Most suicide bombers in Iraq are foreigners

updated 1:10 p.m. ET July 1, 2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The vast majority of suicide attackers in Iraq are thought to be foreigners — mostly Saudis and other Gulf Arabs — and the trend has become more pronounced this year with North Africans also streaming in to carry out deadly missions, U.S. and Iraqi officials say.

The bombers are recruited from Sunni communities, smuggled into Iraq from Syria after receiving religious indoctrination, and then quickly bundled into cars or strapped with explosive vests and sent to their deaths, the officials told The Associated Press. The young men are not so much fighters as human bombs — a relatively small but deadly component of the Iraqi insurgency.

"The foreign fighters are the ones that most often are behind the wheel of suicide car bombs, or most often behind any suicide situation," said U.S. Air Force Brig. Gen. Don Alston, spokesman for the Multinational Force in Iraq.

Officials have long believed that non-Iraqis infiltrating the country through its porous borders with Syria, Iran and Saudi Arabia were behind most suicide missions, and the wave of bloody strikes in recent months has confirmed that thinking.

Authorities have found little evidence that Iraqis have been behind the near-daily stream of suicide attacks over the past six months, U.S. and Iraqi intelligence officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the subject's sensitivity.

There have been a few exceptions.

On election day Jan. 30, a mentally disabled Iraqi boy, wearing a suicide vest, attacked a polling station. An attack on a U.S. military mess hall in the northern city of Mosul in December that killed 22 also was believed to have been carried out by an Iraqi, as was a deadly June 11 attack on the heavily guarded Baghdad headquarters of the Interior Ministry's feared Wolf Brigade.

Foreigners make up 90 percent
Since 2003, less than 10 percent of more than 500 suicide attacks have been carried out by Iraqis, according to one defense official. So far this year, there have been at least 213 suicide attacks — 172 by vehicle and 41 by bombers on foot — according to an AP count.

Another U.S. official said American authorities believe Iraqis are beginning to look at suicide bombers as a liability. "Just as there is no shortage of people willing to do this, nor is there any shortage of targets, and they tend to be police," the official said.

The trend doesn't mean Iraqis aren't part of the bloody insurgency: On the contrary, Iraqi insurgents are thought to be responsible for much of the violence and fighting in the country, although most of those are non-suicide attacks.

"I still think 80 percent of the insurgency, the day to day activity, is Iraqi — the roadside bombings, mortars, direct weapons fire, rifle fire, automatic weapons fire," said Kenneth Katzman, a Middle East expert with the Congressional Research Service, which advises U.S. lawmakers.

But he added: "The foreign fighters attract the headlines with the suicide bombings, no question."

The key role of foreign fighters in suicide attacks is one reason many senior military officials, including the top U.S. general in the Middle East, tend to view the war in Iraq as slowly developing into an international struggle against militant Islam.

The military brass say Islamic extremists like Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his al-Qaida in Iraq organization are determined to start a civil war in Iraq by attacking Iraqi security forces and members of the country's Shiite majority.

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