Only 2 Percent of Detainees in Iraq Are Non-Iraqis, Contrary to Bush Administration Claims

Few Detainees in Iraq Are Foreign Fighters

Tue Jul 6, 2004 02:33 PM ET

By Charles Aldinger WASHINGTON (Reuters) -

Only 90 of the more than 5,700 people in custody in Iraq as security risks are foreign fighters, defense officials said on Tuesday, a figure that suggests the Bush administration may have overstated the role of outside militants in the deadly insurgency.

The officials, who asked not to be identified, said the U.S. military command handling security detention facilities in Iraq confirmed a report in USA Today that fewer than 2 percent of those in custody were foreigners.

The small percentage indicates the war in Iraq may not have attracted very many Islamic militants from other countries.

The Bush administration has insisted that foreign insurgents are playing a key role in Iraq, led in part by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Jordanian-born Zarqawi is leader of the Jama'at al-Tawhid and Jihad, which has claimed several deadly suicide bombings, assassinations of Iraqi officials and the kidnapping and beheadings of a South Korean and an American hostage.

Of the 90 foreign captives, about half are from Syria and others are from Arab countries including Egypt, Iran, Jordan, Yemen and Saudi Arabia, defense officials told Reuters.

POROUS BORDERS WITH SYRIA, IRAN

The administration has repeatedly accused both Syria and Iran of giving support to the insurgency by making it easy for foreign fighters to cross their borders with Iraq.

Private defense analysts told Reuters the issue was not the number of foreigners in custody, but whether they represented impressionable suicide candidates or hard-core, well-trained "terrorists" who opposed the United States and its allies everywhere.

"The question here is not how many foreign fighters are involved, but who are they?" said Daniel Goure of the Lexington Institute, a private Washington think tank.

"Are they chiefly your average Joe from the Syrian mosque or the British mosque caught up in all the rhetoric?" Goure asked.

"Or are they people we should be more deeply concerned about -- perhaps with military and intelligence training from Syria and elsewhere? If these are serious, committed, well-trained ex-bin Laden jihadists, it's a significant factor," said Goure, using the term jihadists to mean militant Muslims battling the West.

Even though there are relatively few non-Iraqis in custody, U.S. officials believe those foreigners are involved in organizing or financing attacks against U.S. forces, one senior defense official said. "I think these people (foreign fighters) give backbone, a ruthless drive, to the insurgency," one senior defense official told Reuters. "They recruit. They organize. They finance."

But analyst Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington said that "the overwhelming mass of those involved in the insurgency are Iraqi nationals who are simply opposed to the U.S. invasion and foreign occupation."

"That doesn't mean that there are not small, dispersed cells of foreign fighters, including some loosely affiliated with al Qaeda," Cordesman said, adding that it was doubtful if such groups around the country had "a central nervous system."

USA Today reported that U.S.-led military forces had detained 17,700 people -- including some 400 foreign nationals -- in Iraq since last August who were considered to be enemy fighters or security risks. Most were freed after a review board found they didn't pose significant threats, the newspaper said.

Earth, a planet hungry for peace


The Israeli Land-Grab Apartheid Wall built inside the Palestinian territories, here separating Abu Dis from occupied East Jerusalem. (IPC, 7/4/04).

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank, like a Python (Alquds, 1/25/03.

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