December 4, 2005

CAIRO, December 4, 2005 (IslamOnline.net) – US commanders have revealed that Iraqis, rather than foreign fighters, form the vast majority of the resistance against the US-led occupation forces, a British daily reported on Sunday, December 4.

"Their (Iraqis') family and tribal honor has been impugned if we're on their ground. They're almost duty bound to fight," Lt Col Michael Herbert, a brigade intelligence officer, told the Sunday Telegraph as part of interviews over 10 days in battle-torn Anbar province.

Of 1,300 suspected insurgents – the US term for Iraqi resistance fighters - arrested over the past five months in and around Ramadi, none has been a foreigner.

Col John Gronski, senior officer in the town, Anbar's provincial capital, said that almost all "insurgent" fighting there was by Iraqis.

"The foreign fighters are staying north of the [Euphrates] river, training and advising, like the Soviets were doing in Vietnam," he said.

The American commanders' conclusion contradicts the White House argument that outsiders are the principal enemy in Iraq, said the British daily.

A study by the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) concluded that foreign fighters represent less than five percent of the Iraqi resistance.

It said most of them were motivated by "revulsion at the idea of an Arab land being occupied by a non-Arab country."

Click to read the Sunday Telegraph's report in full