Iraq and Afghanistan

Today's news brings us an important interview in Lebanon with a Lebanese would-be suicide bomber. He went into Iraq to help the cause. After considering the alternatives he decided there that the best he could do was to be a suicide bomber. The impression one gets is that there is a well-organized, non-Iraqi movement working alongside the Iraqi resistance. However, the latter are in charge. There is also a great deal of money involved. He had to pay $500 to get smuggled into Iraq. He spent nearly all his time with other non-Iraqis in sealed rooms, one in Baghdad and one in Falluja. The Iraqis told them that they would have to pay $200 for a military kit (with grenades, a machine gun, grenade launcher etc.). They also had to pay for their food. The owner of the house in Falluja eventually said that they were attracting notice and might be bombed by the Americans. He suggested that they would do better to donate their money, go home, and raise more money there.

What one gathers from this is that the Iraqis are not really that welcoming of outsiders. They would prefer to keep the fight to themselves. It would also seem that in spite of the sense that much of the urban landscape in these cities is controlled by the insurgency, people such as our informant were almost always in hiding. When they went out it was in disguise. So lack of security is as much a problem for their side as ours, even in Falluja. This in itself would seem encouraging. The fact there is a worldwide propaganda movement for recruitment and donations is not, however, so reassuring. The fact that there is a larger supply of hopeful suicide bombers than is needed is also less reassuring.