In September 2007, U.S. soldiers raided a desert encampment
outside the town of Sinjar in northwest Iraq, looking for insurgents. Amid the
tents, they made a remarkable discovery:
a trove of personnel files -- more than 700 in all -- detailing the origins of
the foreign fighters al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) had brought into the country to
fight against coalition forces.
The Sinjar records -- which we analyzed extensively in a series
of reports
for the U.S. Military Academy at West Point's Combating Terrorism Center --
revealed that at least 111 Libyans entered Iraq between August 2006 and August
2007. That was about 18 percent of AQI's incoming fighters during that period,
a contribution second only to Saudi Arabia's (41 percent) and the highest
number of fighters per capita than any other country noted in the records.
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