Iraqi Insurgency Remains Active

Copyright © 2009 National Public Radio®. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required.

JENNIFER LUDDEN, host:

In Iraq today, Prime Minister Ibrahim Al-Jafari said the final five members of his new Cabinet have been chosen. He didn't name them, but said they'll be presented to the National Assembly for approval tomorrow. The nominees are expected to include several Sunnis; one would be in the important post of defense minister. Some Iraqi lawmakers have said the lack of high-level Sunnis in the Cabinet has emboldened insurgents. The recent wave of attacks continued today with at least two suicide car bombs in central Baghdad. Some 300 people have been reported killed in the past 10 days. Retired Army Colonel Patrick Lang is a former chief of Middle East intelligence for the Defense Intelligence Agency, and he joins me now.

Welcome.

Colonel PATRICK LANG (Retired; US Army): Thank you.

LUDDEN: How significant do you think having a completed Cabinet will be, assuming that this is approved in the assembly?

Col. LANG: Well, it could be very, very significant or it could in fact mean nothing at all. If these people are substantial people who are respected in the Sunni Arab community, it could go a long way toward solving the problem.

LUDDEN: So you'd see a direct link between people the Sunni community trusts in the Cabinet and the number of suicide attacks we see?

Col. LANG: Oh, I think so because, you know, it's widely said in this country often that the insurgents have no connection to the population. But as somebody who's spent a lifetime combatting insurgencies in various parts of the world, I know that cannot be true. You couldn't have an insurgency of this scale being waged successfully in the country unless there was a very substantial number of people supporting it either actively or passively. And if you diminish that support for the insurgents, you markedly reduce their ability to conduct the kind of war they've been fighting.

LUDDEN: So what do we know then about who these insurgents are and how many there are?

Col. LANG: Well, I've had some conversations last couple days with people just back from there who really have been studying this closely, and it is their opinion that the insurgents are about 90 percent homegrown--I mean, mixture of former military, intelligence, police personnel, government officials, Baath Party functionaries, local Islamists, people of that kind, with a kind of government-in-exile functioning from somewhere overseas giving strategic direction. And in addition to that, you have about 10 percent of these people who are truly international jihadis from all over the Islamic world--from Central Asia, Africa, everywhere--under Zarqawi, who are probably doing most of the actual suicide bombing.

LUDDEN: This ongoing insurgency is a strain for the US military. Do you think the US needs to send more troops to Iraq?

Col. LANG: I think we're going to have to make some kind of strategic decision. We can beat this insurgency if we wish to persist for a long period of time in our strategy of training the Iraqi forces up and supporting their government, but I think it takes a long time to start from scratch and create effective police and military forces. If we're going to do that, we have to be prepared for the long haul, and you don't necessarily need more troops than you have now, but you need to be willing to sustain them for a long period of time and spend a lot of money further on down the road. We're in the third year of this, and General Casey, the commander over there, has spoken in terms of a 10-year war, and I think that's not unrealistic.

LUDDEN: You keep in touch with military people here. You said you've spoken with people just back from Iraq. How do you find morale?

Col. LANG: Yeah, well, this is the difficulty with this because, in fact, it was decided over the last 20, 25 years that in fact they wanted to have a very stable, sort of middle-class Army. So they deliberately set out to recruit a family-friendly force of people who were mainly family people, men and women both, and so they have real establishments at home that they think about all the time, and it makes it quite difficult because these folks are away from home for long periods of time, and they think about the Little League games they miss and the kids' dance recital--all that kind of business--and over a long period of time that's very hurtful to a personal psyche. But I haven't seen that reflected as yet in any indication that they're not quite willing to go back and do their duty. They just accept the fact that this is what they do in life and that this is their profession and that this is, in fact, a worthy task.

LUDDEN: Retired Army Colonel Patrick Lang is a former chief of Middle East intelligence for the Defense Intelligence Agency. Thank you very much.

Col. LANG: Sure.

Copyright ©2009 National Public Radio®. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to National Public Radio. This transcript is provided for personal, noncommercial use only, pursuant to our Terms of Use. Any other use requires NPR's prior permission. Visit our permissions page for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by a contractor for NPR, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of NPR's programming is the audio.