Ansar al-Islam, the Iraqi branch of Al Qaeda.
The links are substantial between the Iraq-based terrorist group Ansar al-Islam and Al Qaeda. Both are Wahhabi radical groups tied to global terrorism.
The US State Department recently made this statement in reaffirming its designation of Ansar al-Islam as a foreign terrorist organization.
Ansar al-Islam, which operates in Iraq, has close links to and support from al-Qaida. Al-Qaida and Usama bin Laden participated in the formation and funding of the group, which has provided safehaven to al-Qaida in northeastern Iraq. Ansar al-Islam trained in al-Qaida camps in Afghanistan. The group has been one of the leading groups engaged in anti-Coalition terrorist attacks in Iraq.
(*) See also the original designation. (†)
Ansar al-Islam is currently led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (birth name: Ahmad Fadeel Nazzal al-Khalayleh), a Jordanian. (‡)
On 1 September 2001, two radical Kurdish groups came together in northern Iraq and Ansar al-Islam was founded. (§) It is not clear whether Zarqawi was himself present in Iraq at the time.
Jeffrey Goldberg reported in the New Yorker of 10 February 2003 that
Zarqawi is believed by European intelligence agencies to be Al Qaeda’s main specialist in chemical and biological terrorism. Zarqawi is also believed to be behind the assassination, on October 28th [2002], of an American A.I.D. official in Jordan.…
(**) Zarqawi’s chemical and biological warfare (CBW) expertise must be considered in light of the WMD justification for going to war with Saddam’s regime.
In any case, by the time of Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan subsequent to 9/11, Zarqawi had made his way to Afghanistan, and there he was wounded. (††) Having limped to Iraq, Zarqawi sought safe haven and medical treatment in a country supposedly hostile to Al Qaeda, Iraq. He received both courtesy of Saddam Hussein.
As the Christian Science Monitor reported on 15 March 2002,
The group – Ansar al-Islam – emerged just days before the Sept. 11 attacks on the US. It delivered a fatwa, or manifesto, to the citizens in mountain villages against “the blasphemous secularist, political, social, and cultural” society there, according to Kurdish party leaders.
Since, Ansar al-Islam has nearly doubled in size to 700, including Iraqis, Jordanians, Moroccans, Palestinians, and Afghans – a composition similar to the multinational Al Qaeda network. Villagers here claim it has ransacked and razed beauty salons, burned schools for girls, and murdered women in the streets for refusing to wear the burqa. It has seized a Taliban-style enclave of 4,000 civilians and several villages near the Iran border.
(‡‡) The article also points out that one of the members of Ansar al-Islam is “Mula Kreker,” also spelled “Mullah Krekar.”
Since Operation Iraqi Freedom and the liberation of the Ansar al-Islam controlled areas in Iraq, the ordinary people of the region are able to look back at their time living under the Taliban-style rule of the Al Qaeda-linked terrorist group, as reported by the Christian Science Monitor on 12 September 2003.
“CDs were banned, music and songs were forbidden, picnics were banned, and you couldn’t play backgammon in the tea shops,” Mr. [Sangar] Mansour says. “We weren’t allowed to wear shorts to play soccer, and whenever they called for prayers, guards visited each house with an adult. Those who failed to go, they beat him hard.”
Iraqis here say they were shocked by the uncompromising views imposed by Ansar - a Wahhabi, and more radical Salafi, view shared mostly by the Taliban in Afghanistan, among some adherents from Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and the Persian Gulf, and by Al Qaeda.
“I know Islam, but they created very difficult choices for people,” says Mansour, noting that he knew of 85 young men who lived for a time in hotels outside Biyara, to escape the restrictions. “This is totally unique. This behavior told us that they must be something else.”
The aforementioned Mullah Krekar currently enjoys freedom in Norway. It was in Norway where Krekar met with Jamal Zougam “several times” according to Jean-Charles Brisard, a French lawyer. (***)
As it turns out, Zougam just happens to be a suspect in the Madrid train bombings. (†††) This constitutes another strand of evidence tying Ansar al-Islam to global terrorism. (‡‡‡)
Strangely enough, the discoveries of ricin (a lethal toxin) in the possession of terrorists in Europe in early 2003 occurred shortly after Zarqawi had paid the boys in Europe a visit. (§§§) The US tried to tell Europe that the ricin was tied to Zarqawi. (****) Europe was skeptical, however, saying the ricin looked “homemade.” (††††) Europe apparently didn’t think to ask who could have trained the terrorists in the making of deadly ricin.
The stump-legged Zarqawi (‡‡‡‡) has left his bloody fingerprints in many countries. (§§§§)
A seven-pound block of cyanide was recently found in a safe house in Iraq used by Zarqawi. (*****)
If Zarqawi’s letter to senior Al Qaeda leaders (†††††) is truthful, though, the efforts of coalition forces in Iraq is beating back Ansar al-Islam and the other networks Zarqawi runs.
There is no question that Ansar al-Islam is the Al Qaeda branch in Iraq, that it is fighting coalition forces, and that it is carrying out attacks against other countries, including Spain, for strategic purposes.