The New York Times reported last week that American troops raided a key station on the Foreign Fighters’ Highway near the Iraq-Syria border and came across a treasure trove of data. Fortunately for us, those the coordinators of the global trade in suicide bombers kept their books up to date and left us a tidy breakdown of the home countries of their victim-volunteers (no word yet on whether their HR people were using Microsoft Excel or Google Documents):

In addition to $18,000 in cash and assorted weapons, troops found five terabytes of data that included detailed questionnaires filled out by incoming fighters. Background information on more than 900 fighters was found, or about 750 after eliminating duplicates and questionnaires that were mostly incomplete.

According to the rosters found in the raid, the third-largest source of foreign fighters was Yemen, with 68. There were 64 from Algeria, 50 from Morocco, 38 from Tunisia, 14 from Jordan, 6 from Turkey and 2 from Egypt.

You may be surprised to learn that 40% came from our ally, Saudi Arabia. An additional 18% were from Libya, another American ally in the so-called War on Terror. Not one Iranian was listed. According to the Times, “The records also underscore how the insurgency in Iraq remains both overwhelmingly Iraqi and Sunni.”

I find that both the insurgency and sectarian violence in Iraq make a lot more sense (inasmuch as one can make sense of such senselessness) when I frame it in terms of the greater Sunni-Shia conflict. Ideological differences magnify regional enmities, with Saudi Arabia as the big Sunni kid on the block, and Iran championing Shi’a Islam.

Shiites outnumber Sunni Muslims 2 to 1 in Iraq. When the U.S. deposed Sadaam Hussein and his Baath Party, it not only deposed a poerful ruling minority, it also precipitated a shift of influence in Iraq from Sunni to Shia. I can understand if from friend Saudi Arabia’s perspective this makes things a little…complicated.

Of course, the death dealing in Iraq can’t all be boiled down to historical tension between Sunni and Shia Islam, but considering how much the U.S. has at stake in the region, media outlets do little to educate us (and as a people we probably show little interest) and our administration actively misinforms us (at worst) or remains willfully ignorant (at best) when they indiscriminately blend foreign and domestic, Sunni and Shia violence in an effort to heighten tensions between the U.S. and Iran.