http://csmonitor.com/2005/0923/dailyUpdate.html September 23, 2005 The 'myth' of Iraq's foreign fighters Report by US think tank says only '4 to 10' percent of insurgents are foreigners. By Tom Regan | csmonitor.com The US and Iraqi governments have vastly overstated the number of foreign fighters in Iraq, and most of them don't come from Saudi Arabia, according to a new report from the Washington-based Center for Strategic International Studies (CSIS). According to a piece in The Guardian, this means the US and Iraq "feed the myth" that foreign fighters are the backbone of the insurgency. While the foreign fighters may stoke the insurgency flames, they only comprise only about 4 to 10 percent of the estimated 30,000 insurgents. The CSIS study also disputes media reports that Saudis comprise the largest group of foreign fighters. CSIS says "Algerians are the largest group (20 percent), followed by Syrians (18 percent), Yemenis (17 percent), Sudanese (15 percent), Egyptians (13 percent), Saudis (12 percent) and those from other states (5 percent)." CSIS gathered the information for its study from intelligence sources in the Gulf region. The CSIS report says: "The vast majority of Saudi militants who have entered Iraq were not terrorist sympathizers before the war; and were radicalized almost exclusively by the coalition invasion." The average age of the Saudis was 17-25 and they were generally middle-class with jobs, though they usually had connections with the most prominent conservative tribes. "Most of the Saudi militants were motivated by revulsion at the idea of an Arab land being occupied by a non-Arab country. These feelings are intensified by the images of the occupation they see on television and the Internet ... the catalyst most often cited [in interrogations] is Abu Ghraib, though images from Guantánamo Bay also feed into the pathology." The report also gives notes that the Saudi government for spending nearly $1.2 billion over the past two years, and deploying 35,000 troops, in an effort to secure its border with Iraq. The major problem remains the border with Syria, which lacks the resources of the Saudis to create a similar barrier on its border. The Associated Press reports that CSIS believes most of the insurgents are not "Saddam Hussein loyalists" but members of Sunni Arab Iraqi tribes. They do not want to see Mr. Hussein return to power, but they are "wary of a Shiite-led government." The Los Angeles Times reports that a greater concern is that 'skills' foreign fighters are learning in Iraq are being exported to their home countries. This is a particular concern for Europe, since early this year US intelligence reported that "Abu Musab Zarqawi, whose network is believed to extend far beyond Iraq, had dispatched teams of battle-hardened operatives to European capitals." Iraq has become a superheated, real-world academy for lessons about weapons, urban combat and terrorist trade craft, said Thomas Sanderson of [CSIS]. Extremists in Iraq are "exposed to international networks from around the world," said Sanderson, who has been briefed by German security agencies. "They are returning with bomb-making skills, perhaps stolen explosives, vastly increased knowledge. If they are succeeding in a hostile environment, avoiding ... US Special Forces, then to go back to Europe, my God, it's kid's play." Meanwhile, The Boston Globe reports that President Bush, in a speech Thursday that was "clearly designed to dampen the potential impact of the antiwar rally" this weekend in Washington, said his top military commanders in Iraq have told him that they are making progress against the insurgents and "in establishing a politically viable state." Newly trained Iraqi forces are taking the lead in many security operations, the president said, including a recent offensive in the insurgent stronghold of Tal Afar along the Syrian border – a key transit point for foreign fighters and supplies. "Iraqi forces are showing the vital difference they can make," Bush said. '"They are now in control of more parts of Iraq than at any time in the past two years. Significant areas of Baghdad and Mosul, once violent and volatile, are now more stable because Iraqi forces are helping to keep the peace." The president's speech, however, was followed by comments made Thursday by Saudi Arabia's foreign minister. Prince Saud al-Faisal said the US ignored warnings the Saudi government gave it about occupying Iraq. Prince al-Faisal also said he fears US policies in Iraq will lead to the country breaking up into Kurdish, Sunni and Shiite parts. He also said that Saudi Arabia is not ready to send an ambassador to Baghdad, because he would become a target for the insurgents. "I doubt he would last a day," al-Faisal said. Finally, The Guardian reports that "ambitions for Iraq are being drastically scaled down in private" by British and US officials. The main goal has now become avoiding the image of failure. The paper quotes sources in the British Foreign department as saying that hopes to turn Iraq into a model of democracy for the Middle East had been put aside. "We will settle for leaving behind an Iraqi democracy that is creaking along," the source said.
