The Terrorists Battleground
By Kevin Aylward on War On Terror
Wizbang
I've long been of the opinion that the argument that the war in Iraq would create a hotbed of terrorism was misguided. That Muslim jihadists from all over the Middle East are coming to Iraq to attack American forces is, in some respects, not necessarily a bad thing. Clearly these fanatics want to kill American's and don't much care where they do so. They're out to get us, the only question is on whose turf the battle will be fought. At least in Iraq we have our trained military on the offensive against them.
Via The New York Post reports on a new analysis of terrorist activity in Iraq which indicates a majority of the jihadists are not Iraqis.
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June 1, 2005 -- WASHINGTON - More than 40 percent of the suicide bombers dispatched by al- Zarqawi to attack Iraqis and U.S. troops hailed from Saudi Arabia, according to a new study. Only 9 percent of the bombers were Iraqis, said the report by the SITE Institute, a counterterror group.
The SITE Institue recently discovered a "Martyrs' List" that [ terror leader Abu Musab] Zarqawi posted on a Web site to commemorate the fanatics who were recruited as foot soldiers in the group's deadly campaign of car bombings and other attacks to undermine Iraq's transition to democracy. An analysis of 107 bombers whose names and backgrounds Zarqawi's group published revealed that 45 of the dead extremists, or 42 percent, came from Saudi Arabia, said Rita Katz, SITE director.
Many other bombers were Syrian, Kuwaiti, Palestinian, Afghani, Libyan and even French, while only 10 of the attackers, or 9 percent, were Iraqi-born.
"What we see here is there are a lot of people who appear to be quite well educated leaving universities, good jobs and families to go to Iraq to fight the jihad," Katz said.
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The good news is that the Iraqi-led anti-insurgent Operation Lightning appears to be having some success.
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The Associated Press has obtained Iraqi summaries of the operation from a U-S military source. The documents say more than 700 hundred arrests have been made, most of them last week before the operation was officially announced.
Iraqi Ministry of Defense and Ministry of Interior numbers break the arrests down this way: 627 "suspected terrorists," eleven "suspected foreign fighters," and 82 others who are classified as "wanted by judicial authorities."
The documents also report the seizure of scores of explosives.
The summaries say at least two car bomb attacks have been foiled and more than more 860 false documents have been confiscated along with Syrian currency and fake military uniforms.
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Also the return of the death penalty in Iraq is very popular among the Iraqi public who've become the target of least resistance for insurgents.
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