Officer: Syria Processes 70% Of Insurgents
KUWAIT CITY — Seventy percent of insurgents fighting in Iraq come from Gulf countries via Syria, where they are provided with forged passports, an Iraqi intelligence officer alleged in a published report yesterday.
"They, according to their own confessions, gather in mosques in the said [Gulf ] states to travel to Syria using their passports, taking with them phone numbers of individuals waiting for them there," the assistant undersecretary for intelligence of Iraq's Interior Ministry, Brigadier General Rashid Fleih, told Kuwait's Al-Qabas daily in an interview.
General Fleih did not provide more specific details about the alleged insurgents or which countries they come from. But he said once in Syria, the alleged insurgents are transported to al-Qaim border area. Individuals provide the men them with new passports after destroying the old ones, General Fleih alleged in an interview from Baghdad.
American and Iraqi officials claim Syria does not do enough to prohibit people of different nationalities from crossing its 380-mile border with Iraq to join the ranks of Al Qaeda and other insurgent or terrorist groups there. Damascus denies the allegations and says it is doing all it can to stop them.
The Iraqi intelligence officer did not say where the other 30% of insurgents come from.
Iraq's other neighbor Iran is suspected of aiding Iraqi Shiite fighters with training, money, and weapons. Tehran denies the accusations.
