WASHINGTON, Feb. 12 (UPI) -- Sunni insurgents are successful using a "wasp swarm" strategy to stymie U.S. forces in Iraq. a U.S. military expert warns.
"In some ways, the Sunni insurgents behave more as a nest of 'wasps' than as an integrated group. They swarm against an enemy, each pursuing their own path. Unlike wasps, however, they individually observe their enemy, adapt to changes in enemy tactics, react to the successes of other attackers, and experiment," Anthony H. Cordesman, who holds the Arleigh A. Burke chair in strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, warned in a new analysis of the insurgency last week.
"This makes them a more difficult enemy to defeat since there is no clear hierarchy to attack, there are no predictable limits and rigid patterns of attack, and the defeat of any one group leaves the others intact," Cordesman wrote. "These 'wasps' do not even have a common nest or fixed location; they can move from one area of Sunni influence to another as long as they have broad popular tolerance or support," he wrote.
"Some groups differ enough in ideology to make it questionable as to whether the more national groups can easily coordinate with the more purely Islamist groups. Some of the bloodiest anti-Shiite bombings have come from the most extreme Sunni Islamist groups like al-Qaida in Mesopotamia, and many more mainstream Sunni insurgents almost certainly oppose both such sectarian warfare and effort to provide a large-scale civil conflict," Cordesman wrote.
