U.S. officials have raised their estimates of the size and financial support of Iraq’s insurgency, The New York Times reported on Friday, citing unnamed sources.
The resistance numbers between 8,000 and 12,000 rebels, counting foreign fighters, the network of Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and home-grown insurgents, the Times cited the officials as saying. When sympathizers are added, the number burgeons to more than 20,000, the newspaper said.
Those estimates are greater than earlier intelligence reports — in which the number of insurgents has varied between 2,000 and 7,000, the Times said.
According to military and government officials in Iraq and Washington cited by the Times, the core of the Iraqi insurgency now consisted of as many as 50 militant cells that draw on “unlimited money” from an underground financial network run by former Baath Party leaders and relatives of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
That financing is supplemented in part by wealthy Saudi donors and Islamic charities that funnel large sums of cash through Syria, the newspaper said, citing officials with access to detailed intelligence reports.
Only half of an estimated $1 billion sequestered before the war by the Iraqi government in Syrian banks has been recovered, the newspapers said. There is no tally of money flowing through Syria to Iraq from wealthy Saudis or Islamic charities, but the Times quoted a Pentagon official as saying the figure is “significant.”