In Need of Money, Guns, and Lawyers

Here is an interesting overview of the Syrian revolt, as of last month.

Their estimate of 40,000 insurgents in the field is fairly fascinating given that in Iraq the estimate of enemy full-time fighters in the field never exceeded 25,000. Which gives you a sense of how narrow the Iraqi insurgencies were. With all the money and weapons available to them, our enemies didn't have the popular support to really challenge us despite widespread impressions in the West that the Iraqi insurgencies were a national resistance to our occupation.

If the Syrian insurgents had more money and weapons, I have to think that they could put more in the field.

The figure of 40,000 probably isn't comparable to the 25,000 figure for Iraq. In Iraq, that represented the full-time fighters, who were probably 10% of the total dominated by part-timers who occasionally fought. That's typical, as I understand it.

Given that Iraq's insurgents during the height of the fighting there managed daily attack numbers that Syrian insurgents manage in a month (over 150 lately), the 40,000 "active fighters" in the Syrian resistance, as the foot note for that figure calls them, cannot mean full-time fighters. If it was, the Syrian opposition would be doing a lot better than their Iraqi counterparts did given that the Syrian opposition faces far fewer and lower quality counter-insurgency forces than the Iraqi insurgents and terrorists faced. The security force quality issue is clear from the far greater casualties that the Syrian security forces are suffering compared to Coalition casualties. Even in the worst months of the insurgencies, far more numerous Iraqi forces did not endure the recent levels of Syrian casualties (404 in May).

It seems to me, from my pajama-clad view, that it makes more sense to think of the Syrian opposition army as having 4,000 full-timers with the rest part-time help. With a sixth of the Iraqi insurgencies' numbers and far lower material support, the far lower attack numbers of the Syrian resistance compared to the Iraqi insurgents make more sense.

Already, the insurgency's ability to hold out-of-the-way terrain exceeds the capacity of the Syrian security forces to clear and hold. With more arms, the large number of potential recruits from the 75% Sunni population could exceed the activity of the Iraqi insurgents quite easily. Arms are clearly the limiting factor for the Syrian insurgents. Maybe we should get our BATF on this problem.