Algerian authorities are holding 120 men on suspicion of involvement in the insurgency in Iraq.... most of those in custody belonged to the al Qaeda organisation in the Islamic Maghreb, a group of Algerian Islamist insurgents... the 120 Algerians were variously suspected of having fought in Iraq, planning to travel to Iraq to take part in the conflict there or of recruiting Algerians to participate in the conflict.
The long term worry which has been expressed since at least 2005 is that Iraq is being used as a proven ground and a Darwinian culling process to produce the next generation of very effective Islamist military leadership. Needlenose accurately snarked Iraq as the "The world's most expensive school for terrorists" and the CIA first identifed this problem as the "Class of 2005" problem.
Foreign jihadis have always been a fairly small component of the numerous armed groups shooting at other Iraqis and US/UK forces in Iraq. Most reliable estimates place the foreign groups to be between 4% to 10% of the active shooters in Iraq at any one time. The Iraqi fighting is overwhelmingly an Iraqi v. Iraqi and Iraqi v. American affair. However the foreign fighters have already demonstrated that they will travel to fight the United States while the typical Iraqi insurgent, guerilla or militia member is operating within a couple of miles of their home. This makes keeping track of the foreign fighters important as a means of long term threat assessment.
We have seen some isolated examples of individual jihadists going back to their home country and conducting attacks, but this is the first massive sweep of organized networks that went to Iraq and then returned home. I have strong doubts that this will be the last network that will have had significant experience fighting in Iraq.
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