That was what I was thinking to…that this sophisticated command and control structure, as well as the highly developed bureaucratic structure probably came from some of the original Iraqi professional officers who joined forces (probably holding their noses initially) with AQ in Iraq. It’s interesting that they saw the problems but that the actual foreign AQ command couldn’t see it.
It’s a good point. I hadn’t thought of that to be honest. But the article did say that they continued executions…presumably (the article doesn’t say) until they really started getting hammered from Sunni militia groups who turned on them.
It was interesting that they apparently were using the supposedly fearsome ‘foreign fighters’ as essentially cannon fodder, and that it was the Iraqi’s who co-opted the command structure (though they did also say that some of the higher level command structure was till foreign).
Mmm. I don’t have that impression. I think that their base is religious fanaticism. I doubt that bin Laden is too crazy about his brand being secularized in Iraq. shrug Could be wrong.
And as RedFury says, that’s exactly what we see. Lie upon lie, corruption upon corruption, leading inevitably to failure upon failure. We built an enterprise entirely upon lies and corruption, and a disastrous result was therefore guaranteed; an evil idea, badly executed by incompetents.
xtisme, Frank There is no question that De-Baathification is one of the greatest blunders in history. They created an armed insurgency. The administration’s policy has since done a 180, but it’s after the damage has been done. The idea that secular Baathists ultimately would turn against AQI for ideological differences is an intriguing one.
I definitely agree that among the fuckups from our invasion of Iraq disbanding the army and tossing out every Baathist was one of the bigger ones.
I think though that the core differences (at least wrt the article) between the Iraqi command of AQI and the foreign AQI types (who seem to be a pretty small minority) was more fundamental than ideological…I think it stemmed more from practical considerations. The Iraqi’s KNEW that wacking their own out in public would eventually turn the people against them…while it seems the AQ foreigners perhaps felt they would intimidate the populace by their brutal acts.
Which is one of the reasons that now there are something like 100,000 (IIRC) Sunni militia fighters of various groups going after them hammer and tongs. Well, unless of course all those Sunni’s are fighting phantoms that don’t exist of course.
The assembly line for AlQueda production is between Pakistan and Afghanistan, I saw a program that said the drug trade is helping finance them. They now train operatives in their native language. Goofy and crazy Europeans are being taught how to make bombs and to organize and recruit.
Afghanistan has had a rebirth of AlQueda and they will eventually have to be faced. It is turning into a disaster and our commitment there will have to be increased. The real enemy has been allowed to rearm and retrain.
Well, the other side of that is that maybe there are more AQI than the estimates from your cite (those Sunni militia groups are certainly fighting someone)…or maybe a lot of folks who are part of AQI are actually Iraqi (probably mainly Sunni) who have simply joined the organization for reasons of their own but aren’t really part of AQ…sort of an enemy of my enemy thing. They could have simply be using the AQ ‘brand’ as a loose way of organizing themselves to have more effect than a bunch of disjointed groups would have.
Or it could be as you say. I don’t know. Certainly the insurgents in Iraq were and still are surprisingly effective and tenacious…and we most certainly underestimated them going in.
BTW, my post was in response to Der Trihs, not gonzo…there was a bit of a board glitch there and I couldn’t edit to put in his quote.
Though this has nothing to do with this thread, you may be surprised to learn that I actually agree with you here for once. I think we screwed the pooch in Afghanistan and allowed the real enemy a chance to get back on it’s feet…and I think we will probably regret that, regardless of how Iraq turns out.
Let me try something out on you. Lets say somebody really, really stupid is willing to pay you to fight zombie garden gnomes. You know there are no zombie garden gnomes, and are just about to say so when the really, really stupid guy drops a huge wad of Benjamins on your kitchen table. He also offers you weapons, with the proviso that you pinky promise to use them only on zombie garden gnomes.
Now, me, being of solid moral fiber and stern rectitude, would refuse to have anything to do with such a disgraceful scam. Most definitely I would not recruit my friends, relatives, and co-conspirators to belly up to the money trough.
850-1k would sound about right if they were using them as cadre , trying to ape the green berets and montngards ala Vietnam. But id probably wait until we get the new numbers out to see what the 03 to 08 AQ totals were, they should have raised and lowered depending on what phase of the insurgency.
Why can’t it be ‘all of the above’? I can understand the counter reaction to some about AQI as we have certainly heard enough in the past about how great a threat they were…but I think people are over reacting the other way, trying to minimize AQI’s role and impact on Iraq but completely marginalizing them, as if by doing so they can focus more on making this a completely home grown insurgency against the US. But reading the article it seems that AQI IS mostly composed of Iraqi’s, from the command structure to the troops, with only a few hundred or (perhaps) thousand foreigners tossed in for seasoning (and the lower rank foreigners used mainly as cannon fodder).
Even then it will probably be hard to judge their relative strength I should think. I have no idea how they estimate how many fighters might be in AQI or in the various hostile (or even ‘friendly’) militia groups. I seriously doubt it’s something you could go around with a clipboard and count noses.
Definitely agree. Organization is definitely a force multiplier. A 1000 well organized, well drilled and well lead troops are better than 10’s of thousands of disorganized individuals, no matter how fierce they are.
Numbers, however, can be misleading. “Around 1000” is seen as a pittance when the government is talking about the number of AQ in Iraq, but around 1000 is purported to by the number of members of the Hell’s Angels Motorcycle Club world wide and they’re supposed to be one of the most sophisticated organized crime syndicates in the world. Apparently 1000 men can have quite the effect on society at large if they put their minds to it.