Sunni-Shiite religious war in Iraq feared (AP) Updated: 2005-10-10 21:07
They include men arrested as they tried to slip back into Jordan from the
turmoil across the border. Such U.S.-aligned regimes as Jordan's and Saudi
Arabia's worry that "returnees" from Iraq would soon turn their newfound
military skills against their home governments.
The Saudis report stopping more than 60 apparent would-be insurgents from
crossing over into Iraq in one recent six-month period. Egyptian authorities
have pulled young men from Jordan-bound ferries, on suspicion they were headed
for Iraq.
When the U.S. military invaded in 2003, busloads of Iraqi exiles — and some
Jordanians — drove into Iraq from Jordan to join the defense. As the anti-U.S.
insurgency grew, Jordanian newspapers called it "al-Muqawama al-Sharifah" — the
honorable resistance.
But such phrases are vanishing from news reports, and some see
disillusionment setting in, including in Salt, another Jordanian city that, like
Zarqa, has sent fighters to Iraq.
"At first the propaganda worked on a few young men
here," shopkeeper Mohamed Dabbas, 28, said over coffee at a Salt cafe. "But
after the losses in Iraq, and the stories about what was going on there, they're
not so ready to die."
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