Back when the Baathists, using looted money and weapons from sources inside Iraq, were the primary threat to the new Iraqi government and our forces, I speculated that interdicting the border wasn't that important:
I've said from early on that this insurgency by a small minority is only so persistent because it has access to plentiful money and arms stockpiled inside Iraq prior to the invasion. The normal practice of sealing the border to prevent such assets from getting inside don't work in Iraq since those assets are already inside Iraq. Putting 20,000 troops along the border would be a waste of effort and would either subtract troops from other missions in the interior if we didn't add them to the current force or would further stress our military if we had increased our troops strength in Iraq for this mission.
In time, we'll have more Iraqis in fully equipped border posts and they will be better able to tell locals from distant foreigners. But this problem shows the complexity of the problems we face and why the obvious solution isn't necessarily the solution.
But the Baathists are increasingly isolated as more Sunnis join the government. So just as the importance of dealing with pro-Iranian militias has increased because the Baathist and home-grown Sunni resistance has started to wane, defeating the foreign jihadis becomes more important.
Strategypage notes:
Iraq. Iraqi and Coalition intelligence estimates that infiltration of foreign fighters into Iraq is averaging about 75 a month (with a range from two dozen or so up to 100), which is down significantly from 2005, when the average was about 125 a month. Reportedly, about 40 percent of the fighters are Jordanians or Saudis, another 20 percent are Syrian, another 30 percent seem to have African origins, and the balance come from Moslem communities all across the world, including Europe.It is a good sign that secondary threats are now gaining in priority. It means we are beating the old threats and can devote resources to the former lower tier problems.
The 258 new border forts, and thousands of newly trained border police have seriously cut into illegal border crossings. While the border police caught about 1,500 people trying to cross illegally last year, they have caught 1,940 in the first four months of this year alone. Examination of captured documents, and interrogation of those border crossers arrested provides pretty accurate information on how many are making it across. Another factor in halting the illegal crossings is enlisting the
Sunni Arab tribes along the border. By offering rewards for catching illegal crossers, the tribesmen have been out there looking as well (although the tribesmen are subject to accepting a large bribe to let the illegal crossers go.)
Surprisingly, very few infiltrators have been from Iran. The favored route into Iraq still seems to be through Syria, which seems to be taken by 70-75 percent of the infiltrators.