IT is strange, because there have been other reports that most of hte insurgents were Iraqi, and yet the MSM continued to keep pushing the myth. It is very strange when that kind of thing happens.
In Iraq, probably. AQ is smart enough to know not to use their people head-to-head against US military. Who knows how many people it has recruited into its fold based on additional perceptions of the US as "evil" or empirical.
True. However, these are some things we know as fact: 1. Anger/hatred towards the US is a primary recruiting influence if you're joining an organization fighting the US. 2. Anger/hatred towards the US, according to polls, rose dramatically following the US invasion. 3. US intelligence sources have stated in the past that it is believed that AQ gained thousands of new recruits as a result of the Iraq situation. How much of #3 is legitimate and accurate is in the air.
True. Yet that dramatic rise in anger toward the US resulted in a max of 3,000 'radicalized' volunteers. True. My point is that I believe the numbers have been exaggerated greatly - up to now. If 3,000 as a max as the report states that is. One thing I found interesting: if the majority of local insurgents are not Saddam loyalists, but Sunnis - why do they continue to blow up mosques and the poor? I'm not sure I understand their motivation for attacking those targets. Or - are those the foreign fighters and if so are they totally disjointed from the Iraqi insurgents?
But those are radicalized volunteers <I>in Iraq</I>. When AQ recruits people, they aren't going to send them to Iraq. I don't think the numbers in Iraq tell us anything one way or another if or how much AQ has benefited in new recruits or money.
BEcause they along with other groups are doing a good job destabilizing Iraq, and wreaking havoc there already. They don't need to do anymore there. Maybe if Iraq started stabilizing they would want to increase actions there.
These Iraqi insurgents remind me of the anti-foreign/loyalists Boxers in resisting the Eight-Nation Alliance (aka China Relief Expedition) near the end of Qing Dynasty in China, at the turn of last century. Not nearly the same situation, there are still plenty of similarities between the two. I think it'll be an interesting discussion.
Because they are smarter than that. AQ doesn't make it a habit to take on the US military head-to-head. They do just enough to cause trouble there, but their primary operations are terrorist activities in civilian regions (ideally for them, the US or Western Europe). They aren't trying to win a military battle against the US, so why send their recruits there to get slaughtered. Just keep supplying Iraqi forces (who they don't like anyway) so that the Iraqi insurgents can keep going, but why send your people in any large scale? Plenty of people here have said one of the benefits of the Iraqi war would be to cause an influx of terrorists so we could just kill them all there. Don't you think AQ knows this too?
It's probable a lot of them have been sent to Iraq to get training and seasoning, then returned to whatever country they were from (in Europe, the Middle East, Central Asia, ISC). Iraq is a great training ground for Al-Qaida. They don't need a lot of terrorists in Iraq at any one time carry out their guerilla tactics.
So you're saying it's Iraqis who are killing all these Iraqis... and we are supposed to sympathize with the murderous Iraqis killing their fellow citizens who are attempting to participate in the newly- and duly-elected Iraqi government? I don't know which is worse: an insugence full of or devoid of Iraqis...
Well, I watched a good bit of the Peace Rally in Washington and everyone was talking about the US as an Occupying Force not a Liberating one. Doesn't that deserve sympathy?
Opposing the war/thinking the US is an occupying force and "sympathizing" with Iraqis who kill Iraqis are two completely different things. You can oppose the war and oppose Iraqi-Iraqi violence. For some reason, those on the right seem to think that if you oppose the war in Iraq you support the insurgents. It is this narrow minded "Rush is Right" train of thought that has gotten us into this quagmire in the first place.
Why is it "right" to leave the mass of Iraqi people to the whims of the Hussein clain OR to the murderous impulses of the insurgents?
Better question... why is(was) it any of our business? Call me uncaring if you wish, but unless he was a threat to us(which he wasnt)...I couldn't care less who ruled Iraq.
Who said it's right? I'm sure everyone agrees that if we could solve the situation without any losses or cost, we should. The question becomes, at what point is it not worth it? What if it would cost American 50,000 lives? 100,000? What about 2 million? At one of these points, you're going to say it's a reasonable option. Would you then be sympathizing with the insurgents? People who want us to leave now believe that line of cost vs. benefit has already been passed. People who try to paint it as "sympathizing" with insurgents have fallen for Bush rhetoric or simply have no clue what they are talking about.
