American military intervention in Muslim countries has bred a generation of "angry young men" vulnerable to al-Qa'eda recruitment, a report from a leading security analysis group has said.
The Senlis Council, which has an extensive network of researchers in Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia, said frustration with war and unemployment was underpinning the insurgency against western forces.
A survey conducted in Iraq last month found that 46% of young men said they were "angry all the time".
Similar levels of discontent have been detected in Afghanistan, where America has led the Nato coalition for six years and Somalia, which has not recovered from the chaos that led to a brief US intervention in 1991.
Unemployment levels in all three countries were as high as 70 per cent of the young work force.
Norine MacDonald, the lead Senlis reseacher, said the resentment of the Muslim young had exposed a "structural weakness" in the American-led campaign to quash Islamic-based terrorism.
"The unstable and increasingly angry populations of these countries need to hear why they can live in a stable and prosperous future," she said. "Otherwise they are very vulnerable to violent recruitment by violent groups."
The report called for a jobs and democracy "surge" to match the US troop reinforcement that tamped down violence in Iraq throughout 2007.
The perils of a ready pool of recruits available to Islamic militants has been most obvious in Afghanistan. Miss MacDonald, who lives much of the year in Afghanistan, warned that Taliban insurgents had taken control of half of Wardak province, an area just 45 minutes from Kabul. The growing ranks of the Taliban were able to mount increasingly sophisticated raids on Afghanistan's urban centres, including Kabul and Kandahar.
Condoleezza Rice's special adviser for Iraq, David Satterfield, echoed the Senlis call on Baghdad to start spending the tens of billions of dollars it receives in oil revenue to improve the conditions of its people.
Story from Telegraph News: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iraq/2199469/US-wars-have-helped-al-Qa%27eda%2C-says-report.html