Sunday, August 25, 2002

Ansar Al Islam Part I

by pv vivekanand

ANSAR AL ISLAM, the group whose name rose to prominence last week with the CNN screening of alleged testing of chemical weapons in Afghanistan by Al Qaeda members, has been active in northern Iraq since late 2001 but the connection that the US is trying to make between Baghdad and the faction -- and Al Qaeda by extension -- is weak at best, according to regional experts,
Washington has failed to establish that Baghdad had links with Al Qaeda although several attempts were made: first with a report that an Iraqi diplomat had met with Mohammed Atta, the suspected leader of the Sept. 11 attacks, in Europe in early 2001. It could not be confirmed that such a meeting took place, let alone that the two discussed Al Qaeda plans to stage anti-US attacks.
The second attempt was a matter of convenience and it came with the rash of anthrax scares in the US. The finger was immediately pointed at Iraq, since UN inspectors had found anthrax strains in Baghdad's weapons programme. However, the accusation fell apart when it was found that the particular strain in anthrax that caused the massive scare in the US was different from what the UN inspectors had discovered in Iraq.
The third attempt to link Iraq with Al Qaeda came in May with reports that a defecting Iraqi intelligence agent had seen Osama Bin Laden in Baghdad in early 2000. The US media played up the report, but then it became apparent that the defecting agent could not have been telling the truth since he had left Iraq in early 1999 and never went back.
The third attempt seeks to establish that Al Qaeda fighters are present in northern Iraq, but it appears to be a self-defeating exercise since the area where they are said to be present is outside the control of the Baghdad government. If anything, the US is offering protection to the area's residents against attacks by the Iraqi army.
Against that backdrop, the alleged Al Qaeda presence in northern Iraq could not be a strong argument for the US to target Saddam in its war against terrorism.
Regional experts are emphatic that Saddam and Bin Laden, while sharing common enmity towards the US, are ideologically too far apart to strike an alliance and work together.
Bin Laden holds Saddam responsible for having set the ground for US military presence in the region by invading Kuwait in 1990 and has often been bitterly critical of the Iraqi president.
According to Arabs who knew Bin Laden well while they were in Afghanistan and maintained contacts with his supporters after leaving the country in the mid-90s, the Al Qaeda leader had turned down Iraqi offers of asylum after he came under American focus following the 1998 bomb attacks in Kenya and Tanzania.
US intelligence reports say Ansar Al Islam fighters trained with Al Qaeda members in Afghanistan in 1999 and 2000 and the group is harbouring Al Qaeda activists in northern Iraq. They are presumed to have fled overland from Afghanistan in the wake of the American military strikes against that country launched in October 2001. The implication is that they reached northern Iraq through Iranian territory.
Immediately after the CNN screening of the purported tapes of Qaeda testing of chemical weapons last week, US "experts" said it resembled a method followed by Ansar Al Islam.
The New York Times reported that US intelligence had monitored an Ansar Al Islam site in northern Iraq where chemical or biological weapons experiments were conducted with farm animals. It was initially feared this might constitute a significant chemical-biological threat, but US officials decided it was not serious enough to justify a military strike, said the paper.
Even if it is established that Ansar Al Islam, which is led by a Kurd, Najmuddin Faraj Ahmad, who goes by the name of Mullah Kreekar, had links with Al Qaeda, it is far from establishing that Baghdad had connections with Ansar Al Islam.
US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has said there are Al Qaeda members in Iraq, but he has not said where they are.
"I have said for some time that there are Al Qaeda in Iraq, and there are," he said last week. "They have left Afghanistan," he said. "They have left other locations. And they've landed in a variety of countries, one of which is Iraq."
US officials initially said Arab members of Ansar Al Islam were involved in the experimentation, but later they said it was unclear whether they were Arabs or Kurds.
Ansar Al Islam is based in northern Iraq near the border with Iran -- territory not controlled by the government of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad.
As such, says Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz, the US, which offers "protection" to Kurds in north Iraq by enforcing a "no-fly" zone, should ask itself how it allowed the group to base itself there.
Aziz, in recent US television interviews, pointed out the irony in the US contention that the Iraqi government was harbouring a group in a territory beyond its control and "protected" by the US.
Aziz questioned why American officials have not publicly raised the Al Qaeda matter with the Kurdish groups Washington supports in northern Iraq.
