be behind the majority of attacks" in Iraq.
"Last Friday's Army. " That assessment remains true today, says Army Brig. Gen. John DeFreitas, the Pentagon's senior intelligence officer in Iraq. In an interview, DeFreitas said that while the insurgency has many faces, the former regime elements clearly are the biggest problem. Some insurgents remain loyal to Saddam, the general said, but what they really want is to return to power. "You have a power struggle going on here," DeFreitas explained. "The old regime controlled the reins of power in the country for years, and they are not willing to let them go without a fight."
Others ascribe a range of motivations to the insurgents. "The vast majority," says Anthony Cordesman, a prominent defense analyst and Middle East expert, "are Sunni Arabs motivated by nationalism, religion, fear of loss of power to the Shiites, anger at [the] U.S., anger at occupiers, and sometimes profit or simply being caught up in events."
Sorting out the elements of the insurgency is mind-boggling work and may help explain why coalition forces have had such a difficult time keeping the peace in Iraq. For one thing, no one seems to really know how many insurgents there actually are. Estimates range to as high as 20,000, but current and former government officials say coalition forces simply don't know how many there are. Ahmed Hashim, a professor of strategic studies at the U.S. Naval War College, has studied the insurgency and concluded in a paper last summer that the "insurgency is not a monolithic, united movement directed by a leadership with a unitary and disciplined ideological vision." David Kay, the former chief weapons inspector for the Iraq Survey Group, agrees. "There is still no agreement" in U.S. government circles," Kay says, "on what the insurgency is--its structure and command."
Given the mayhem in the provinces of Baghdad, Anbar, Salah ad Din, and Ninawa, such confusion seems understandable. The insurgency includes not just Sunnis and former Baathists who want to turn back the clock but also militant jihadists and foreign fighters determined to make their stand in Iraq. Each day, it seems, another terrorist group is born, albeit sometimes with very few members. They have had names such as "the Army of Hawks," the "Jihad al-Islam," and "Last Friday's Army." Nearly 1,300 U.S. military personnel have died in the Iraqi conflict.
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