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With US support, Arab fighters trained in Pakistan and Afghanistan to become “jihadists” in the war against the Soviets. The lessons learned have been duplicated hundreds of times in any country with a Muslim footprint and a weak government to provide security. About 40,000 fighters have been trained to become Al Qaeda jihadists and have since traveled the globe to fight in Chechnya, Bosnia, Kosovo, AfPak region again, Kyrgyzstan, Iraq, Somalia, Yemen and returning often to homesoil and become trainers for new recruits.
Unrest in the Muslim world is an excellent and fertile soil to recruit young men and prepare them for the ultimate sacrifice and the promise of paradise. The stupidity for the US and Western colonial powers to uproot Gaddafi in Libya and Assad in Syria made the terror threat much worse. Just for Syria, the Islamists have recruited more than 600 young men from Europe to travel to Al-Qaeda training camps in Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria. The blowback from the Afghan and Iraq campaign will last beyond our lifetime. Perpetual war is institutionalized.
(France24) March 28, 2012 – Around 100 Westerners, including a dozen French citizens, are currently being monitored by intelligence services in Islamabad. Some are joining the “Holy War” in training camps along the Pakistani-Afghan border. Between 2006 and 2010, Pakistan was the destination of choice for these “jihad tourists”. Mohamed Merah, the 23-year-old Frenchman who killed seven people in Toulouse, also claimed to have trained in one such camp.
London hacking attack: 10th suspect arrested in soldier’s murder
- Jihadi veterans of Iraq, Yemen and Afghanistan join callow foreign idealists on frontline of Aleppo
- British Special Forces Training Syrian Rebels – January 2012