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Occupation blamed for new iraq terror front { July 18 2005 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.theage.com.au/news/iraq/us-occupation-blamed-for-new-iraq-terror-front/2005/07/17/1121538864304.html?oneclick=truehttp://www.theage.com.au/news/iraq/us-occupation-blamed-for-new-iraq-terror-front/2005/07/17/1121538864304.html?oneclick=true
US occupation blamed for new Iraq terror front
By Brian Bender
Washington
July 18, 2005
Studies of the backgrounds and motivations of hundreds of foreigners entering Iraq to fight the US have found that most foreign fighters are not former terrorists and became radicalised by the occupation itself.
The Saudi Arabian and Israeli studies, which together comprise the most detailed picture available of foreign fighters, cast serious doubt on President George Bush's claim that those responsible for some of the worst violence are terrorists who seized on the opportunity to make Iraq the "central front" in a battle against the US.
"The terrorists know that the outcome (in Iraq) will leave them emboldened or defeated," Mr Bush said in his nationally televised address on the war at Fort Bragg in North Carolina last month. "So they are waging a campaign of murder and destruction." The US military is fighting the terrorists in Iraq, he repeated this month, "so we do not have to face them here at home".
However, interrogations of nearly 300 Saudis captured while trying to sneak into Iraq and case studies of more than three dozen others who blew themselves up in suicide attacks show that most were heeding the calls from clerics and activists to drive infidels out of Arab land, according to a study by Saudi investigator Nawaf Obaid, a US-trained analyst who was commissioned by the Saudi Government and given access to Saudi officials and intelligence.
A separate Israeli analysis of 154 foreign fighters compiled by a leading terrorism researcher found that despite the presence of some senior al-Qaeda operatives who are organising the volunteers, "the vast majority of (non-Iraqi) Arabs killed in Iraq have never taken part in any terrorist activity prior to their arrival in Iraq".
"Only a few were involved in past Islamic insurgencies in Afghanistan, Bosnia, or Chechnya," the Israeli study says. Out of the 154 fighters analysed, only a handful had past associations with terrorism, including six who had fathers who fought the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, said the report, compiled by the Global Research in International Affairs Centre in Israel.
American intelligence officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, and some terrorism specialists paint a similar portrait of the suicide bombers wreaking havoc in Iraq: before the Iraq war, they were not Islamic extremists seeking to attack the US, as al-Qaeda did four years ago, but are part of a new generation of terrorists responding to calls to defend their fellow Muslims from "crusaders" and "infidels".
"The President is right that Iraq is a main front in the war on terrorism, but this is a front we created," said Peter Bergen, a terrorism specialist at the nonpartisan New America Foundation, a Washington think tank.
Foreign militants make up only a small percentage of the insurgents fighting in Iraq, as little as 10 per cent, according to US military and intelligence officials.
But the impact of the foreign fighters has been enormous. They are blamed for the almost daily suicide attacks against American and Iraqi forces and have killed thousands of Iraqi civilians, mostly members of Iraq's Shiite Muslim majority. Their deadly exploits have been responsible for much of the headline-grabbing carnage in recent months, contributing to the slide in American public support for the war.
There have been nearly 500 car bombings since the US-led coalition handed over sovereignty to an interim Iraqi government one year ago, US military statistics indicate. In the last two months, car bombs and suicide attacks have killed nearly 1400 people.
Mr Bush has cited foreign fighters as a reason for continued US military operations in Iraq. His argument, repeated often, is that "the world's terrorists" have chosen to make their stand in Iraq.
Saudi investigator Nawaf Obaid said his Saudi study found that "the largest group is young kids who saw the images of the war on TV and are reading the stuff on the internet".
Other fighters, who are coming to Iraq from across the Middle East and North Africa, are older, in their late 20s or 30s, and have families, according to the two investigations. Case studies of foreign fighters indicated they considered the Iraq war an attack on the Muslim religion and Arab culture, Reuven Paz, author of the Israeli study, said.
The CIA concluded earlier this year that "Iraq and other possible conflicts in the future could provide recruitment, training grounds, technical skills, and language proficiency for a new class of terrorists".
- Boston Globe
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