Iraq - A Terror Training Centre.

Iraq has replaced Afghanistan as the main training ground for the next generation of "professionalized" terrorists, according to a report released on Jan. 13 by the US National Intelligence Council (NIC). This is the CIA director's think tank. According to David B. Low, the US national intelligence officer for trans-national threats, Iraq provides terrorists with "a training ground, a recruitment ground, the opportunity for enhancing technical skills". He said: "There is even, under the best scenario, over time, the likelihood that some of the jihadists who are not killed there will, in a sense, go home... and will therefore disperse to various other countries".

Low's comments came during a rare briefing by the council on its new report on long-term global trends. It took a year to produce and includes the analysis of 1,000 US and foreign experts. Within the 119-page report, titled "Mapping the Global Future", is an evaluation of Iraq's new role as a breeding ground for Islamic terrorists. The NIC report suggests the war has helped terrorists by creating a haven for them in the ensuing chaos. "At the moment", NIC Chairman Robert L. Hutchings said, Iraq "is a magnet for international terrorist activity".

The chaos in Iraq's Sunni Triangle has helped Salafis from Kuwait, their Wahhabi allies from Saudi Arabia and fellow Salafis from elsewhere to become professional terrorists. Those who have returned to their countries have staged a number of operations and caused the death of many people. The traffic of terrorists from and into Iraq has affected the rest of the GCC (see GCCJan24-05).

Bush described the war in Iraq as a means to promote democracy in the Middle East. It is not yet clear whether anyone in the Bush administration had expected Iraq to become a haven for Salafi terrorism. As instability in Iraq grew after the toppling of Saddam, and resentment towards the US intensified in the Muslim world, hundreds of terrorists flooded into Iraq across its unguarded borders. They found tons of unprotected weapons caches which they are now using against US troops.

Foreign terrorists, from the Arab world, Europe and Asia, make up a large portion of today's suicide bombers. They form tactical, ever-changing alliances with Baathist fighters and other insurgents. The NIC report highlights the effects of globalisation and other economic and social trends. But NIC officials said their greatest concern remained the possibility that terrorists may acquire WMD.

The NIC report says: "The Al-Qa'ida membership that was distinguished by having trained in Afghanistan will gradually...be replaced in part by the dispersion of the experienced survivors of the conflict in Iraq". It says Iraq has joined the list of conflicts and independence movements that have deepened solidarity among Muslims and helped spread the Salafi ideology. It says by 2020, Al-Qaeda "will be superseded" by other Islamic extremist groups that will merge with local separatist movements. Most terrorism experts say this is already well underway. The NIC says this kind of ever-morphing decentralised movement is much more difficult to uncover and defeat. Terrorists are able to easily communicate, train and recruit through the Internet, and their threat will become "an eclectic array of groups, cells and individuals that do not need a stationary headquarters... Training materials, targeting guidance, weapons know-how, and fund-raising will become virtual (i.e. online)".

A new study - by Roland Jacquard, a leading French analyst who has worked for a UN terrorism panel, and Paris-based Algerian journalist Atmane Tazaghart - says Iraq has become a recruiting ground for Al-Qaeda, which is training agents, including Western nationals, and sending them home to set up networks or form sleeper cells. Jacquard and Tazaghart make their assessment in a new 500-page book: Bin Laden The Programmed Destruction of the West. The book argues that Al-Qaeda is now capable of striking the West and its allies with chemical, biological and radiological weapons so-called "dirty bombs" that could wreak havoc on humans and the global economy.

Tazaghart on Jan. 12 told journalists at a book presentation: "The crucible of Iraq is really becoming a recruitment ground... Not everyone who arrives is allowed to fight in Iraq, but some are trained for 45 days or three months, and then they are asked to return home and set up logistics or financial networks, or sleeper cells. There is very clear information on this", notably from Bulgarian intelligence, added the journalist, a specialist on fundamentalist groups. Al Qaeda's eviction from Afghanistan in the US riposte to 9/11, far from triggering a decline, forced it to mutate into a decentralised group difficult for security services to track down, the authors said. Experts believe Zarqawi has some 100-150 operatives in Europe. Western police know of around 70 Al-Qaeda agents in the region, and estimate twice that number could be working undetected.

A lack of co-ordination between intelligence services is hampering their efforts to defeat Al-Qaeda, which is why it has survived the post-9/11 crackdown. Bin Laden's hardcore commanders, expecting US retaliation after 9/11, left Afghanistan in good time and now head units in about 60 countries, said Jacquard, who heads the International Terrorism Observatory in Paris. He added: "Today, all countries could be the victim of terrorism, because from the moment Al-Qaeda transformed itself into a multitude of networks, each decides at any given time, depending on how it is set up, its own choice of target". Mobile laboratories in Asia able to produce potentially fatal anthrax spores are a major concern, Jacquard said, and regional security services have so far failed to locate them. He warned: "The next attack could come from kamikazes who inject themselves with a virus - airport metal detectors are not going to be set off by that". Europe was not safe from attack, even France, despite its fierce opposition to the US-led war in Iraq. Hardline Islamists consider France a target because of French support for North African governments that have battled militant groups.

After intensive surveillance, France smashed a cell that was sending recruits for the jihad in Iraq. In raids on Jan. 24-26, police arrested 11 people, two of them women, and more arrests were expected. The timing of the arrests was linked to information that two French recruits were poised to leave for Iraq for suicide operations. The raids at several locations in a corner of north-east Paris represent the first time in the Europe-wide campaign to crack down on the recruitment of insurgents to Iraq that an entire cell has been broken. It is the first such operation in France since Dominique de Villepin, the minister of the interior, stepped up surveillance of mosques, prayer halls and demonstrations throughout France after terrorist bombings in Madrid in March. The arrests in France follow Jan. 23 arrests in Germany of two men believed to be part of a sophisticated recruitment operation which helped at least a dozen men travel from Germany to Iraq to join the insurgency.

Senior investigators throughout Europe say they have seen evidence of young Muslims wanting to go to Iraq to fight, inspired by anger and by the pronouncements of Salafi religious men. The NYT quoted a senior German official as saying: "This is just the beginning, there will be more arrests made of recruiters soon". France, Italy, Spain, Britain and the Netherlands have increased secret surveillance of their countries' mosques, where they believe Salafi militant religious men are preaching and young radicals are organising. The NYT quoted senior European counter-terrorism officials as agreeing that the movement of young men from Europe to Iraq has not come close to the levels seen in the 1980s, when at least 10,000 men travelled to Afghanistan to fight against the Soviet occupation of that country.