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Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/02/politics/02PREX.html?hp
Foreign Terrorists Entering Iraq from Syria
(New York Times) David E. Sanger- More than a year of intensive efforts by the American military and the CIA to destroy the insurgency in Iraq has failed to reduce the number of "hard-core Saddamists'' seeking to destroy the interim Iraqi government, a former senior official of the American occupation authority said Thursday. He estimated that the number of insurgents had stayed constant at 4,000 to 5,000, suggesting that as soon as they are killed or captured, they have been replaced. The official also said that over the last year, both Iran and Syria had stepped up their activity in Iraq, and that the Iranians might have been financing radical cleric Moktada al-Sadr. While the Iranians have "become more active over time, and not helpful,'' the official said, intelligence indicated that far more foreign fighters were coming over the border from Syria than from Iran. He said the Syrian border "was the most important one where foreigners were coming in, and terrorists.'' The captured fighters were "mostly Syrian - there were Sudanese, Yemenis, some Saudis, and then the odd Egyptian and Moroccan.'' He appeared less concerned about the appeal of the Zarqawi fighters, who he said were reviled in much of Iraq.