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Terrorists hone skills in Iraq, experts say

FOREIGNERS LEARN URBAN COMBAT

By Warren P. Strobel / Knight Ridder

WASHINGTON - Iraq has replaced Afghanistan as the prime training ground for foreign terrorists who could travel elsewhere across the globe and wreak havoc, according to U.S. counterterrorism officials and classified studies by the CIA and the State Department.

Of particular concern, the officials and studies say, are the urban combat techniques being learned and used by foreign fighters assaulting U.S. and Iraqi troops. There's already evidence that those tactics are being replicated elsewhere.

Marine Corps Lt. Gen. James Conway told a Pentagon briefing last week that remotely detonated bombs known as improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, are an increasing threat to U.S. forces trying to stabilize Afghanistan.

Iraq's emergence as a terrorist training ground appears to challenge President Bush's rationale for invading and overthrowing leader Saddam Hussein in March 2003.

``To complete the mission, we will prevent Al-Qaida and other foreign terrorists from turning Iraq into what Afghanistan was under the Taliban, a safe haven from which they could launch attacks on America and our friends,'' the president said in a nationally televised address last Tuesday.

But Iraq wasn't a source of Islamist fundamentalist terrorism under Saddam and played no role in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Critics argue that the U.S. invasion harmed, rather than helped, the war on terror by acting as a magnet and recruiting tool.

``Arguably, it's created new problems that we're going to be dealing with for a long time,'' said Steven Simon, a senior analyst at the Rand Corp. who served at the National Security Council under President Clinton.

The classified CIA and State Department assessments were completed in May and deal with what intelligence analysts are calling ``bleed out'' or ``terrorist dispersal'' from Iraq to surrounding countries. The officials who described them did so on condition of anonymity.

The studies -- first reported by the New York Times and Newsweek -- compare Iraq to Afghanistan in the 1980s, when the Soviet invasion drew Muslim fighters from around the world. After the Soviet defeat, many of them, including Osama bin Laden, built terrorist networks or fought for Islamist causes outside Afghanistan.

Foreign fighters make up only a small fraction -- perhaps 5 percent -- of the Iraqi insurgency. Many are killed or captured, but their numbers are replenished by fresh recruits, who often transit via Syria.

U.S. ally Saudi Arabia is a prime potential destination for experienced fighters returning from Iraq, the State Department study concludes, say officials familiar with its contents. Yemen is another likely destination.

Saudis are thought to make up the largest contingent of foreign fighters in Iraq, and the Saudi royal family has expressed alarm to the U.S. government. Other insurgents are believed to come from Syria, Jordan, Yemen, Egypt and elsewhere in North Africa.

Some current and former government experts said the comparison between Afghanistan and Iraq is ``overstated,'' in the words of one U.S. official.