What is known about Ansar Al Islam?
The existence of the group and its alleged links with Al Qaeda were highlighted in a Christian Science Monitor report in March.
It is a tight-knit group of less than 800 followers -- Iraqis, Jordanians, Moroccans, Palestinians and Afghans -- based in Halabja, a Kurdish village on the Iraqi-Iranian border and enforces a Taliban-style Islamic code in a cluster of villages in the area.
Halabja is the site of what the US has described as a massive Iraqi chemical attack towards the end of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war and to quell Iranian Kurdish presence there -- all the more reason for the group to maintain hostility towards the Saddam Hussein regime in Baghdad.
Ansar Al Islam's leader Mulla Kreekar has refugee status in Norway after landing there from Iran under a UN refugee programme in 1993. He has been out of Norway for the last two years.
The Norwegian government has launched an investigation into his activities in the wake of the US allegation that the group had ties with Al Qaeda.
The group, an offshoot of the Islamic Movement of Kurdistan, is reportedly backed by Tehran, which supports for several Iranian Kurdish groups in the area with a view to countering the influence of Iraqi Kurdish factions that are dominant in northern Iraq.
Mullah Kreekar was a former member of the Islamic Movement of Kurdistan who joined Ansar Al Islam after its formation in September 2001. He supposedly replaced Abu Abdullah Shafae - an Iraqi Kurd who allegedly trained with Al Qaeda in Afghanistan for 10 years - and changed his name from Warya Holery. Shafae is now believed to be Ansar Al Islam's deputy leader.
Traditionally, Tehran has supported the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) of Jalal Talabani, and its support for other groups is seen as aimed at using them if, as and when Kurdish activities threaten Iranian interests.
Tehran is eager to ensure that the Kurds living in its north, Iraqi Kurds and Turkish Kurds do not gang up to set up an independent Kurdistan in the border area.
Saddam might have tried to use Ansar Al Islam if only to create confusion among the dozens of Kurdish groups that challenge his control of northern Iraq, analysts say. However, they doubt whether Saddam had much success with the group, which is said to be staunchly fundamentalist bordering on fanatic obsession with their fight against "the blasphemous secularist, political, social, and cultural" society in northern Iraqi villages.
According to reports, Ansar Al Islam activists have ransacked and razed beauty salons, burned schools for girls, and murdered women in the streets for refusing to wear the veil in the areas under their control.
"Ansar Al Islam is a kind of Taliban," PUK leader Jalal Talabani has said. "They are terrorists who have declared war against all Kurdish political parties. We gave them a chance to change their ways ... and end their terrorist acts. But if we can't do it through dialogue, we are obliged to use force."
The PUK, which is engaged in a running battle with Ansar Al Islam for domination of the villages on the border, does not believe the group is backed by Iran.
"The Iranians are emphatic that this group is a threat to their own security," according to Barham Salih, a senior PUK official.
The other dominant Kurdish group, the Kurdish Democratic Party led by Masoud Barzani, has not commented on the allegations, but it is united with the PUK against Ansar Al Islam.
Another PUK official, Mustapha Saed Qada, claimed in comments carried by the Christian Science Monitor in March that his group had overrun two Ansar camps after Sept. 11 and found "the walls covered with poems and graffiti praising Bin Laden and the Sept. 11 attacks on the US."
"In one, there is a picture of the twin towers with a drawing of Bin Laden standing on the top holding a Kalashnikov rifle in one hand and a knife in the other." he said.
He added that the group has received $600,000 from Al Qaeda and a delivery of weapons and Toyota landcruisers.
According to Qada, Ansar Al Islam might even have ties with Iraqi government agents operating in northern Iraq. "We have picked up conversations on our radios between Iraqis and Ansar Al Islam. I believe that Iraq is also funding Ansar Al Islam. There are no hard facts as yet, but I believe that under the table they are supporting them because it will cause further instability for the Kurds."
Given that the PUK is bitterly opposed to the Iraqi regime, Qada's comments need a lot more than simple assertions, observers point out.
Saddam's eldest son Udai has accused Iran of backing the group but rejected its purported links with Al Qaeda. The ambiguity in Udai's comment was that he referred to a group called "Jund Al Islam," which US officials varying describe as either a mother group from which Ansar Al Islam broke away or an offshoot of Ansar Al Islam itself.
"They (Jund Al Islam) do not have any link whatsoever with Al Qaeda, and this is purely an Iranian game aimed at gaining influence in the area," said Udai Hussein.
As of Sunday, Tehran has not commented on Udai's s statement.