Posted on 11/01/2003 2:58:35 PM PST by Jacob Kell
LONDON, Oct. 31 — Across Europe and the Middle East, young militant Muslim men are answering a call issued by Osama bin Laden and other extremists, and leaving home to join the fight against the American-led occupation in Iraq, according to senior counterterrorism officials based in six countries.
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The intelligence officials say that since late summer they have detected a growing stream of itinerant Muslim militants headed for Iraq. They estimate that hundreds of young men from an array of countries have now arrived in Iraq by crossing the Syrian or Iranian borders.
But the officials say this influx is not necessarily evidence of coordination by Al Qaeda or other terrorist groups, since it remains unclear if the men are under the control of any one leader or what, if any, role they have had in the kind of deadly attacks that shook Baghdad on Monday. A European intelligence official called the foreign recruits "foot soldiers with limited or no training."
A senior British official, who was in Iraq in September, said most of the foreign men captured there were from the Middle East — Syria, Lebanon and Yemen — or North Africa. He described them as "young, angry men" motivated by the "anti-British, anti-American rhetoric that fills their ears every day."
Signs of a movement to Iraq have also been detected in Europe. Jean-Louis Bruguière, France's top investigative judge on terrorism, said dozens of poor and middle-class Muslim men had left France for Iraq since the summer. He said some of them appeared to have been inspired by exhortations of Qaeda leaders, even if they were not trained by Al Qaeda.
Mr. Bruguière, who earlier this year opened an investigation of young men leaving France to fight on the side of Muslims in Chechnya, said the traffic to Iraq was now a similar problem. He called the changing pattern "a new threat."
The rising agitation in parts of the Muslim world over the American-led occupation in Iraq was clear at Friday Prayers at Al Nur Mosque in a working-class section of Berlin. Dr. Izzeldin Hamad, the director of the Saudi-financed mosque, said political discussion was banned there.
But outside, a 21-year-old man who identified himself as Akmed said that while Saddam Hussein was unpopular, now "there are people who are angry about the American occupation." He and others said that inside the mosque, collections usually requested for Muslims in Palestine and Chechnya were now being offered for Iraq as well.
An initial hint that Iraq would become a magnet for foreign recruits came just before the war began in March, with the arrest in Syria of four Algerian men, who had been living in Hamburg and attending a mosque frequented by three of the Sept. 11 hijackers. The authorities believed that the men intended to fight in Iraq.
One of them, Abderazak Mahdjoub, whom German investigators have linked to a Spanish-based terror network, is under investigation for alleged involvement in a planned terror strike on a tourist location on the Costa del Bravo in Spain. Syria deported the men to Germany, but none of the four men is in custody, since there is no German law against going to Iraq.
A senior German intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the authorities had detected other cases of immigrants in Germany trying to go to Iraq. "We know that in Germany there are people in the militant Muslim scene who are willing to go other places to participate in jihad, including Iraq," the official said.
There are scattered reports from other places, including Saudi Arabia, where a senior Saudi official said two Saudi militants, believed to have ties to Al Qaeda, were missing from the kingdom and believed by the authorities to have gone to Iraq.
Intelligence officials, who base their assessment of the traffic into Iraq on surveillance of mosques and Islamic centers and on interrogations of terrorist suspects captured inside Iraq, say they have found no connections between the recruits. "Nobody is organizing this move from Europe to Iraq," a senior European counterterrorism official said. "At least it is difficult to analyze and know who is organizing this. This may be just the beginning of a new phenomenon."
Good. They'll all be in one area for us to more easily kill them. Let's fight them in Iraq, rather than in New York.
The only thing "easy" about it is for those of us in the states to sit at our keyboards and play Internet soldier. When I hear about more militants streaming into Iraq to kill our young men and women, I don't see anything "easy" about it. God be with them all.
It's easier to kill them in Iraq, than if they stayed home in one of the other 18 Arab countries.
It's also easier and better for our troops to face these people in Iraq than on the streets of America.
That is what I meant. You can stop with the inane "keyboard soldier" remarks and the like. I don't appreciate your insults.
Our military exists to fight and possibly die for the rest of us. Since Vietnam, we've become impotent.
Another mystery is how the infiltrators can manage to cross the border at all. That was one of the problems in Vietnam, that is a problem with Mexico, and apparently that is a problem with Israel. How can terrorists possibly cross the border undetected in this high-tech age?
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