Papers Paint New Portrait of Iraq's Foreign Insurgents

Although Saudi Arabia was by far the most common country of origin of foreign fighters, with about 40 percent of the total, a surprising share -- 19 percent -- came from Libya. Overall, about 40 percent were North African.

Petraeus has said that the number of foreign fighters traveling through Syria to Iraq has dropped by as much as half since the summer, to as few as 50 each month. Military officials describe the Sunni insurgents as on the run. But based on the Sinjar documents, Boylan said, the military has concluded that its baseline of foreign entrees, beginning in August 2006, was about 10 percent too low.

The State Department's counterterrorism chief, retired Army Lt. Gen. Dell L. Dailey, has referred to the Sinjar documents in ongoing conversations with Arab and North African governments about their efforts to stem the flow of foreign fighters going to Iraq.

The West Point center's analysis notes that the home towns and regions listed by many fighters correlate with areas of high insurgent activity in the Arab world. More than half the Libyans came from in or around the coastal cities of Darnah and Benghazi. Both are long associated with the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, which in November officially affiliated itself with the global al-Qaeda network headed by Osama bin Laden.

Most of the Libyans traveled through Egypt on their way to Syria, and further analysis is being done on places of origin and travel routes.

The records are also a bonanza for the National Counterterrorism Center in McLean, which maintains the nation's massive database on individuals with a "foreign terrorist nexus." Russ Travers, the NCTC's deputy director, declined to discuss specific data but said that "there is no question that the more information we get, the more we can pull the thread on who is connected to whom."

Beyond their importance in understanding the big picture, the documents -- now posted in Arabic and English on the Combating Terrorism Center's Web site -- provide a riveting portrait of the people behind the numbers, and a window into the personnel practices of al-Qaeda in Iraq.

"These documents tell us more about AQI than they do about Iraq," said Brian Fishman, an associate at the West Point center and co-author of its Sinjar analysis. "When you've got hundreds . . . entering the country with different skill sets and different intentions, you have to build a bureaucracy to use your resources efficiently.

"I think we made a mistake in assuming that al-Qaeda, because it's a terrorist organization, doesn't need to organize itself the way other large organizations do. They have a human resources problem; they have to manage people."

Al-Qaeda has a track record of good documentation, he said, adding that "Osama bin Laden was a businessman before he was a terrorist."

Fishman offered an example from among the many captured al-Qaeda documents in the center's database -- an employment contract between the group and terrorist recruits in Afghanistan in the late 1990s. In addition to a definition of the organization, religious duties and a loyalty pledge, it includes a list of official "company" holidays and salary grades.

Married fighters were to be allotted time off every three weeks and round-trip tickets to their country of origin every two years, although al-Qaeda retained the right to deny vacation dates "in certain cases." Vacation requests were to be submitted 2 1/2 months in advance. Married fighters received higher salaries than bachelors -- including a bonus for every newborn -- but unmarried fighters were entitled to more vacation time.

The extent of al-Qaeda in Iraq's ties to the wider al-Qaeda network has long been a subject of debate within the U.S. intelligence community and military. Although its membership is overwhelmingly Iraqi, it has been led by foreigners with direct ties to al-Qaeda central, which has been based in Pakistan since being driven from Afghanistan in 2001.

Some of the early Sinjar documents carry the seal of the Mujaheddin Shura Council, an umbrella organization for Sunni insurgent organizations in Iraq created in January 2006 by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a bin Laden associate who was then leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq. Most of the later records are imprinted with the insignia of the Islamic State of Iraq, declared in October 2006 after Zarqawi's death. Those documents provide far more comprehensive information.

There is no indication of individual motives, but recruits were asked how they had made initial contact with travel "coordinators." Responses ranged from friends and family members to someone "in the mosque" or "a brother who came back from Iraq."

Although answers to many questions were left blank, most recruits said they carried identification -- a passport, birth certificate or driver's license. Some helpfully noted that their documents were "clean" or "not burnt," indicating they did not appear on any watch list. Contributions to the insurgency, including funds that totaled several thousand dollars in some cases, were duly recorded.

Based on information solicited in the longer Islamic State of Iraq forms, the Syrian role in the traffic appeared more that of entrepreneur than ideological partner and seemed to be a source of concern and suspicion for al-Qaeda in Iraq. Entrants were asked for names and descriptions of Syrians they had come into contact with, and were asked how they were treated. Many responded that the Syrians had demanded exorbitant sums of money, often exactly the amount the entrants were carrying.

Many of the forms include telephone numbers. According to Fishman, "we called a lot of them and they didn't work" or "just rang and rang." But a Swedish newspaper noticed on the center's Web site that one man, a Tunisian who gave only an alias, listed his country of residence as Sweden and supplied a telephone number in the Stockholm suburb of Rinkeby. A government registry indicated that he was married, with two children.

When a reporter from Svenska Dagbladet called the number, the newspaper reported early this month, a man who identified himself as a cousin said that Abu Mua'az was not there. He, his wife and older brother, the man said, "were currently overseas and unavailable."