Evidence is emerging that United States forces are waging war in Libya on behalf of rebels whose ranks include jihadis who fought against the U.S. in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Britain's Daily Telegraph reports that Abdel-Hakim al-Hasidi, a leader of U.S.-supported rebel forces in the fighting around Adjabiya, went to Afghanistan in 2002 to fight against the "foreign invasion" -- that is, U.S. troops who invaded Afghanistan in retaliation for the September 11 attacks. The Telegraph says al-Hasidi told an Italian newspaper, Il Sole 24 Ore, that he was captured in 2002 in Peshawar, Pakistan. "He was later handed over to the U.S., and then held in Libya before being released in 2008," the Telegraph reports. Al-Hasidi also told the Italian paper he recruited about 25 Libyan men to fight against U.S. forces in Iraq.
Al-Hasidi's story is consistent with evidence presented in a 2007 report published by the Combating Terrorism Center at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point. That report, by professors Joseph Felter and Brian Fishman, examined records of an al Qaeda-affiliated organization found after an October 2007 raid near Sinjar, Iraq. The records contained biographical information about nearly 700 foreign terrorists who came to Iraq to fight against the United States between August 2006 and August 2007.
Felter and Fishman found that the largest portion of foreign fighters, about 41 percent, came to Iraq from Saudi Arabia. The second-largest source of foreign fighters, at nearly 19 percent, was Libya. "Libya contributed far more fighters per capita than any other nationality in the Sinjar records, including Saudi Arabia," the authors conclude. Since previous studies had indicated far fewer Libyan fighters in Iraq, the authors suggest there may have been a "surge" of Libyans into Iraq in the spring and summer of 2007. "The apparent surge in Libyan recruits traveling to Iraq may be linked to the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group's [LIFG] increasingly cooperative relationship with al Qaeda, which culminated in the LIFG official joining al Qaeda on November 3, 2007," the report say.