“By 2006 potential suicide bombers traveling from Europe and North Africa to join al Qaeda operations in Iraq were increasingly being diverted to Afghanistan. French intelligence monitored a new route for militants from North Africa that ended up at Peshawar [Pakistan]. ‘There is less need for them in Iraq,’ said Pierre de Bousquet de Florian, director of the DST, France’s counterterrorism agency [in The Los Angeles Times on October 26, 2006]. ‘The Iraqi insurgency is now very well organized around Iraqis. In contrast in Afghanistan there are certainly many Pakistanis and people from Arab countries and some from North Africa.’ ”
– Ahmed Rashid, Descent Into Chaos, Page 282