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June 19, 2005
Insurgents trawl Europe for recruits
Islamic militant networks are on a recruiting drive across Europe for potential suicide bombers in Iraq, according to US and European police and security sources. The claim comes amid evidence that the high number of recent attacks is forcing terrorist leaders into a drive for new volunteers. Analysis of recent patterns of activity, based on tracing the identities of suicide bombers killed in Iraq, indicates that Europe is experiencing the sharpest growth in the recruitment of suicide bombers in comparison with North Africa, the Middle East and Asia, although those areas still supply the largest numbers of jihadis.
Evidence of the rise in recruitment in Europe has emerged as concern grows that sympathy for the conflict is spreading to mainstream Islamic communities that have thus far rejected violence. There are fears of an 'Afghanistan effect' in a new generation of young men, inspiring them to fight the Americans in Iraq in the same way that a previous generation flocked to fight the Russians.
[...] Academics specialising in Iraq and the Middle East, such as Rosemary Hollis at Chatham House, say they have also identified a recent change in the 'atmospherics' of how the insurgency in Iraq is viewed by a wider Islamic audience. 'The region is both in transition and in crisis,' she said last week, 'and that has meant that there is now no longer any will in Muslim communities to isolate or undermine what the extremists are doing while this moment of transition is being played out.'
Posted by Emma at June 19, 2005 10:11 AM
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