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Al-Qaida leaving Iraq for Afghanistan

(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-07-24 15:01

WASHINGTON -- Al-Qaida's foreign fighters who have for years bedeviled Iraq are increasingly going to Afghanistan to fight instead, the Iraqi ambassador to the United States said Wednesday.

Afghan police officers are seen around the damaged police vehicle after it was hit by a roadside bomb in Chaparhar district of Nangarhar province east of Kabul, Afghanistan on Wednesday, July 23, 2008. [Agencies]

"We have heard reports recently that many of the foreign fighters that were in Iraq have left, either back to their homeland or going to fight in Afghanistan. Afghanistan is now seeming to be more suitable for al-Qaida fighters," said Ambassador Samir Sumaida'ie.

Al-Qaida had training camps and a headquarters in Afghanistan, under the protection of the then-ruling Taliban, until the US invaded after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. With al-Qaida forced out of Afghanistan, the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 quickly drew outside fighters there.

Sumaida'ie said al-Qaida is finding it now increasingly difficult to operate in Iraq, beginning with the rebellion of the largely Sunni tribes in Anbar Province in 2006 and 2007. Until then, al-Qaida had ruled by intimidation and violence, establishing physical control and setting up a shadow government in large swaths of Iraqi territory.

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