Sunday, March 23, 2003

Ansar Al Islam

s ongoing war against Iraq. The group was in
American gunsights since July last year when it
emerged that it was present in a corner of northern
Iraq near the border with Iran and had links with
Osama Bin Laden's Al Qaeda.
However, American intelligence could not find any
links between Ansar and the Baghdad government. Had
such a link been established, it would have given new
life to Washington's fumbling effort to assert that
the Saddam Hussein regime was connected with Al Qaeda
through Ansar.
That did not prevent US Secretary of State Colin
Powell to assert in February that Ansar enjoyed
Saddam's patronage and that the group had a
sophisticated "chemical weapons testing facility" in
northern Iraq.
But Powell was caught redfaced when American and
Western reporters rushed to the area and found no such
facility and reported their finding.
The reporters found that armed Ansar fighters were
present at the site and living like any Iraqi villager
and engaged in a running conflict with other Kurdish
groups in the area. There was no evidence, either on
the ground or otherwise, that they had any relations
with the Saddam regime.
However, the reporters who visited the site found the
walls covered with poems and graffiti praising Bin
Laden and the Sept. 11 attacks on the US.."
In one, ther was a picture of the New York 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, according to one report.
In any event, Powell's claim was contradictory in
itself because the area where Ansar is present is
beyond the control of the Saddam government and the
region comes under the "no-fly" zone that the US had
declared in northern Iraq, preventing the Iraqi army
from entering the area.
As such, Iraq immediately countered Powell, pointing
out that it was illogical, baseless and unreasonable
to expect the Iraqi government to crack down on a
group which was present and operating in an area under
US protection. It also asked why American officials
have not publicly raised the Al Qaeda matter with the
Kurdish groups Washington supports in northern Iraq.
On Saturday and again on Sunday, Americans bombed the
group's base near Halabja in northern Iraq, killing at
least 60 of its fighters. No doubt further attacks
were planned along with a ground offensive against the
group be launched by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan
(PUK), one of the two dominant Kurdish factions in the
area.
US intelligence reports said that Ansar had more than
2,500 fighters grouped in the area ahead of the March
19 launch of the American war against Iraq. The
reports could not be confirmed independently since
earlier estimates said the group did not have more
than 800 members.
The PUK and Ansar have been locked in a bitter battle
for more than two years and it was backing from
Iranian sympathisers -- not necessarily the Tehran
regime itself -- that helped Ansar substain itself
against PUK assaults and also to make daring forays
into PUK-held territories.
Ansar's name hit headlines in early August when Cable
News Network (CNN) screened testing of chemical
weapons in Afghanistan by Al Qaeda members and the
group was present in northern Iraq.
Immediately after the CNN screening of the purported
tapes of Qaeda testing of chemical weapons, US
"experts" said it looked like a method followed by
Ansar Al Islam.
According to US intelligence reports, Ansar fighters
trained with Al Qaeda members in Afghanistan and the
group is harbouring Al Qaeda activists in northern
Iraq after they fled overland from Afghanistan in the
wake of the American war there in late 2001. The
implication is that they might have reached northern
Iraq through Iranian territory.
US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has said there
were Al Qaeda members in Iraq, but he had not said
where they were.
US intelligence had monitored an Ansar Al Islam site
in northern Iraq where chemical or biological weapons
experiments were allegedly conducted with farm
animals. It initially was feared this might constitute
a significant chemical-biological threat, but US
officials decided it was not serious enough to justify
a military strike, reports said at that time.
US officials initially said Arab members of Ansar Al
Islam were involved in the alleged experimentation
with chemicals, but later they said it was unclear
whether they were Arabs or Kurds.
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
the attacks in New York and Washington.
The second attempt came with reports that a defecting
Iraqi intelligence agent had seen Al Qaeda leader
Osama Bin Laden in Baghdad in early 2000. The US media
played up the report, but then it became aparent that
the defecting agent could not have been telling the
truth since he had left Iraq in early 1999 and never
went back.
In any event, British intelligence reports backed by
Central Intelligence Agency findings have showed that
Saddam could not have had any alliance with Bin Laden
if only because of the deep ideological chasm between
them. Bin Laden calls Saddam an infidel and has blamed
the Iraqi leader for giving a pretext for the US
military presence in the Gulf by invading Kuwait in
1990.
It is possible that Saddam might have tried to use
Ansar Al Islam if only to create confusion among the
dozens of Kurdish groups which challenge his control
of northern Iraq, but it is doubtful whether he had
much success with the group, which is staunchly
fundamentalist bordering on fanatic obsession with
their version of Islam against "the blasphemous
secularist, political, social, and cultural" society
there.
Ansar Al Islam, which is led by a Kurd, Najmuddin
Faraj Ahmad, who goes by the name of Mullah Syed
Kreekar, had links with Al Qaeda, says US officials.
What is known about Ansar Al Islam?
It is a tight-knit group of less than 800 followers --
Iraqis, Jordanians, Moroccans, Palestinians and
Afghans -- and enforces a Taliban-style Islamic code
in a cluster of villages in a tiny pocket of territory
between the town of Halabja and the Iranian border,
an area around 80 kilometres southeast of the PUK's
administrative centre of Sulaymaniya.
(Halabja is the site of what the US has described as a
massive chemical attack towards the end of the 1980-88
Iran-Iraq war in order to fight Kurdish dissent. The
US accused Iraq of using the chemical weapons, but
analysis of the chemical used left the question open.
The analysis found that the chemical was not of the
type used by Iraq and experts suggested that it could
have come from Iran).
Mulla Kreekar has refugee status in Norway after
landing there from Iran under a UN refugee programme.
However, the Norwegian government has moved to expel
him after the US allegation that the group had ties
with Al Qaeda.
Mullah joined Ansar Al Islam after its formation in
September 2001. He replaced Abu Abdullah Shafae - an
Iraqi Kurd who trained with Al Qaeda in Afghanistan
for 10 years - and changed his name from Warya Holery.
Shafae is now Ansar Al Islam's deputy.
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," says PUK leader
Jalal Talibani. "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 Ansar 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.
PUK officials have claimed that Ansar had received
hundreds of thousands of dolllars, weapons and Toyota
landcruisers from Al Qaeda and that the group has ties
to Iraqi government agents operating in northern Iraq.

The source of such information was, they ssay,
intercepted telephone conversations between Iraqis and
Ansar Al Islam.
Given that the PUK is bitterly opposed to the Iraqi
regime, such comments need a lot more than simple
assertions..
Saddam's eldest son Uday has accused Iran of backing
the group but his comment was ambiguous since 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," according to
Uday Hussein.
Traditionally, Tehran has supported the 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 anxious to ensure that Iranian Kurds, Iraqi
Kurds and Turkish Kurds do not gang up to set up an
independent Kurdistan in the border area.
Shortly after Saturday's US bombing, an apparent car
bomb in northern Iraq killed at least five people,
including an Australian cameraman near an Ansar camp.
The camp itself was subjected to a two-hour
bombardment by some 50 cruise missiles.
US missiles also targeted a base of the Komala Islami
Kurdistan (Islamic Society of Kurdistan), in the
small town of Khormal, killing at least 50 people.
Komala control an area between PUK and Ansar territory
It was unclear why Komala was targetted. It keeps out
of the PUK-Ansar dispute.