Saturday, September 24, 2005

The 'myth' of Iraq's foreign fighters

One of the major studies on the nature of the insurgency in Iraq, which was foreshadowed a few months ago in the Boston Globe, has been published finally.

As noted then, the report, released yesterday by CSIS, blows the lid off the "foreign fighter" in Iraq bogeyman, claiming that the insurgency consists of only about 4-10% non-Iraqis. Moreover, it asserts that the "vast majority of Saudi militants [ed. - the focus of the study] who have entered Iraq were not terrorist sympathisers before the war; and were radicalized almost exclusively by the coalition invasion."