My Twin Questions on Any Iraq Strategy

By Andrew Cochran

I have two questions that President Bush's speech didn't answer, and I haven't read a good answer to them today. First, how will this or any strategy halt the funding of the insurgency? The Iraq Study Group found, "Funding for the Sunni insurgency comes from private individuals within Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States, even as those governments help facilitate U.S. military operations in Iraq by providing basing and overflight rights and by cooperating on intelligence issues." (Page 29.) On November 26, after obtaining a classified U.S. report, the New York Times reported, "The insurgency in Iraq is now financially self-sustaining, raising tens of millions of dollars a year from oil smuggling, kidnapping, counterfeiting, connivance by corrupt Islamic charities and other crimes that the Iraqi government and its U.S. patrons have been largely unable to prevent. The report, obtained by The New York Times, estimates that groups responsible for many of the insurgent and terrorist attacks are raising $70 million to $200 million a year from illegal activities." That is an enormous amount of money, sufficient to fund an insurgency for a long time. And here is another example from another news story in December: "In one recent case, an Iraqi official said $25 million in Saudi money went to a top Iraqi Sunni cleric and was used to buy weapons, including Strela, a Russian shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missile." I told several Congressmen and staff last fall that "Zarqawi died fat," meaning that the most wanted man in the Middle East never lacked for money. If we can't stop the money, the insurgents can finance attacks and tactical delays forever.

Second, how will we stop, and then reverse, the exodus of the Iraqi middle class? Since the Samarra shrine bombing almost a year ago, the middle class, from whom the next generation of Iraqi democrats should come, began to leave in droves. A November U.N. report indicated that nearly 100,000 Iraqis are leaving the country every month. There is no better indicator of the lack of confidence by Iraqis in the country's future. If they don't believe it will survive intact, why should we?

I was optimistic on Iraq until I saw these trends emerging last year. And absent reversals in these trends, I doubt that any American strategy will have a positive long-term impact on Iraq's future.

TrackBack