THOUSANDS OF SAUDI AND ARAB JIHADIS ARE IN IRAQ

LONDON 19 Aug. (IPS) Increasing numbers of Saudi Arabian Islamists are crossing the border into Iraq in preparation for a jihad, or holy war, against US and UK forces, security and Islamist sources have warned.

Quoting a senior western counter-terrorism official on Monday, the influential British newspaper Financial Times said the presence of foreign fighters in Iraq was "extremely worrying".

Although a statement purportedly from al-Qa’eda was broadcast on Monday by the Arab satellite television channel “al-Arabiya” claiming that the leaders of the terrorist network Osama Ben Laden and of the Afghanistan's ousted Taleban regime Mollah Mohammad Omar were still alive, but it also asserted that recent attacks on US forces in Iraq were the work of jihadis, or holly warriors.

The focus of concern for US counter-terrorist officials was at first on a reconstituted Ansar al-Islam, a group linked to al-Qa’eda, backed by the Islamic Republic of Iran and based in northern Iraq before the Allied attack on Iraq.

According to Iranian sources, the Ansar al-Islam was to provide protection to the family and close associates of Ben Laden who had been sheltered by Iranian authorities after the fall of Kabol, but sent to a tiny area inside the Iraqi Kurdistan, but controlled by Iranian revolutionary guards.

However, US officials have recently acknowledged the presence of other foreign fighters in Iraq, the paper said.

Paul Bremer, the US Administrator in Iraq, said recent raids, including one near al-Qaim last month, uncovered fighters "carrying travel documents from a variety of countries".

Sa’ad al-Faqih, a UK-based Saudi dissident told the FT that the Saudi authorities are concerned that up to 3,000 Saudi men have gone "missing" in the kingdom in two months, although it is not clear how many have crossed into Iraq.

Saudis who have gone to Iraq have established links with sympathetic Iraqis in the northern area between Baghdad, Mosul and Tikrit, where they have hidden in safe-houses, a Saudi Islamist source said on Monday.

Pressure on Islamists in Saudi Arabia has grown since the bombing of an expatriate residential compound in May, killing 35 people, some of them American and British.

The subsequent arrest of many Islamists has forced some underground while others are trying to flee to Iraq, Financial Times added.

"Part of this movement of people has been individual, but it is getting more organised now", Mr. Faqih said, adding that the loose organisation of Saudi Islamists did not have a clear link to al-Qa’eda.

"Al-Qa’eda is there and not there. But its umbrella is huge, which is what has given it its ability to survive", he told the paper.

A senior UK official said there was evidence of extremists from several countries focusing on Iraq, though it was unclear what role al-Qa’eda played.

"I don't know whether you can talk about an al-Qa’eda strategy in Iraq, though there is great evidence of al-Qa’eda involvement in the jihadi cause inside Iraq. But there's as much talk about other people doing things inside Iraq", the official said.

But informed Iranian sources say despite the fact that Mr. Ben Laden, believed to be the mastermind behind the 11 September destruction of the Word Trade Center twin towers in New York is a Wahabite, a branch of Islam that is staunchly against Shi’ism, which is the dominant religion in Iran, Iraq and Azerbaijan, yet the two are united in their hating of the West in general and the United States in particular. ENDS IRAQ JIHADIS 19803