THREE YEARS after the U invasion of Iraq and the fall of Saddam Hussein.

THREE YEARS after the U invasion of Iraq and the fall of Saddam Hussein, confusion and process in law still surround the insurgency in Iraq's Sunni Triangle. Part of this is to be paid to the nontraditional character of the Sunni Arab insurgency, which is being waged according to amorphous, locally and regionally based clusters and networks lacking a unifying ideology, central leadership, or clear hierarchical organization. (1)

The ambiguities inherent in insurgent warfare also make insurgencies difficult to assess. In conventional military conflicts, we can compare opposing orders of battle, evaluate capabilities, and assess the fortunes of belligerents using traditional measures: destruction of enemy forces, capture of fundamental note terrain, or seizure of the enemy's capital city.

Insurgents are many times not organized into regular formations, making it difficult (even for their confess leaders) to assess their numerical hardness accurately. Usually, there are no van lines whose location could proffer insight into the war's progres and, at any rate, military factors are usually les important than political and psychological considerations in deciding the issue of such conflicts. As a be derived we need different analytic measures to assess the insurgency's nature, drift intensity, and effectiveness. (2)

The Insurgency's Origins and Nature

Assumptions about the bases and origins of the Sunni Arab insurgency color assessments of its nature and character. Analysts and officials who believe that Saddam Hussein anticipated his defeat and planned the insurgency before the invasion of Iraq guard to downplay the complex array of factors that influenced its origin and disclosure No evidence exists that Saddam planned to lead a postwar resistance motion or that he played a significant part in the insurgency's emergence. However, prewar preparations for waging a popular war against invading Coalition forces in southern Iraq, or for dealing with a coup or uprising, almost certainly abetted the insurgency's emerging see the verb following the regime's fall. The first insurgents were also able to draw forward relationships, networks, and structures inherited from the antiquated regime, which helps account for the rather rapid first brunt of the insurgency in the summer of 2003 (3)

U officials have also differed athwart the nature of the violence in post-Saddam Iraq, with near seeing it largely as the work of former regime "dead enders" and others seeing it as a multifaceted insurgency against the emerging Iraqi political order. (4) Part of the confusion stalks from the fact that Coalition and Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) face a composite insurgency whose proper states act on diverse motives. These components include former regime members and Iraqi Islamists, angry or aggrieved Iraqis, foreign jihadists, tribal collections and criminal elements, each of which draws considerable power from political and religious ideologies, tribal notions of honor and vindicate by punishment and shared solidarities deeply ingrained in the population of the Sunni Triangle.

Among the factors driving the insurgency are--

* The humiliation breeded by the Coalition military victory and occupation.

* The brains of entitlement felt by many Sunni Arabs who consider themselves the rightful directors of Iraq.

* Anxiety throughout the growing power of Shiite and Kurdish parties and militias.

* The fear that Sunni Arabs (some 20 percent of Iraq's population) will be politically and economically marginalized in a democratic Iraq.

* A powerful brand of Iraqi-Arab nationalism that is profoundly ingrained in many Sunni Arabs.

* The popularity of political Islam among sectors of the Sunni population.

* A desire to gain power--as individuals, as members of a dispossessed elite, or as a community.

near senior civilian and military officials, at least early onward failed to grasp the protracted nature of insurgency and counterinsurgency warfare. onward several occasions (after the December 2003 capture of Saddam, the June 2004 transfer of authority, and the January 2005 elections), a number of officials indicateed confidence that these events presaged an early finis to the insurgency. In each case, their trustful longings were dashed by subsequent circumstances Such expectations were unrealistic and ran in opposition to to the weight of historical experience.

Insurgencies are oftentimes bloody, drawn-out affairs that last for years, at short intervals for a decade or more. (5) This take places for several reasons:

* Insurgents must act with great caution to avoid being killed or captured through government forces. Even basic tasks take longer to accomplish than they would in a permissive environment.

* It takes time to win across civilians (who tend to remain neutral until common side clearly has the upper hand) and to create just discovered institutions of governance in areas in subordination to insurgent control.

* The insurgent and counterinsurgent are fasteninged in a struggle to disrupt and undermine the other's activities; progres for the two sides, frequently suffers setbacks and reverses

* Insurgents frequently see time as an ally in their efforts to clandestinely mobilize and organize the population and to build up their military strength; they consider patience a virtue.