The enemies of our enemy

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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