Insurgent base undiminished

What's new: The United States claims that thousands of insurgents have been killed or captured in Iraq this year, but has it made a difference?

U.S. and Iraqi forces have killed more than 1,300 insurgents in Iraq and detained 9,000 suspected fighters since last January's election for an interim government, but the estimated size of the insurgency remains the same, according to American military officials.

The U.S. military releases only occasional tallies of enemy deaths and has a policy of not releasing a total. Even so, the available numbers, compiled from news releases since January, and the official estimate of overall insurgent numbers suggest that the forces fighting American soldiers in Iraq have been able to find enough recruits to replace those who've been killed or detained.

Gen. John Abizaid, the chief of U.S. Central Command, who once estimated insurgent strength at 5,000, put the number at 20,000 in early October, about the same as it was a year ago. Insurgents' ranks are being replenished as quickly as they are depleted, said Michael O'Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a research center in Washington, and the co-author of its Iraq Index, which tracks statistics in key areas such as security and economics.

"(It's) closer to stalemate militarily than anything else, as best I can tell," he said.

U.S. military officials in Baghdad said 376 foreign fighters had been captured and about 400 had been killed since the January election. More than 100 of those were "known leaders" of the group al Qaida in Iraq, and six were "trusted agents" of its leader, Abu Musab al Zarqawi, Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, a coalition spokesman, said last month.

Sixty percent of the foreign fighters captured were from Egypt, Syria, Sudan and Saudi Arabia, said Brig. Gen. Donald Alston, a military spokesman in Baghdad.

Most of the suicide bombers who've attacked in Iraq in recent months are thought to have been foreigners, and since last spring U.S. and Iraqi counterinsurgency efforts increasingly have targeted villages and towns that are thought to be their havens in the Euphrates River valley and along the Syrian border.