If Jean-Louis Bruguiere had read Onward Muslim Soldiers, he would know that imams around the world have been trying to turn Iraq into a “land of jihad” for quite some time now. As Rumsfeld has said, better in Baghdad than in Boise. From AFP:
Iraq is liable to become a “land of jihad”, or holy war, if peace and stability cannot be restored, France’s powerful anti-terrorist judge Jean-Louis Bruguiere said Friday.
Speaking on BBC radio, Bruguiere reiterated the concern, which he expressed a year ago, that the US and British invasion of Iraq would fan the flames of global terrorism in the name of Islam.
“My concern right now is that this country (Iraq) could become, in the future, a new land of jihad, like Afghanistan was in the past,” the veteran investigating judge said.
“It is very important to focus our attention and to restore peace in that region,” he said. “If the situation becomes more and more restless, I fear that it will be a new focus of terror and a new ground for jihad.”
If that were to happen, Iraq would become “attractive soil” for global terrorists looking for a place to make preparations, said Bruguiere, who spoke to the BBC three weeks after the March 11 train bombings in Madrid.
He also warned of an “operational connection between the situation in Iraq… and the level of threat in Europe”.
“This is an attractive situation for all the elements sharing the strategy of Al-Qaeda,” he said. “This could … continue to have an impact on the level of threat.”
Bruguiere would obviously prefer that coalition forces leave Iraq, so that the mujahedin will not go there. But will that make them no longer mujahedin, and prevent their going elsewhere? In Onward Muslim Soldiers I show how they went from Afghanistan to Bosnia in the 1990s; some will go wherever there is jihad. If they are not confronted in Iraq, they will confront us elsewhere.