Arab Militants Join Fight in Afghanistan

Source: Associated Press
Arab Islamic radicals who fled Afghanistan in the U.S.-led invasion are coming back, eager to support suicide bombers in their increasingly frequent and effective attacks on Western and Afghan forces.
In both Iraq and Afghanistan, young militants feel that ''Allah's victory seems to be drawing near'' and see parallels with the stalemating of the Soviet army in Afghanistan in the 1980s and its ultimate withdrawal, said Michael Scheuer, a former CIA official who until 2004 headed a team that searched for Osama bin Laden.
Al-Qaida is bringing back fighters it sent home after the post-9/11 invasion, he said. Al-Qaida leaders have written that ''it would take three or four years to get the insurgency restarted. They seem to be pretty much on schedule and are bringing more fighters back into the theater,'' he said.
Seth Jones, counterinsurgency expert at the U.S.-based Rand Corporation, said the influx is in the dozens or low hundreds, but is increasing, along with a fervor reminiscent of the 1980s, when Arabs such as the Saudi-born bin Laden flocked to Afghanistan to fight the Soviets.
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