The New York Times has a report on “hundreds” of stupid young Muslims being lured to Iraq by visions of glorious murder and grand jihad. Looks like the flypaper strategy is working: Calls to Jihad Are Said to Lure Hundreds of Militants Into Iraq. (Hat tip: NC.)

LONDON, Oct. 31 — Across Europe and the Middle East, young militant Muslim men are answering a call issued by Osama bin Laden and other extremists, and leaving home to join the fight against the American-led occupation in Iraq, according to senior counterterrorism officials based in six countries.

The intelligence officials say that since late summer they have detected a growing stream of itinerant Muslim militants headed for Iraq. They estimate that hundreds of young men from an array of countries have now arrived in Iraq by crossing the Syrian or Iranian borders.

But the officials say this influx is not necessarily evidence of coordination by Al Qaeda or other terrorist groups, since it remains unclear if the men are under the control of any one leader or what, if any, role they have had in the kind of deadly attacks that shook Baghdad on Monday. A European intelligence official called the foreign recruits “foot soldiers with limited or no training.”

A senior British official, who was in Iraq in September, said most of the foreign men captured there were from the Middle East — Syria, Lebanon and Yemen — or North Africa. He described them as “young, angry men” motivated by the “anti-British, anti-American rhetoric that fills their ears every day.”

The NYT is puzzled, however, because according to European officials there seems to be no central organization behind it:

Intelligence officials, who base their assessment of the traffic into Iraq on surveillance of mosques and Islamic centers and on interrogations of terrorist suspects captured inside Iraq, say they have found no connections between the recruits. “Nobody is organizing this move from Europe to Iraq,” a senior European counterterrorism official said. “At least it is difficult to analyze and know who is organizing this. This may be just the beginning of a new phenomenon.”

What connections could there possibly be? It’s a danged mystery, all right—a brand new phenomenon that’s 13 centuries old.