It was really only a matter of time... From the Times - reg reqâd (and I think itâs not free for those outside the UK)
HANDPICKED groups of British Muslims are among the increasing number of foreign fighters slipping into Iraq to join terrorist attacks against coalition troops. An Anglican peace envoy, Canon Andrew White, recently met one group of British men waiting to cross the Iraqi border who admitted that they were going to Baghdad âto be part of the battle against the evil occupying forcesâ.
"Iraqi passport holder queue here" "Non-Iraqi passport holders queue here" "Jihadis queue beside the pit"
The men, in their late 20s and early 30s, were all British-born, they have families, own properties and claimed to have been recruited for their mission in Britain. âWhat struck me was that these were all stupid gullible traitorous respectable men,â Canon White said yesterday. âSome had their own business or were professional men. They didnât have long beards and werenât shouting their mouths off like young fanatics.â
Despite what some may think, natural selection doesnât only discriminate on the basis of beards and forms of employment.
Canon White, who is a frequent visitor to Baghdad as Director of the International Centre for Reconciliation at Coventry Cathedral, said that he had met other Britons intent on joining the attacks on British and US troops. He approached one group after they flew to Amman, the Jordanian capital, presuming that they were working for an aid organisation or the Coalition Provisional Authority running Iraq. âI told them that I was going to help in the struggle for peace and they laughed and said: âWe are going to be part of the struggle but not in the same way. ââOur struggle is with weapons,â they said.â The men were of Middle Eastern and Asian backgrounds, though all were born in the UK and travelling on British passports. Their plan was to drive from Amman to Baghdad, where they would be met by their Iraqi handler.
"Welcome to your grave Iraq, brave cannon-fodder! Give me your passports, please. You wonât be wanting them again."
âUnlike many of the young men who just pitched up in Pakistan before the war with Afghanistan, bragging about wanting to join al-Qaeda, these men had apparently made their contacts while in Britain and were on some kind of organised mission.â Canon White said that senior Iraqi figures in the provisional Government had told him about their meetings with men who had come from Britain to join the so-called international jihad. He said that Muslim clerics in Britain were appalled at militant figures from âMujahidin-type organisationsâ who run what are advertised as prayer groups from private homes but which are in reality recruiting missions. âThe overwhelming majority of Muslim leaders here and in Iraq donât want foreigners going to Baghdad to fight when they are working for peace,â he said.
"Having the worldâs crop of psychopathic nutjobs milling around does tend to make the job more difficult."
Intelligence authorities admit that they do not know how many Britons have travelled to Iraq since the build-up to war began. Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defence Secretary, said at the weekend that coalition troops had so far arrested up to 300 foreign fighters inside Iraq. They had come from up to 30 different countries.
Gosh, Murat! B-b-but you told us these people were Iraqis!
A suicide bomber, who was shot before he could ram a car packed with 1,000lb of explosives into a Baghdad police station last week, was identified as a Yemeni carrying a Syrian passport. Recruitment to terrorist groups inside Iraq is believed to be on a much smaller scale than was the case in Afghanistan. None of the Britons who returned from Afghanistan has been prosecuted.
Which is a disgraceful and inexcusable dereliction of duty by the government...
One security source said: âIraqi groups donât want dozens of amateurs wandering about getting themselves into trouble, as happened in the first weeks of the war in Afghanistan. âAl-Qaeda told these foreigners to go home as they were no use to them. They got sick, they couldnât adapt to the terrain or handle a weapon.â
"They were just youthful dewey-eyed dreamers, carried here as if flower petals blown on the wind. All they wanted was to live according to the scriptures of the holy book, to kill and to maim..."
During the invasion of Iraq, British troops found foreign passports being carried by fighters who put up the fiercest resistance in the battle to occupy Basra. Some of those captured have been handed over to the US authorities for interrogation at Baghdad international airport, which the Americans are using as their main prison camp inside Iraq. British security authorities have expressed concern at the number of young men who have travelled to Syria in recent months to study Arabic or the Koran and who cannot now be traced. Some are believed to have moved on to the West Bank and Iraq. Paul Bremer, who leads the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad, criticised the Government in Damascus for not doing more to stop foreign fighters infiltrating Iraq from Syria. âWe have certainly got, because we have captured and killed them, members of al-Qaeda who may be coming in from Syria,â he said.
Will the Labour government chunt down the traitors and their recruiters? Will they f***. |