Four CIA officers received the Intelligence Star for actions in 2002 and later as part of Special Activities Division (SAD) paramilitary teams in Iraq. The SAD teams, the first U.S. forces to enter Iraq in 2002 in preparation for the March 2003 U.S. invasion, were soon joined by members of the Army's 10th Special Forces Group to form a joint team called the Northern Iraq Liaison Element (NILE). The joint team organized the Kurdish Peshmerga and defeated Ansar al-Islam, an ally of Al Qaeda, in a battle for the northeast corner of Iraq, killing many terrorists and uncovering a chemical weapons facility at Sargat, the only such facility of its type discovered in the Iraq war.