Friday, November 23, 2007

Foreign Militants In Iraq

According to the Guardian and New York Times, around 60% of all foreign militants who entered Iraq to fight over the past year came from Saudi Arabia and Libya. The information is based on files seized by American forces during a raid at a desert camp, in Sinjar, North-West of Iraq. The files listed the nationalities and biographical details of more than 700 fighters who crossed into Iraq from August last year, around half of whom came to the country to be suicide bombers. In all, 305, or 41%, of the fighters listed were from Saudi Arabia. Another 137, or 18%, came from Libya. Both countries are officially US allies in anti-terrorism efforts. The list goes on to count 68 Yemeni nationals, the third-biggest source, in addition to 64 from Algeria, 50 from Morocco, 38 from Tunisia, 14 from Jordan, six from Turkey and two each from Egypt and France.


The US claims that there are at the moment around 25000 suspected militants in custody in Iraq.

The entire article here

I am not that concerned about the nationalities, I am more concerned with how these people are sneaking into Iraq. Most of the blame is put on Iran and Syria, but why not putting Saudi Arabia and Kuwait on same level of accusations? Why limited to Iran and Syria? because they are now the bad boys in the eyes of the United States? A year ago I read in the news how Iraqi authority arrested a number of men dressing like Saudi military personnel, and the same thing happened from Kuwait, also last year. A day after the news broke out, it was dead quiet on the issue. I couldn't find anything in the news, as if nothing happened!

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