Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Iraq report's dismal picture

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published December 8, 2006

WASHINGTON - Details from the Iraq Study Group's 160-page report paint a tableau of trouble.

The commission, led by former Secretary of State James A. Baker III and former Rep. Lee Hamilton, had broad access to U.S. intelligence data.

Its report embraces the most worrisome estimates about Muqtada al-Sadr's private army: He has up to 60,000 fighters, and his followers are planted throughout the security forces protecting the Health Ministry and other Iraqi government institutions.

Making matters worse, the high-level panel believes the cleric himself may not be able to manage the diverse and growing parts of his network known as the Mahdi army.

"As the Mahdi army has grown in size and influence, some elements have moved beyond Sadr's control," the report concludes.

In 2005, Sadr had fewer than 10,000 fighters, but the new report puts that figure now at as many as 60,000 - or three fighters loyal to Sadr for every seven U.S. soldiers in the country. The latest estimate is believed to include a dedicated core as well as part-time fighters.

But the Mahdi army is only one of the problems facing the United States in Iraq:

- The terrorist group al-Qaida in Iraq is now largely Iraqi-run and made up of Sunni Arabs. Some 1,300 foreign fighters are believed to support the group or be available to carry out suicide bombings, the study found.

- Four of Iraq's 18 provinces are highly insecure - Baghdad, Anbar, Diyala and Salahuddin - and account for about 40 percent of Iraq's 26-million people.

- Corruption in the oil industry, the group said, is debilitating.

"Experts estimate that 150,000 to 200,000 - and perhaps as many as 500,000 - barrels of oil per day are being stolen," according to the report.

- The report noted that fewer than 10 analysts at the Defense Intelligence Agency have more than two years of experience in analyzing the insurgency.

Yet DIA said those figures are inaccurate. The agency has many more than 10 experienced analysts deployed in Iraq, said spokesman Don Black.

[Last modified December 8, 2006, 01:30:49]