Insurgents in Iraq show signs of acting as a network

"We simply did not have enough manpower to police Iraq and protect the citizens while at the same time fully engage in combating the insurgency," says Mr. Hashim.

Beginning last fall and culminating in the winter with Mr. Hussein's capture, the insurgency's composition shifted from what the Pentagon calls "former regime loyalists" to Iraqis motivated by nationalism and Islam, as clerics increasingly stepped into the local power void, experts say. In Sunni areas, disgruntled, jobless Iraqi military and intelligence personnel used their expertise in weaponry and explosives to bolster the proficiency of insurgents.

Their ranks have swollen with young men from Sunni Arab tribes that felt both disenfranchised and angered by harsh US military tactics in the Sunni Triangle. Meanwhile, an influx of small numbers of foreign terrorists and Sunni extremists willing to carry out suicide attacks served as a "force multiplier" for the insurgency.

"Sunni tribesmen ... have become the principal popular support for most of the Sunni Arab and foreign insurgents," says Kenneth Pollack, a Middle East specialist at the Brookings Institution. Like other experts, Mr. Pollack stresses the existence of a popular base of support that is sustaining Iraqi insurgents. "We should always remember Mao Zedong's parable of the sea and the fish; the people are the sea and the guerrilla is the fish, and as long as the sea is hospitable to the fish, you will never catch them all."

At the same time, Shiite clerics asserting their influence after the fall of the regime steadily built up their militia and support networks. In Baghdad's sprawling Sadr City, for example, the anti-US cleric Moqtada al Sadr moved into former Baath Party neighborhood offices and systematically recruited poor, unemployed youth with offers of money and welfare for their families.

Today, military sources say Sadr's Mahdi Army has 7,000 to 10,000 men. Iran has agents in Najaf and Karbala who are providing arms and training to various Shiite militia, the sources say.

Some low-level cooperation is underway between Shiite and Sunni insurgents, says Hashim, and Shiite militiamen from Sadr City have even infiltrated Fallujah to battle coalition forces, he adds.

To head off worse violence, experts say the US must urgently add tens of thousands of troops to the 135,000 now in Iraq in order to uproot enemy fighters and better protect Iraqi civilians.

The top US commander in the Middle East, Gen. John Abizaid, this month retained 20,000 troops scheduled to leave Iraq and says he may need more. Tanks and other armored vehicles, which were left at US bases when fresh troops such as the 1st Cavalry Division rotated into Iraq this spring, may now be brought into the country. "We are doing some planning for follow-on forces," said Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, this month, adding that the military may beef up existing forces by replacing some Humvees with tanks.

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