LONDON — Mohammed Alami, 20, sells reggae CDs and believes every Muslim has a duty to go fight in Iraq to drive out the Americans. But he isn't prepared to go himself.
"Maybe I'm afraid I'm going to die and not solve anything, have an impact," Alami, a Briton of Moroccan origin, said as he stood at his stall in an open market in central London.
The fall of Saddam Hussein in March 2003 and the U.S. occupation of the country would have seemed an opportunity of a lifetime for Muslim men around the world eager to wage "holy war" against their arch enemy.
Yet the influx of foreign fighters from Europe appears to have been minimal, at least compared with the numbers that poured into previous lands of jihad, or holy war -- Afghanistan, Bosnia and Chechnya.
Tough anti-terrorism laws and the close watch on Europe's Muslim communities, especially mosques, after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks are deterrents.
Another may be that the Iraqi insurgency is nationalist and lacking the strong Islamic component that attracted so many to Afghanistan to fight the communist, atheist Soviet Union.
Also, Iraq is a dangerous and chaotic place for European youths with no military experience or knowledge of the culture.
"Were there none of those restrictions, I'm certain the number of Arabs and Muslims going to fight in Iraq would have been much higher than those who went to Afghanistan," said Hani Sibaei, an Egyptian Islamic exile in Britain who supports the insurgency in Iraq.
"Maybe half a million people would have gone because Iraq is closer to them than Afghanistan, which is too far and was too complicated to get there, too expensive. The landscape is too harsh and the language is different. To go to Iraq, all they had to do was go to a neighboring country and cross over," he said.
The fighters who went to Afghanistan had the backing of the West, including the United States, and were showered with moral, financial, military, logistical and propaganda support. One was Osama bin Laden, before founding Al Qaeda.
But in Iraq's case, Western and many Muslim nations are working together to stop the volunteers from going there.
Iraq's borders with Turkey, Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Jordan are all but shut to them, although some sneak through, including those from Europe. They may number only a few hundred, European anti-terrorist officials estimate, but are thought responsible for many of the worst attacks in the last year, including suicide bombings.
