Is there no adult leadership in the entire Arab world?
Across Europe and the Middle East, young militant Muslim men are answering a call issued by Osama bin Laden and other extremists, and leaving home to join the fight against the American-led occupation in Iraq, according to senior counterterrorism officials based in six countries.
The intelligence officials say that since late summer they have detected an increasingly steady stream of itinerant Muslim militants headed for Iraq. They estimate that hundreds of young men from an array of countries have now arrived in Iraq by crossing the Syrian or Iranian borders.
But intelligence officials say this influx is not necessarily evidence of coordination by al-Qaida or other terrorist groups, since it remains unclear if these men are under the control of any one leader or what, if any, role they have had in the kind of deadly attacks that shook Baghdad this week. One European intelligence official called the foreign recruits "foot soldiers with limited or no training."
A senior British official, who was in Iraq as recently as September, said the majority of foreign men captured there are from the Middle East -- Syria, Lebanon and Yemen -- and from North African countries. He described them as "young, angry men" motivated by the "anti-British, anti-American rhetoric that fills their ears every day."
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