Al Qaeda gains unlimited recruits from Iraq war - U.N. study
Pastor Dale Morgan
Thursday September 28, 1:18 PM Reuters
*Al Qaeda gains unlimited recruits from Iraq war - U.N. study*
By Irwin Arieff
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - A U.N. report released on Wednesday said the
Iraq war provided al Qaeda with a training centre and recruits,
reinforcing a U.S. intelligence study blaming the conflict for a surge
in Islamic extremism.
The report by terrorism experts working for the U.N. Security Council
said al Qaeda was playing a central role in the fighting in Iraq as well
as inspiring a Taliban resurgence in Afghanistan, several hundred miles
(km) away.
"New explosive devices are now used in Afghanistan within a month of
their first appearing in Iraq," said the report. "And while the Taliban
have not been found fighting outside Afghanistan/Pakistan, there have
been reports of them training in both Iraq and Somalia."
Al Qaeda, it said, "has gained by continuing to play a central role in
the fighting (in Iraq) and in encouraging the growth of sectarian
violence, and Iraq has provided many recruits and an excellent training
ground," it said.
The report said that al Qaeda's influence may soon wane in Iraq, citing
some fighters' complaints that they were unhappy to learn upon arriving
in the country that they would have to kill fellow Muslims rather than
foreign fighters or could serve their cause only as suicide bombers.
The report was prepared by a team of experts set up to monitor the
effectiveness of Security Council sanctions imposed on the Taliban and
al Qaeda shortly after the September 11 attacks on the United States.
A 2001 council resolution requires all 192 U.N. member-nations to freeze
the assets and travel of any person or group suspected of ties to al
Qaeda or Afghanistan's former Taliban rulers, and bars arms deals with them.
U.S. President George W. Bush faced heavy criticism from political foes
after parts of the U.S. National Intelligence Estimate leaked out this
week, revealing intelligence experts' conclusion that Islamic extremists
were "increasing in both number and geographic dispersion" due to the
Iraq war.
The study, prepared in April, said the war had become a "cause celebre
for jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of U.S. involvement in the
Muslim world and cultivating supporters for the global jihadist movement."
U.S. Ambassador John Bolton said it was natural that war would lead to
more violence, citing as an example Japan's World War II attack on Pearl
Harbor and the U.S. response.
"If you said after the attack on Pearl Harbor that the American response
had increased the violence in the Pacific, you would be right, wouldn't
you? Because violence did increase after the attack and after our
response," he told reporters.
"We are in conflict with international terrorism and the nature of that
conflict is playing out in Iraq," he said.