Tuesday, August 27, 2002

Ansar Al Islam - Part II

PV Vivekanand

This the second and final part of a report on the militant Ansar Al Islam group, which the US says was linked with Al Qaeda and is present in northern Iraq in what appears to an effort to establish a connection between the Baghdad government and Al Qaeda.


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 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 which was reportedly backed by Tehran.
Iran upports everal Iranian Kurdish groups in the area with a view to countering the influence of Iraqi Kurdish factions that are dominant in northern Iraq, regional experts say.
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.
Baghad might have tried to use Ansar Al Islam if only to create confusion among the dozens of Kurdish groups that challenge its 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 an 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," according to PUK leader Jalal Talabani. "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."
Predictably, Qada claimed that 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.
US officials have voiced similar doubts since the PUK has a vested interested in implicating Baghdad with Al Qaeda.
Reports in the US said the White House had rejected a proposal to launch a pre-emptive strike against the Al Ansar positions in northern Iraq.
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.
Tehran rejected the accusation and said it disapproved of the group's activities.
Since mid-August, more than 1,000 Peshamargas of the PUK are figthing Ansar Al Islam around the Ansar stronghold of Halabja after pushing the group back from from villages further into north Iraq.
It was reported in early August that 19-year-old youth belonging to Ansar Al Islam surrendered to PUK authorities after he had a last-minute change of heart on his way to blow himself among PUK officials.
The youth had strapped himself with explosives and was indoctrinated by his Ansar mentors that he would be serving his people by killing PUK officials in a suicide attack.
However, the youth opted not to carry out the attack and surrendered to the same officials whom he was supposed to have killed, the reports said. He is detained at a PUK jail in Sulaimaniya in north Iraq.
Had the attack taken place, it would have been the first known suicide bombing by an Iraqi Kurd against opponents, and would have introduced a new element in the ongoing battle between Ansar Al Islam and the PUK.
Mullah Kreekar, the Ansar Al Islam leader, has given an interview to Norwegian television that is expected to be broadcast on Tuesday. Possibly, he might throw more light into the group's activities and its connections.
Regardless of all other factors, is abundantly clear that the group espouses militancy and is present in northern Iraq. However, is it not enough to prove that Baghdad is linked with the group, and, inter alia, Al Qaeda, particularly given that the group is active in an area generally under American protection?