Reply #117: In a related story.... [View All]

[wiggs]

From Rawstory (link to Guardian article):

Report attacks 'myth' of foreign fighters

Brian Whitaker and Ewen MacAskill
Friday September 23, 2005
The Guardian

The US and the Iraqi government have overstated the number of foreign fighters in Iraq, "feeding the myth" that they are the backbone of the insurgency, an American thinktank says in a new report.

Foreign militants - mainly from Algeria, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia - account for less than 10% of the estimated 30,000 insurgents, according to the Washington-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)

snip

The CSIS report says: "The vast majority of Saudi militants who have entered Iraq were not terrorist sympathisers before the war; and were radicalised almost exclusively by the coalition invasion."

snip