I was wondering as I was driving home tonight from work who is actually paying for the insurgents/terrorists/enemy combatants in Iraq.

1. Rifles cost money.
2. Bullets cost money.
3. RPG's cost money.
4. Cell phones for IED's cost money.
5. Cameras to film your exploits costs money.
6. Websites to chronicle your exploits costs money.
7. Recruiting costs money.
8. Food, and training costs money.

This infrasructure has an origin and I would be very interested to know who is doing it. Logistically speaking, the Iraqi's couldn't have stockpiled enough ammunition to keep them going for almost 3 years of combat. We are told that the RPG's grow on trees there. I seriously doubt that.

What do you think? Iran?, Syria?, China?, Turkey?, Saudi Arabia? or is it someone that we have yet to discover? Who gave them a HUGE line of credit?

Some links I found:

Eurolefties fund Iraq insurgency

Officials Report to Congress on Funding for Iraqi Insurgents

Iraqi Insurgency

The last link mentions a quarter of a million tons of missing munitions. Is this factual?

What do YOU think about this?

[edit on 1-12-2005 by xman_in_blackx]

Iran and Syria, and probably factions within Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.
The above could be wrong, and there could undoubtedly be more players.

I am not sure that any of this will ever be entirely known or discovered, if revealed.





seekerof

I think you are right. People forget that even our American Revolution was funded by the French. There is always a player in the background who has much to gain by insurgencies.

There is ALWAYS a bigger picture to be seen. Sometimes you have to get outside of your personal involvement to see it, but it is always there.

China has always weirded me out a bit. I saw a lot of things when I was working a job for a large corporation. I was privy to the fact that we had been in a sort of clandestine cyber war with China. No one talks about it. It was written off as rogue hackers, but these guys were well funded and bloodied our noses for a while. It was then I started to notice things like China being involved with the Taliban back in Q4 2001. They were making deals with the Taliban for any recovered technology that the US threw at them for backward engineering. I always wondered if they were funding them in other ways.

The National Democratic Party?

My best guess would be diverted money from Saudi Arabia. Kuwait and Syria.

some of this might be finding its way into the coffers I think.

UN Oil For Food

The insurgency is largely members of the Iraqi Republican Guard, the Fedayeen, the Secret Police (Mukhbarat) and other former member of Saddam's military, plus various stragglers. The US made the decision to dismantle Saddam's military very early in the invasion, and it turned out to be a huge tactical mistake.

They have a distinct advantage over the coalition in Iraq. Many top level oficers reporterdly still live in Syria and Iran. I had also heard that a member of the Saudi Royal Family is involved in funding them, and providing the with safe houses. The funding surprises me - there is so much support for the insurgency that they have a regular flow of cash at all times. Weapons come from many sources, esp. Syria. And since their weapon of choice seems to be the car bomb, it makes things simpler for them.

Most of the weapons probably came from the US in the first place so you could say we are helping them and even some of our tax dollars will find their way into the hands of the insurgents.

CodeMonkey has a point. America did sell/give weapons to Iraq when they went to war with...Iran is it? Sorry, I'm not too good on that era of history. But at a guess..well..I'd say you shouldn't name countries, but individuals. Iraqi or Saudi businessmen who sympathise? A businessman who thinks that the Insurgents will win and will favour him when they retake control? Who knows...Seekerof is right, it's not likely to be discovered at all, or at least, not any time soon and not without some serious digging.

Most of the weapons came from the U.S.? Can you tell us what those weapons are? Maybe the rpgs and aks mostly come from the U.S. along with MIGs and T-72 tanks as well for the conventional forces of Iraq, right? Not to mention man portable SAMs.

Money is probably coming mainly from Syria and Iran as well as Islamic "charities" that funnel money into terror, but I'm sure Saddam had a bunch of money squirreled away in various places that the Ba'ath party loyalists have access to.

No doubt about it since the Syrian govt. is Baath as well. Why shouldnt they help the former Baathists of Iraq try to retake Iraq.

