Where does al-Zarqawi get recruits for Iraq?

Are most of his recruits from Iran? Afghanistan maybe?

A new study attempts to show exactly where al-Zarqawi gets his recruits. It includes details such as average age, nationality, education and more.

Zarqawi’s al-Qaeda in Iraq organization—come from all over the Arab World, with Saudis being the majority 53%, 13% from Syria, 8% from Iraq, 5.8% from Jordan, 4% from Kuwait, 3.8% from Libya, with the rest distributed among other countries (see Chart 1)

What do you think? Plausible or propaganda?


[edit on 12/4/05 by makeitso]

Very plausible, makeitso.
His work in gathering and preparing this study is source-backed/referenced, which is nice to see, as well.





seekerof

A very interesting topic. I think the mistake that most people make is to view the political boundries in the middle east. In truth people are probaly more loyal to there tribe or ethienic group then to there countrie.

AUDI ARABIA DOWN THE MEMORY HOLE: BACKING SADDAM

What else is missing from the enormous coverage of Saudi Arabia? One element that is hardly mentioned is the long strategic compact between the House of Sa'ud and Saddam Hussein (united by their fear of their Shia populations, and of Shia Iran).

link

The trouble started after WW1 when France and Britain put colonal interests before granting the variouse tribes the inderpendence they were promised. From then onwards it was a slow decay into todays troubled region.
The western world took thousands of years to go from tribes to what we have to today how were the arab tribes spose to go thou the same process in 80 years?

Now that we know that the source if the insurgency spans political boundries the measures to stop recuruitment will have to as well. As far as I know the last person to untie the Arabs behind a common cause was TE lawance. Any future leader will have to use tribal and ethenic loyalties to unite Iraq.

The future leader faces the juggling act of the needed allied presence and the desrie of the Iraqi people to be free from occupation.

It wouldn't surpirise me if it's relatively accurate for the al-Zarqawi group in particular, unlike the insurgency in general, the al-Zarqawi group does seem to consist mainly of foreign jihadists.

I wouldn't extrapolate this to the insurgency as a whole, which the Zarqawi group is only a small (if particularly murderous) component of. Is the Zarqawi group even targeting the coalition forces anymore? It seems to me they have moved on to primarily targeting Shiite civillians at this point.

Originally posted by xmotex
I wouldn't extrapolate this to the insurgency as a whole, which the Zarqawi group is only a small (if particularly murderous) component of. Is the Zarqawi group even targeting the coalition forces anymore? It seems to me they have moved on to primarily targeting Shiite civillians at this point.

Good Point xmotex.
In the previous study The Jamestown Foundation studies the information that you brought up.

Al-Zarqawi’s Rise to Power: Analyzing Tactics and Targets

Suicide bombings by the Zarqawi network, which make up 42.2% total suicide attacks in Iraq, have many advantages, the most important of which are low cost, lack of need for escape plans and media coverage. The percentage of suicide attacks perpetrated by Zarqawi’s faction to the overall number of victims of other operations is 70% dead and 83.7% injured (see table 2). The high rate of victims apparently proves the effectiveness of the terrorist act (table 2 indicates that civilian victims of this tactic are as high as 80%) and achieves a large media coverage.

Percentage of Zarqawi’s Operations to Iraqi Resistance Operations


The Operations of Zarqawi’s Faction Compared to Overall Iraqi Resistance Operations


Percentage of Victims of Zarqawi’s Suicide Attacks to Victims of other Tactics


It would appear that while his group is in the minority, the ferocity of the attacks more than makes up for the size, wouldn't you say?