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Wednesday, August 8, 2007

U.S. military: Money talks for Al Qaida recruits; Lack of jobs a factor

WASHINGTON — Al Qaida has enticed most of its recruits in Iraq with money.

A senior officer said the U.S. military found that most of the thousands of Al Qaida operatives in Iraq were recruited through cash incentives. The officer said the recruits were trained to operate improvised explosive devices.

"The biggest percentage are in this for the money," Gen. Douglas Stone, deputy commander of detainee operations for the Multi-National Force-Iraq, said.

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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."

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