18 April 2002
Iraqi Funds, Training Fuel Islamic Terror Group
(Article from the Christian Science Monitor on April 2, 2002) (1700)
[This article first appeared in The Christian Science Monitor on April
2, 2002, and is reproduced with permission. (c) 2002, The Christian
Science Publishing Society. All rights reserved. (Republication not
permitted in Kuwait.)]
Iraqi Funds, Training Fuel Islamic Terror Group
Two Iraqi Arabs held in a Kurdish prison tell of contacts among Ansar
al-Islam, Al Qaeda, and aides to the Iraqi president.
By Scott Peterson
Staff Writer Of The Christian Science Monitor
HALABJA AND SULAYMANIYAH, NORTHERN IRAQ -- The US Operation Anaconda
has squeezed many Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters out of Afghanistan,
but some of those forces are simply joining a budding conflict nearby,
in Iraq, local security officials warn.
Ansar al-Islam, a Kurdish Islamic extremist group that has shaken
Northern Iraq with bloody episodes of killing over the past 14 months,
is being bolstered by the American rout of Osama bin Laden's diehards
at Shah-e Kot, Afghanistan.
"Their numbers have been increasing, as [fighters] escape from
Operation Anaconda," says a top security official in the region. "We
don't know how many, but each day that goes by, they are more and more
of a threat."
While Ansar is gaining strength in numbers, new information is
emerging that ties the organization to both Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda
network and to Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. The Al Qaeda contacts
allegedly stretch back to 1989, and include regular recruiting visits
by bin Laden cadres to Kurdish refugee camps in Iran and to northern
Iraq, as well as a journey by senior Ansar leaders to meet Al Qaeda
chiefs in Kandahar, Afghanistan, in the summer of 2000.
A 20-year veteran of Iraqi intelligence alleges the Iraqi government
secretly provided cash and training to Ansar, in a bid to destabilize
the "safe haven" and weaken armed Kurdish opponents. Any link between
Baghdad and Al Qaeda could be used by Washington to help justify
toppling Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.
Some Kurdish politicians downplay the threat from Ansar al-Islam, and
senior Islamic leaders claim to have convinced Ansar to "change their
methods," meaning they won't target and kill Kurds in their fight for
a more secular state as they did this past September.
Ansar al-Islam, which means "Soldiers of God," is no more than several
hundred strong. But it controls a handful of Iraqi Kurdish villages
that abut the border with Iran, on the eastern end of the US-protected
Kurdish safe area in northern Iraq.
Iraqi intelligence link
New details about Ansar's contacts with Al Qaeda come from Rafed
Ibrahim Fatah, an Iraqi Arab held by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan.
Mr. Fatah agreed to be interviewed in an interrogation room at a PUK
security complex in Sulaymaniyah.
Mr. Fatah says he fled from Baghdad to Iran in the mid-1980s, and was
in a refugee camp on the outskirts of Tehran. There, in 1989, he says
he met two Iraqi brothers who had returned from mujahideen centers in
Pakistan explicitly to make contact with another Kurdish faction, the
Islamic Movement of Kurdistan (IMK), "because there was jihad in
Peshawar, [Pakistan], and they were fighting jihad here." The IMK is a
broad political party that splintered in recent years; the breakaway
extremists first created Jund al-Islam, then changed their name to
Ansar.
Fatah says one of the brothers, Abu Ayoub, called himself a "military
cadre working for Osama," and visited Iraqi Kurds in northern Iran for
two weeks. Fatah made the trip with him, spending most of his time
with Abu Ayoub's lower-ranking brother, Najjem, who he said did not
attend the "big meetings."
Those ties continued in later years, Fatah says. An Iraqi Kurd called
Abu Jaffar also visited from Pakistan twice a year during the 1990s,
to recruit jihadis. The Kurdish Islamists, Fatah says, stroking his
short salt-and-pepper beard, maintained their own house in Peshawar,
like many of Islamic militant organizations in Pakistan.
Fatah himself first traveled to Pakistan in 1989, and even to Afghan
training camps of the mujahideen, though he says he didn't have the
stomach -- literally -- for the hard life of guerrillas.
The Al Qaeda-Kurdish ties appear to have grown closer by the summer of
2000, when Al Qaeda was well established, and Jund al-Islam was taking
root in Kurdistan. Fatah was in Kandahar, Afghanistan, when he heard
about a high-level delegation of Iraqi Kurdish militants. He says a
friend introduced him to Abu Wa'el and two other Jund al-Islam
leaders. They were staying in the guest house of a Taliban minister
known for his support of Arab jihadists in Afghanistan, and were
surprised when Fatah and his Iraqi friend showed up.
"They wanted to present themselves as a jihad group, and they were
concentrating on Al Qaeda," Fatah says, recalling a conversation that
took place in his presence. "They said they had already received money
once from Abu Qatada, to elicit more support from Al Qaeda." Abu
Qatada is a London-based sheikh who went underground earlier this
year, and has been convicted in a Jordanian court of conspiring to
attack US and Israeli interests.
