In the neighborhood of 200 to 300. And so it was, you know, again, it depends on how you count and what period you count, but there was a significant amount of activity on election day.
Let's assume 250 attacks on election day. What could this tell us about how many insurgents there are?
Assuming the insurgents made a maximum effort, could we assume 90% participation of insurgent cells? This is six times the usual number, so ordinarily insurgent cells aren't attacking on a given day. But barring inability, every insurgent cell would be expected to attack.
Second, how many attacks would a typical cell carry out over the day of the elections? One attack? Two? Given that on any particular day, most cells aren't launching any attacks, say an average of 1.2 attacks per cell. Most would just carry out one attack but some would carry out a couple in a surge of initiative.
So we could assume 208 cells attacking that day and say 23 cells that could not attack that day. There's a total of 231 cells by these assumptions.
Then, how many insurgents are there per cell? Ten? Twenty? A hundred? If a hundred, cells could be broken up more easily. And if cells launched an average of 1.2 attacks per cell, 100 insurgents would indicate pretty poor cells. Even twenty should be able to break down and launch a couple attacks. With maybe 1.2 attacks per cell, about ten men sounds about right.
So we're talking 2,310 insurgents with who knows how many willing or unwilling supporters providing sanctuary and supplies and information.
Or could the maximum effort have involved half the cells? So maybe there are 500 cells. And maybe 15 or 20 men per cell is more likely.
Or what if each cell launched three attacks that day on average? This would lower the number of insurgents appreciably.
You could go crazy trying to figure out how many insurgents there are.
So I found it interesting that General Abizaid was able to provide an estimate of the insurgent numbers:
Insurgents fielded only "around 3,500" fighters on election day, he said, citing U.S. intelligence estimates. Earlier U.S. intelligence had put the number of core Iraqi and foreign fighters at as many as 20,000.
"Why didn't they put more people in the field? Where were they?" Abizaid asked in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee. "They threw their whole force at us, and yet they were unable to disturb the elections. I think that the voting in Iraq, the political process that's going on . . . have driven those numbers [of insurgents] down."
He figures 3,500. Clearly, the US has betteer estimates of the level of the effort, the number of attacks per cell, and the number of insurgents per cell.
I always figured the higher estimates were bull. Given that half the 50-60 attacks per day prior to the election were completely ineffective, it didn't seem likely that 25-30 attacks per day with a degree of commitment meant that many insurgents were out there. If half the attacks were likely made by guys firing off some AKs or RPGs for a quick buck and then getting the heck out of Dodge before US troops could kill them, how impressive could the insurgents be? And I just didn't see attacks by large numbers of insurgents in the press. If they couldn't manage platoon or company level attacks, how effective could they be? Sure, several thousand were massed in Fallujah, but that likely represented a good chunck of the insurgency pinned down in one place largely defending itself. Yes, the sanctuary allowed the insurgents to plan and build car bombs, and fan out in the surrounding region, but as a base, it took a lot of resources to defend, too. And then we killed or captured a good chunk of them.
So just remember that this was never a mass movement or a national resistance. It was a small cadre of determined Baathist killers and a small number of committed jihadis with a lot of money and a lot of guns. They have had an impact out of proportion to their numbers.
But we are beating them. And they know they are losing. They may yet inflict heavy casualties but the main quesiton now is whether the insurgency will suddenly break and fold or whether it will slowly dissipate.
