How Many Fighters Does the Islamic State Really Have?
How Many Fighters Does the Islamic State Really Have? By Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, War on the Rocks
Estimates of the number of fighters in the ranks of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) are extraordinarily wide-ranging. On the low end of things, CNN’s Barbara Starr recently reported that “U.S. intelligence estimates that ISIL has a total force of somewhere between 9,000 to 18,000 fighters.” In late 2014, the CIA’s estimate of ISIL’s numbers was slightly higher, as its analysts assessed that the group had between 20,000 and 31,500 fighters between its Iraq and Syria holdings.
Other estimates are far higher. Rami Abdel Rahman, the director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, has said that ISIL has more than 50,000 fighters in Syria alone. The chief of the Russian General Staff recently said that Russia estimates ISIL to have “70,000 gunmen of various nationalities.” In late August of 2014, Baghdad-based security expert Hisham al-Hashimi claimed that ISIL’s total membership could be close to 100,000. By November, Fuad Hussein, the chief of staff to Kurdish president Massoud Barzani, told Patrick Cockburn of The Independent that the CIA’s estimates were far too low, and that ISIL had at least 200,000 fighters…
How many fighters ISIL has is an important tactical question. If our goal is to convert this weak, emergent state back into a fragmented revolutionary/separatist insurgency it is a good question to ask.
I believe the strategic question is not about ISIL at all. The strategic question is about the Sunni Arab populations of Syria and Iraq. The strategic question is “What % of the Sunni Arab populations of Syria and Iraq perceive that they have no future under those Shia dominated regimes, or any effective legal means to create necessary change”?
We need to stop thinking about and treating symptoms – unless of course we have clearly connected those treatments to desired strategic effects.
In Iraq 2005-thru to early 2007 at the Corp level I saw at least six different analysis theories on the number of Sunni insurgents as well as AQI.
In the end none were anywhere close to being accurate.
And we are suppose to trust the current figures from four different organizations?