Yes, Virginia, There Is A Sunni Insurgency

Gen. Petraeus didn’t say that there isn’t a non–al-Qaeda Sunni insurgency in Iraq anymore. But he’s certainly been at pains to diminish its role. That might have to do with both his campaign plan against that very insurgency — and a great deal with politics — but it certainly paints a misleading picture to the public about who it is we’re fighting in Iraq.

Today at the Press Club, he very briefly referred to the Sunni insurgency, urging reporters, “don’t get me wrong” about its existence. But it would be very easy to get the general wrong, since his description of the ongoing Iraqi Sunni insurgency against the U.S. consigned it to an afterthought compared to al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) and the Shiite militias.

But it’s the Sunni insurgency, primarily, that’s responsible for the approximately 93 soldiers killed on average in Iraq each month this year. “It’s not Al Qaeda in Iraq — they are strictly a [car bomb] and occasional ambush group,” says Malcolm Nance, a longtime counterterrorism expert and former adviser to the U.S. military in both Afghanistan and Iraq. “Nope, it’s the ex-Ba’athists and Iraqi religious extremists.”

According to Nance’s recent book, The Terrorists of Iraq, that aggregated Sunni force — the non-AQI insurgency — constitutes almost all of the insurgency, with AQI possessing an estimated order of battle at about 1300 fighters and supporters, compared to 103,000 for the ex-Baathists and Iraqi jihadis. It should be said that Nance’s book was published in May, just as the “Anbar Awakening” was taking shape, but the disparity between the Sunni insurgency and AQI he presents is large enough to make his estimate enduringly useful.

So what’s up with playing down the Sunni insurgency? “This may be an information operation to make everyone in the Sunni insurgency be disgraced by being called AQI,” Nance speculates. “However, I know Petraeus is fighting what he called ‘from the middle to the extremes’ and views the AQI and Mahdi militia as priority number one. He probably feels he can take the punches of the Sunni insurgents to the point where they are a continuing mission, just not mission number one.” Perhaps more cynically, Nance adds, “He was fudging it but not actually making them disappear. He knows what Bush wants to hear.”