SINGAPORE: Iraq has replaced Afghanistan as the epicentre of international terrorism and escalated the threat of Muslim extremist violence around the globe, security expert Rohan Gunaratna said on Friday.

“The epicentre of international terrorism... has shifted from Afghanistan in Asia to the Middle East, that is to Iraq,” Gunaratna, regarded as one of the world’s authorities on Al Qaeda, told a financial security conference here.

“Like Afghanistan produced the last generation of terrorists, Iraq will produce the next generation.” Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden and thousands of other Muslim militants gained their combat experience and military training while fighting to end the 1979-89 Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, and many stayed there afterwards.

Similarly Gunaratna, who is the head of the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research at Singapore’s Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies, said Muslim militants from more than 30 nations had fought in Iraq since the US-led invasion in March 2003.

He said they would eventually return to their homelands or elsewhere around the world equipped with even more dangerous skills than Muslim militants who were in Afghanistan because the new generation had hands-on training in urban terrorism.—AFP