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| Axis of Evil |
| Latest on Ansar al-Islam... |
| 2002-12-23 |
| For more than a year about 600 fighters of Ansar al-Islam have faced a Kurdish peshmerga force of 5,000, from the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, lobbing mortar shells at their positions, mounting ambushes and sending terrorist cells into Kurdish cities. In the past week the fighting has intensified with reports of 100 people on both sides being killed. Some accounts suggested dozens of peshmerga fighters were killed in one battle and that when they tried to take an Ansar al-Islam fighter prisoner he blew himself up. According to the PUK, one of the two dominant Kurdish political parties, Ansar al-Islam is supplied with weapons and money by the Iraqi Mukhabarat, Saddam's intelligence service, to destabilise the region. A Mukhabarat agent called Abu Wa-il is said to be among the group. This is confirmed by Abu Iman al-Baghdadi, an ex-Mukhabarat officer now in jail. If true, it means Ansar al-Islam could have a wider global aspect because al-Baghdadi says Saddam sent Abu Wa'il to Afghanistan in 1995 where he formed links with al-Qa'eda. Al-Baghdadi said he knew this because he was in the bodyguard of Saddam's son-in law at the time and had been in a training camp with some of the agents they sent to Afghanistan. "Saddam sent agents to Afghanistan to al-Qa'eda," said al Bahgdadi. "But they had their own agenda and orders from Baghdad." The peshmerga commander of the area, Sheikh Jafar Mustapha, says Ansar al-Islam has killed 130 of his men and 20 local villagers have died in crossfire or by stepping on scattered land mines. A year ago the peshmerga fighters tried to drive the group out of their mountain strongholds but the Islamists massacred 42 of them by slitting their throats. Mustapha said: "Usually they don't shoot people; they like to use swords and knives. When they capture one of our peshmergas they cut him into pieces." The original leader of Ansar al-Islam, Mullah Krekar, is in jail in Holland and the PUK said the group is now led by Abu Abdullah Ashafi, a low-born Kurd who joined the Iraqi army in the 1980s before turning to Islam and spending four years in Afghanistan. Dug into caves in the mountains, as many as 40 of Ansar al-Islam's fighters are Arabs, Iraqis and others washed up from the Afghan melee. According to the Kurdish newspaper Hawlati, Ansar al-Islam's leader, Abu Abdallah al-Shafei, was killed in the recent fighting with the PUK but there was no confirmation of the report. The group's profile seems to be that of a band of itinerant guerillas, fighting their own ideological battles for Islam aided by other groups. There are some suggestions that Ansar al-Islam, who operate right on the Iranian border, are supplied through Iran, with Iranian complicity. But in general the Iranian relationship with the Kurdish parties remains cordial - the Iranian-Kurdish border is much more porous than borders with Turkey and Syria and in September they were instrumental in seeing Mullah Krekar caught in Holland. The old enemies, Iraq and Iran, are on paper strange co-conspirators, but Iran, like Turkey and Syria, remains extremely wary of a strong Kurdish state bordering its own Kurdish populations. The KDP tends to play down PUK's claims that Ansar al-Islam has links to bin Laden. One senior official of the Democratic Party of Kurdistan or KDP, said: "There are links with al-Qa'eda but I cannot say that Ansar receives orders from al-Qa'eda." They suspect the connection has been manufactured to encourage American help and involvement. The Americans have conspicuously stayed away. A Mukhabarat captain arrested by the KDP for overseeing a sabotage campaign in Erbil that saw several bombs aimed at civilian and UN targets as well as assassination attempts, said the Mukhabarat supplied Ansar al-Islam. "They co-operated now and then but secretly," he said. "But Ansar does not always carry out the operations the Muk asks them to. Sometimes they take the money and do not deliver." Ansar is a curious beast. It's tucked away in the hills of Kurdistan, and doesn't seem to have any strategic value for al-Qaeda, but it's obviously an al-Qaeda creation. At one point, it was under the direct control of Abu Zubaydah. At the same time, Iraq's Mukhabarat seems to have been involved in its birthing, though I suspect it's turning into a Frankenstein's monster for them. It wouldn't be the first time that one of Sammy's miscalculations has turned around and gnawed him in the tenders. But I can't see any point to it at all, except to torment the Kurds, which would seem to make Sammy the ultimate driver. |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |