Insurgents' ranks quickly replenished, expert says

BY DREW BROWN

KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS

WASHINGTON -- U.S. and Iraqi forces have killed more than 1,300 insurgents in Iraq and detained 9,000 suspected fighters since last January's election for an interim government, but the estimated size of the insurgency remains the same, according to U.S. military officials.

The U.S. military releases only occasional tallies of enemy deaths and has a policy of not releasing a total. Even so, the available numbers, compiled from news releases since January, and the official estimate of overall insurgent numbers suggest that the forces fighting U.S. soldiers in Iraq have been able to find enough recruits to replace those who've been killed or detained.

Gen. John Abizaid, the chief of U.S. Central Command, who once estimated insurgent strength at 5,000, put the number at 20,000 in early October, about the same as it was a year ago.

Insurgents' ranks are being replenished as quickly as they are depleted, said Michael O'Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a research center in Washington, D.C., and the co-author of its Iraq Index, which tracks statistics in key areas such as security and economics.

"It's closer to stalemate militarily than anything else, as best I can tell," he said.

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