Insurgents trawl Europe for recruits

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Islamic militant networks are on a recruiting drive across Europe for potential suicide bombers in Iraq, according to US and European police and security sources.

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Analysis of recent patterns of activity, based on tracing the identities of suicide bombers killed in Iraq, indicates that Europe is experiencing the sharpest growth in the recruitment of suicide bombers in comparison with North Africa, the Middle East and Asia, although those areas still supply the largest numbers of jihadis.

Much blather follows ...

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A typical volunteer is a well-educated, upwardly mobile man in his mid-to-late twenties - European volunteers are on average aged 25 - from a middle-class background and a stable family, and without a strong religious upbringing. Many spoke several languages and were technologically literate. Almost two-thirds - including Europeans - were married.

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Academics specialising in Iraq and the Middle East, such as Rosemary Hollis at Chatham House, say they have also identified a recent change in the 'atmospherics' of how the insurgency in Iraq is viewed by a wider Islamic audience. 'The region is both in transition and in crisis,' she said last week, 'and that has meant that there is now no longer any will in Muslim communities to isolate or undermine what the extremists are doing while this moment of transition is being played out.'

Guardian UK