NY Times: Estimates by U.S. See More Rebels With More Funds
By ERIC SCHMITT and THOM SHANKER
October 22, 2004
nytimes.com/2004/10/22/.../mideast/22insurgents.html
Senior American officials are beginning to assemble a new portrait of the insurgency that has continued to inflict casualties on American and Iraqi forces, showing that it has significantly more fighters and far greater financial resources than had been estimated.
The article goes on to say that funding is coming from two sources. The first is the billions of dollars of Iraqi money funneled into Syrian banks before the U.S. invasion, by the Hussein government. The second is wealthy Saudi's giving money to charities that is again being funneled through Syria.
The Iraqi money is to have been expected, since it's known the Hussein government had hoarded vast quantities of money. A plausible strategy for Hussein's government to fight the U.S. occupation is for their senior fighters to fade into the woodwork, and then fight a guerilla war funded by that hoard of money.
The Saudi connection might seem strange. But it's known there's a conflict in Saudi society not all of whom wish to cooperate with the Western powers. To a large swath of Muslim societies, the presence of foreigners in their sacred land is an offense to Islam. What has funded the extremist Islamic training schools is the donations by those wealthy Saudi's.
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