Officials said the largest portion of Al Qaida recruits were not
committed to the Islamic war against the West. They cited Iraq's high
unemployment as well as the promise of significant financial gain in working
for Al Qaida.
"We've launched an extensive amount of study into who they are, how they
act, what they're doing, what their motivation is, their morale," Stone
told an Aug. briefing. "We've begun to categorize them."
The United States and Iraq have detained more than 20,000 suspected
insurgents since 2003, Middle East Newsline reported. Most of the detainees have been Iraqis, but also
included Algerians, Saudis and Syrians.
"The second largest percentage [of detainees] have been engaged because
of fear or threats that if they didn't [join the insurgency], they would be,
you know, destroyed or their family hurt," Stone said. "The third largest
group have a nationalism bent towards them, and they just want to fight the
occupation."
Ideological Muslims comprised the smallest element in the Al Qaida
network in Iraq, Stone said. But he said they were the most powerful faction
within the Sunni insurgency.
"We've begun to create new programs to address each one of those
categorizations," Stone said.
Officials said Al Qaida has been harmed by the U.S.-led surge in Baghdad
and Anbar, which has increased the American military presence in Iraq to
162,000 troops. They said Sunnis in Anbar have agreed to fight Al Qaida
after they were assured that they would remain in the province.
"It turned out that the potential recruits were afraid of joining the
military and then being sent to serve throughout Iraq," U.S. Col. John
Charlton, commander of the 1st Brigade Combat Team of the 3rd Infantry
Division, said.
"They wanted to serve Iraq, but they wanted to do it in the local area. When
the Iraqi army held a recruiting drive at the end of March, more than 1,200
recruits enlisted in over three days."
Still, Charlton said, the Iraq Army in Anbar remained dependent on the
United States. The general said the Iraqis could not be expected to become
self-sufficient in combat support before March 2008.
"What they lack, because they're such a new force, is all those systems
that are necessary to sustain them," Charlton said. "We still provide them a
lot of fuel. We assist them in getting weapons and ammunition."