While pundits question whether Iraqi insurgents can be controlled or defeated, a political science professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder believes the insurgents will eventually fail.
According to Michael Kanner, a CU-Boulder political science instructor, the insurgency will be unsuccessful for several reasons, in spite of a growing number of suicide car bombings, kidnappings, assassinations and clashes with the U.S. and Iraqi National Guard forces between now and the January elections. With parts of Iraq under control of rebel forces, Sunni clerics have warned that a military assault on insurgent strongholds in Falluja and Ramadi could plunge the country into civil war, according to recent news reports.
"Very simply, they will run out of bullets," said Kanner, a former U.S. Army officer who was involved in counter terrorism operations in Latin America several years ago. "The stockpiled cache of weapons and ammunition that they were able to seize at the fall of the Iraq regime is going to start running out," he said.
The only way the insurgents can continue to fight, said Kanner, is if they find an outside source to consistently re-supply them with ammunition and weapons.
Kanner points out that other factors also will stop the rebel forces. In any conflict a learning curve applies to understanding the enemy and its tactics. Coalition forces are beginning to learn more about the enemy and will get better at finding them, he said.
Secondly, the insurgents eventually will run out of committed fighters, either from a failure to recruit or from the deaths of their members.
"You have to be really committed and the really committed people tend to get dead really quickly," explained Kanner. "Eventually, the insurgents will lose their material capabilities and manpower requirements to be able to continue to fight the way they have been."
The resistance movement in Iraq is a multi-faceted problem involving not only the rebel insurgents but also religious leaders and militants trying to protect their interests, said Kanner. Many people are battling to emerge as leaders in the new coalition government, he added, and some, like radical Shi'ite cleric Sheik Muqtada al-Sadr, are afraid of losing their position of power.
"For example, if you are Muqtada al-Sadr and you lose political position, even though the rhetoric of the coalition is that you can still be a player, his mindset is: you lose -- you lose," explained Kanner. "Al-Sadr believes he won't have the opportunity to come back and so that is part of why he has resisted."
Kanner estimates it will be another two to three years before the fighting stops in Iraq. For the next few months, he said the United States should expect an increase in armed resistance as the insurgents try to destabilize the new government in Iraq as it works toward holding free elections in January.