Fatah says the delegation said they met Abu Hafas al-Masri, bin
Laden's No. 2 and military aide, but that bin Laden rarely met with
such groups. Uneasy about being identified by fellow Iraqis in
Afghanistan -- even though analysts say that three of Al Qaeda's top
20 leaders were Iraqis -- Fatah says that Abu Wa'el and the others
talked little about the details of their mission.
One reason they were leery of attracting the attention of fellow
Iraqis may have been clandestine support for the Kurdish Islamists
from the Baghdad regime. Qassem Hussein Mohamed, a big-boned,
mustachioed Saddam lookalike who says he worked for Baghdad's
Mukhabarat intelligence for two decades, says that Iraqi President
Saddam Hussein has clandestinely supported Ansar al-Islam for several
years.
"[Ansar] and Al Qaeda groups were trained by graduates of the
Mukhabarat's School 999 -- military intelligence," says Mr. Mohamed,
who agreed to be interviewed separately in the Sulaymaniyah
interrogation room. As with Fatah, there were no apparent signs that
he had been compelled to speak, and Kurdish investigators say they are
convinced -- based on other, confirmable parts of his story -- that he
is a Mukhabarat agent.
"My information is that the Iraqi government was directly supporting
[Al Qaeda] with weapons and explosives," he says. "[Ansar] was part of
Al Qaeda, and given support with training and money."
Saddam's 'overt' help
Saddam Hussein did not create Ansar al-Islam, though Mohamed compared
Baghdad's role to the overt help Iraq gives the anti-Iran Mujahideen
e-Khalq forces, which are known to be completely controlled by Iraqi
intelligence within Iraq's borders.
Among other known Ansar leaders, Mohamed says Abu Wa'el was the most
influential, was on the Iraqi intelligence payroll, and served as a
liaison between Baghdad and Al Qaeda. Mohamed says his own mission to
northern Iraq -- during which he was detained by the PUK -- is proof
of that link. "After America attacked Afghanistan, Baghdad lost
contact with [Abu Wa'el]," Mohamed says. "They sent me to check out
Abu Wa'el, to make sure he was not dead or captured, and to
reestablish contact."
Mohamed says PUK intelligence operatives apparently had been following
him for some time, and clearly knew he was trying to contact the
militants in northern Iraq.
The possibility of Iraq's support for Ansar -- if only to destabilize
the Kurdish territory that exists beyond Baghdad's control -- does not
surprise Kurdish officials. They note that President Hussein has
recently embraced Islamic groups, and pays $10,000 each to the
families of Palestinian suicide bombers in Israel, to solidify his
credentials. Supporting Ansar, too, may provide Hussein with a way to
get at his Kurdish enemies.
"There has been a marked change in Saddam's thinking in the past five
years," says Hoshyar Zebari, a senior Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP)
official, regarding Baghdad's shift from hardline secularism, to
backing Islamists.
"[Ansar] are local, home-grown Islamic terrorists, inspired by Al
Qaeda and bin Laden. They think the main enemy is the US, and that
Islam can't be free unless they get rid of blasphemous groups and
infidels, which they consider the KDP and PUK to be," Mr. Zebari says.
"Saddam's intelligence is very good at penetrating small groups."
Which is exactly what has happened to Ansar, says former Mukhabarat
operative Mohamed. "The government does not like this 'safe haven,'
and wants to destroy and destabilize everyone, everywhere," Mohamed
says. "They are using [Ansar] as a base to destabilize northern Iraq,
and assassinate and kill people. Baghdad will never give up supporting
them."
Several additional reports -- unconfirmed -- have surfaced, alleging
that Ansar leaders are sheltering senior Al Qaeda figures who slipped
across the border from Iran, after fleeing Afghanistan.
But Sheikh Sadiq Abdulaziz, the deputy leader of the IMK -- now
weakened by the loss of breakaway factions -- denies there is any link
to bin Laden other than the group draws its inspiration from him.
"People who see Osama on television and hear Osama, want to be like
Osama," Sheikh Sadiq says in his Halabja office. Ahson Ali Abdulaziz,
one of the leaders of Ansar, is the nephew of Sheikh Sadiq and the son
of IMK leader Mullah Ali Abdulaziz.
Some downplay Ansar's tactics
Despite these ties, some Kurdish and local Islamic leaders downplay
the Ansar threat and argue that Ansar has forsaken violence.
"In Islam, we want to be martyrs, but we can't make a battle against
our own people," the sheikh says, dismissing as "rumors" reports that
Arabs and Al Qaeda fighters are among the militants. "[Ansar] has
changed their name, their ideas, and methods."
PUK leader Jalal Talabani says that the collapse of Al Qaeda and
Taliban rule will ultimately weaken the group. "Before, when there was
Afghanistan, all these groups thought they had a base," he says,
hurriedly clicking a set of prayer beads between his fingers. "They
lost this hope, and are isolated. Now they are desperate. We are in
negotiations with them -- that the Arabs must leave. We want to solve
it peacefully. We are giving them a chance."
(Distributed by the Office of International Information Programs, U.S.
Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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