You're taking it out of context I think there. Not everything the insurgents use is American-made, obviously, but I think the prime example would be the Stinger missiles. It is feasible that they still retain some of the supply they were given.

One thing the US most certainly did give them was training. The reason the insurgents are meeting with such success is that having been trained by US soldiers, and seen US soldiers in other countries, they know what makes them tick and can use both military and political attrition to wear the troops down. Wear down the army, and wear down support for the coalition. A neat little strategy, no?

Well it seems to me that the insurgents are pretty much killing thousands of Iraqi soldiers and police who have those American training so its not a neat little strategy when you may have killed your own brothers who are on the insurgent side, true? Its called fratricide. Not to mention I have yet to see any stingers being used. So far its Russian made and since Saddam bought alot of them, no point in hunting down Stingers. Success don't always account for everything as well, since the insurgents are targeting civilians intentionally, makes you wonder why. Can't kill American forces enough and afraid of getting yourself killed so go attack civilians and Iraqi Army and police more.

Have you people already forgot the supposed billions that was reported to have been withdrawn days if not hours before coalition forces attacked?

That's alot of cheese, and if spent well, especially when dealing with those sympathetic to the cause, could last pretty long.

english.people.com.cn...

news.bbc.co.uk...

www.chinadaily.com.cn...

Must say, brilliant points As for the training, I was referring more to strategic training and observation rather than tactical. And the impression you give me is that the new Iraqi security forces are all "reluctant" to kill the insurgents. I sincerely doubt that the Security Forces have any links to the Insurgents. Ok, some may know someone who is an insurgent, but I doubt it is as wide scale as you imply.

As for the attacking civillians and the Iraqi troops - well, Iraqi troops are easy targets, and it wears down morale. Attacking civillians? People will blame the coalition's presence for it, decreasing political support.

Maybe so, but since it looks like insurgents and terrorists are not having enough support and are still wearing masks to cover their faces to prevent the populace from seeing who they are and reporting them. It looks like the insurgent and terrorists arent going to win this war against the new Iraqi govt if this keeps up on targeting civilians intentionally. Civilians would prefer to side with people who dont target them intentionally, even if they hate the new govt or the foreign occupation, true?

I was there for the 1st Gulf War. Practically ALL of their equipment is Russian/Chinese/Jordanian/Iraqi. Alot of their supply equipment(uniforms etc) was eastern bloc. I think most of the equipment they had from America was some artillery and of course other odds and ends Rumsfield helped them get. Didn't see any of it on the battlefield.

[edit on 2-12-2005 by ozerulz]

I'm not going to argue with that, although I guess there is the chance some may want to give in and make a peace bargain with them. Maybe if they terrorise enough people and enough people want to give in to the insurgents they think they can win by popular demand? ie - more people in favour of it than the government can handle.I guess we won't ever know, and if we ever do, it'll be more than a wee while before we do.

And phoenixhasrisin, interesting links. I hadn't heard of money withdrawals on that scale before. That would certainly be sufficient to supply the insurgents...I'd even go so far as to say it could be used to buy more hardware than we've seen. I'm not going to go scare mongering and say Nuclear Weapons, but that sort of funding could equip a decent mechanised army.

[EDIT]

That's just considering cash wealth. That 182million un-recovered would pay for a lot of black market hardware, but what about using maybe natural resources such as gold or oil to trade for hard ware as well? Iraq certainly has enough oil stockpiles to make this a possibility.

[edit on 2-12-2005 by AlphaOfTheOmega]

Once a political organization starts targeting civilians, they lost the war they just barely started. Name me a terrorist group that has won their demands...lets say Al Qaida, Basque, Tamil Tigers, IRA, KKK, etc. Most terrorist groups have been fighting for decades and are still fighting. Once you target civilians intentionally you dont have much popular support and most of them are going into hiding, true?

Isn't Osama a multi-millionaire?