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Ansar al-Islam in Kurdistan

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This article is about the Kurdish Islamist organization. For the Pakistani Islamist organization, see Ansar-ul-Islam (Pakistan).

Ansar al-Islam (Arabic: انصار الاسلام, Supporters or Partisans of Islam) is a Kurdish Sunni Islamist group, promoting a radical interpretation of Islam and Jihad. At the beginning of the 2003 invasion of Iraq it controlled about a dozen villages and a range of peaks in northern Iraq on the Iranian border. It has used tactics such as suicide bombers in its conflicts with the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and other Kurdish groups.

The village of Biyara, main base of the Ansar al-Islam 2001-2003

Origins

Ansar al-Islam was formed in December 2001 as a merger of Jund al-Islam (Soldiers of Islam), led by Abu Abdallah al-Shafi'i, and a splinter group from the Islamic Movement of Kurdistan led by Mullah Krekar. Krekar became the leader of the merged Ansar al-Islam, which opposed an agreement made between IMK and the dominant Kurdish group in the area, Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK).

Ansar al-Islam fortified a number of villages along the Iranian border, under the protection of Iranian artillery support. [1] The local villagers were subjected to harsh sharia laws; musical instruments were destroyed and singing forbidden. The only school for girls in the area was destroyed, and all pictures of women removed from merchandise labels. Sufi shrines were desecrated and members of the Kaka'i (a religious group also known as Ahl-e Haqq) were forced to convert to Islam or flee.[2]

Ansar al-Islam quickly instigated a number of attacks on the peshmerga (armed forces) of the PUK, on one occasion massacring 53 prisoners and beheading them. Several assassination attempts on leading PUK politicians were also made with car bombs and snipers.

Ansar al-Islam comprised about 300 armed men, many of these veterans from the Soviet-Afghan War, and a proportion being neither Kurd nor Arab. The Bush administration alleged that Ansar al-Islam was tied to al-Qaeda before the US invasion of Iraq; however, the nature and extent of these alleged ties have been repeatedly disputed in the intelligence community.

The Bush administration also claimed that Ansar al-Islam had links with Saddam Hussein, attempting to establish a link between Hussein and al-Qaeda. But the Senate Report on Pre-war Intelligence on Iraq concluded that Saddam "was aware of Ansar al-Islam and al-Qa'ida presence in northeastern Iraq, but the groups' presence was considered a threat to the regime and the Iraqi government attempted intelligence collection operations against them. The DIA [Defense Intelligence Agency] stated that information from senior Ansar al-Islam detainees revealed that the group viewed Saddam's regime as apostate, and denied any relationship with it."[3] The leader of Ansar al-Islam, Mullah Krekar, has also called Saddam Hussein his sworn enemy.[4]

Operations after the invasion

When the US invaded Iraq in 2003, it gave air support to a combined US Special Forces/Peshmerga-attack on the Ansar al-Islam enclave, which did not draw Iranian artillery fire. Most of the Ansar al-Islam fighters escaped into Iran, where they were disarmed but not arrested. Many have since returned to Iraq and joined various armed groups fighting the occupation.

Ansar al-Islam detonated a suicide car bomb on March 22, 2003, killing Australian journalist Paul Moran and several others. The group is also thought to have been responsible for an September 9, 2003 attempted bombing of a United States Department of Defense office in Arbil, which killed three people.

On February 1, 2004 suicide bombings hit parallel EID-celebrations arranged by the two main Kurdish parties, PUK and KDP, in the Kurdish capital of Arbil, killing 109 and wounding more than 200 partygoers. Responsibility for this attack was claimed by the then unknown group Ansar al-Sunnah, and stated to be in support of "our brothers in Ansar al-Islam."

While many former activists in Ansar al-islam have joined the Ansar al-Sunnah and similar goups[5], Kurdish authorities claim the organization is still active in Iraqi Kurdistan. In September 2006 11 alleged members of Ansar al-Islam were hanged in Arbil.

Ansar al-Islam has an extensive network in Europe organizing finance and support for armed attacks within Iraq. Several members of such groups have been arrested in European countries such as Germany and Sweden.[citation needed]

In December 2007 the Ansar al-Sunnah formally acknowledged being derived from the Ansar al-Islam, and reverted their name to the original.[6]

Alleged activities and attacks

2003

  • October 27: Ansar al-Islam and Zarqawi are blamed for car bombings that kill 35 and wound 200 in Baghdad, including at the headquarters of the Red Cross according to an MSNBC article.[7]
  • November 12: According to an MSNBC article, Ansar al-Islam is suspected of a suicide truck bombing at the headquarters of Italy's paramilitary police in Nasiriyah that killed more than 30.[7]

2004

In the lead up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, then United States Secretary of State Colin Powell told the United Nations Security Council in February 2003 "Baghdad has an agent in the most senior levels of the radical organization, Ansar al-Islam, that controls this corner of Iraq. In 2000 this agent offered Al Qaida safe haven in the region. After we swept Al Qaida from Afghanistan, some of its members accepted this safe haven."[9] Since that time, some have maintained Saddam had links to Ansar al-Islam, while others argue Saddam infiltrated Ansar al-Islam for intelligence gathering but didn't actively assist the group. The general consensus of experts, as well as the conclusion of the intelligence community and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, is that Saddam was infiltrating the group but that the two parties remained hostile to each other and did not establish a collaborative relationship.

Colin Powell has since acknowledged that his speech presented no hard evidence of collaboration between Saddam and al-Qaeda; he told reporters at a State Department press conference that "I have not seen smoking gun, concrete evidence about the connection, but I do believe the connections existed."[10] However, after Powell left office, he acknowledged that he was skeptical of the evidence presented to him for the speech. He told Barbara Walters in an interview that he considered the speech a "blot" on his record and that he feels "terrible" about assertions that he made in the speech that turned out to be false. He said, "There were some people in the intelligence community who knew at that time that some of these sources were not good, and shouldn't be relied upon, and they didn't speak up. That devastated me." When asked specifically about a Saddam/al-Qaeda connection, Powell responded, "I have never seen a connection. … I can't think otherwise because I'd never seen evidence to suggest there was one."[11]


References

  1. ^ The rise and fall of Ansar al-Islam | csmonitor.com
  2. ^ Ansar al-Islam in Iraqi Kurdistan (Human Rights Watch Backgrounder, )
  3. ^ Senate Intelligence Committee Report p.92-93.
  4. ^ Mullah Krekar Interview, Insight News TV
  5. ^ [1]
  6. ^ http://counterterrorismblog.org/2007/12/ansar_alsunnah_acknowledges_re.php
  7. ^ a b Terror strikes blamed on al-Zarqawi in Iraq - Hunt for Al-Qaida - MSNBC.com
  8. ^ Ibid
  9. ^ "U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell Addresses the U.N. Security Council". 2003-02-05.
  10. ^ NBC, MSNBC, AP, "No proof links Iraq, al-Qaida, Powell says," MSNBC News Services (8 January 2004).
  11. ^ ABC News: Colin Powell on Iraq, Race, and Hurricane Relief

Online Video

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