The war in Iraq, which President George W. Bush said was necessary to combat Islamic extremism, is beginning to export guerilla fighters to neighboring countries and beyond, The New York Times reports.
“You have 50 fighters from Iraq in Lebanon now, but with good caution I can say there are a hundred times that many, 5,000 or higher, who are just waiting for the right moment to act,” Doctor Mohammad al-Massari, a Saudi dissident in Britain who runs the jihadist Internet forum Tajdeed.net, is quoted in the story as saying.
“The flow of fighters is already going back and forth, and the fight will be everywhere until the United States is willing to cease and desist.”
Officials in Europe said in interviews that they are trying to monitor small numbers of Muslim men who have returned home after traveling for short periods to Iraq, where they were likely to have fought alongside insurgents.
In an April 17 report written for the United States government, Dennis Pluchinsky, a former senior intelligence analyst at the State Department, said battle-hardened militants from Iraq posed a greater threat to the West than extremists who trained in Afghanistan because Iraq had become a laboratory for urban guerrilla tactics.
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