Some jihad going out of fashion?
According to the Guardian: “the number of foreign fighters entering Iraq this year dropped from 80-110 a month in the first half of the year to around 40 in October…After the raid the number of suicide bombings in Iraq fell to 16 in October - half the number seen during the summer months and down from a peak of 59 in March. US military officials believe that 90% of such bombings are by foreigners.” Ed Morrissey has more:
The Guardian reports that over 40% of the foreign terrorists who went into Iraq for al-Qaeda had Saudi citizenship…The Guardian waits until the end of the article to list the third-highest contributor to the terrorists in Iraq: Yemen. This has more significance than readers might conclude, given its position in the story. The ethnic Yemenis, not the Saudis, have been the biggest problem in the war on terror, and the Saudis have the same problem with them as we do.
One of the terror-war factoids that one hears repeatedly is that the majority of the 9/11 terrorists came from Saudi Arabia. What most people don’t know is that the majority of those were ethnic Yemenis from disputed territory between Saudi Arabia and Yemen, which the Saudis now control. The territory generates terrorists against the Sauds as much or more than against the Iraqis or the US, as al-Qaeda exploits the dispute to amplify hatred against the Saudis. That fits perfectly into the plans of Osama bin Laden, who wants to see the Saudi royal family overthrown and a new caliphate put in its place — headed by Osama.
Osama sends these terrorists into Iraq for seasoning. At first, it seemed to work, as AQI became ascendant in the West. These Yemenis could then present a threat to the Saudis from the north, in Iraq, and the south, in the disputed region once they returned. The collapse of AQI in Iraq means that these Yemenis have nowhere to go, and that the few who return will bring news of AQ’s collapse against the West.
Six weeks ago, the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia issued a fatwa forbidding Saudis to leave the country on jihad. The usefulness of this edict seemed questionable, given the lack of respect these Yemenis had for the ruling Saudi clique. However, it does appear to have reflected a more active counter-terrorist effort by the Sauds
We were previously aware that 5000 Saudi jihadists had been killed in Iraq, but we were not familiar with the Yemeni angle to this extent. It would be particularly useful if the fatwa forbidding Saudis to leave the country on jihad represents some sort of permanent change.