Interesting article from the Chrstian Science Monitor
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0923/dailyUpdate.html
The 'myth' of Iraq's foreign fighters
[/align]Report by US think tank says only '4 to 10' percent of insurgents are foreigners.
[/align]By
Tom Regan | csmonitor.com
[/align]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 make up only about 4 to 10 percent of the estimated 30,000 insurgents.
The CSIS study also disputes media reports that Saudis are 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.
[blockquote]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."
[/blockquote]
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."
I wonder how many of the smiling faces we see on our TV's are the ones setting IED's and sniping at our troops at night.
Situation in Iraq Is Civil War
