At least
fourteen American troops and several others were killed
on Tuesday in an attack on an improvised dining hall of
a US military base at Mosul in northern Iraq. An
organization called Jaish Ansar al-Sunnah (JAAS) has
claimed responsibility for the attack.
While
JAAS has projected the attack as a suicide bombing,
thereby giving the impression that it has been able to
penetrate the US military base, local US Army spokesmen
have described it as a mortar attack, similar to the
mortar attacks on the Green Zone in Baghdad, which one
witnesses frequently.
JAAS, which came to notice
for the first time in February after a major terrorist
strike in the Kurdish areas, has claimed responsibility
for many killings of kidnapped hostages, including 12
Nepalis, and a number of daring attacks - not only in
and around Mosul, but also in different areas of the
Sunni triangle. The incidents outside Mosul show that it
has a wide reach in the Sunni-majority areas of Iraq.
It advocates hardline fundamentalism, similar to
that of the Afghan Taliban. It describes its objectives
as not only the defeat of the US-led occupation troops
and the liberation of Iraq from their subjugation, but
also the establishment of orthodox Islamic rule in Iraq
after its liberation. It says that those Iraqis who had
willingly sacrificed their lives in the jihad against
the occupiers would have died in vain if a secular
government was to be restored in Iraq after the defeat
of the occupying forces.
A statement of December
6 attributed to JAAS said:
It is known that jihad in Iraq has become
the obligatory required duty of every Muslim after the
infidel enemy fell upon the land of Islam. It was the
followers of the Prophet's Sunnah and Jammah, the
people of unification and following of ancestors, who
raised the blessed banner of jihad and acted in
groups, each in their area but spontaneously,
receiving the directions and orders for their jihad
from the Book of Allah and the Sunnah of His Noble
Prophet. They included clerics, sheikhs, and military
fighters.
The task is great and the situation
is momentous. It concerns the nation's fate and does
not terminate by the end of the occupation. The aim
does not end with their defeat, but with the upholding
of Allah's religion and the application of the Sharia
of Allah to rule this Islamic land. What is the use of
shedding Muslim mujahideens' blood to throw out the
forces of occupation if, after that, the fruits are
enjoyed by a secular Iraqi or a puppet agent of the
Americans working to fulfill their plans and programs?
Then, we return to the control of a puppet government
that rules with the laws of infidels in the name of
Islam and is, in fact, controlled by the Jews and the
Christians.
A faithful does not get bitten
twice. Because of this, a group of resistance fighters
and knowledgeable people, who have the political and
military savvy and who have the record in managing the
Islamic struggle against the enemies of Islam, have
brought together a number of divided groups and
platoons of resistance that operated in the field from
the north to the south to make up a huge army that
comes under a unified command. A command that will
establish a locally devised unimported practical plan
based on their knowledge of the battlefield and on the
basis of the Sharia in the Koran and the Sunnah. We
called it the Ansar al-Sunnah Army. We call on our
brethren in faith and jihad to come together under the
banner of this army to fulfill the hope of an Islamic
nation that honors Islam and Muslims. Allah's hand is
with the group; the devil is in the company of the
single. The wolf attacks the straggler
sheep.
Its projection of itself as "a group
of resistance fighters and knowledgeable people, who
have the political and military savvy and who have the
record in managing the Islamic struggle against the
enemies of Islam", is significant. This seeks to show
that it is a mixed group of local resistance fighters
and others who had participated in jihad elsewhere.
However, it also projects itself as an indigenous
organization carrying out a jihad against the occupation
troops on the basis of a "locally devised unimported
practical plan".
JAAS's statements generally
refer to one Abu-Abdullah al-Hassan bin-Mahmud as its
Amir. Not much is known about him except that he is an
Arab who used to be a member of the Ansar al-Islam
(Defenders of Islam) until October last year. It is said
that after he broke away from the organization he formed
JAAS. The reasons for the split are not known.
Before their invasion of Iraq last year, the
Americans, without credible evidence, had projected
Ansar al-Islam, an anti-US group operating in the
Kurdish areas of Iraq, as the local branch of al-Qaeda.
Some reports also projected it as being aided by Iran,
again without any credible evidence.
On February
1, 105 persons were killed when an Arab and a Kurd
carried out simultaneous twin suicide bombings directed
respectively at the offices of the Patriotic Union of
Kurdistan (PUK) and the Kurdistan Democratic Party, both
in the Kurdish city of Arbil. This was the terrorist
strike for which the Ansar al-Sunnah had first claimed
responsibility. Hawlani, a Kurdish newspaper, had
identified at that time Abu-Abdullah al-Hassan
bin-Mahmud as the Amir of the organization.
This
is apparently his assumed name; his real name is not
known. The newspaper described him as the brother of one
Abdullah al-Shami, an Ansar al-Islam leader, who,
according to it, was killed last year while fighting
against the PUK near the Iranian border. Kurdish sources
describe bin-Mahmud as a Jordanian, like the infamous
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and not an Iraqi Arab, and as a
close associate of Osama bin Laden. He is assisted by
one Abdullah Shafi, who is also projected by Kurdish
sources as an al-Qaeda operative, who had lived for some
time in Afghanistan.
After February, the
following are some of the strikes for which JAAS has
claimed responsibility:
December 5: Machine-gun attack in Tikrit, killing 17
Iraqi civilians working for the US military.
December 1: Kidnapping and killing of three Iraqis
working for the US Marine Corps.
November 25: A mortar attack on Baghdad's Green Zone
that killed four Gurkha security guards and 12 others.
November 20: The killing of two hostages identified
as members of a Kurdish political group in Mosul.
November 4: Beheading of a captured major of the new
Iraqi army raised by the Americans.
October 28: Kidnapping and killing of 11 Iraqi
soldiers south of Baghdad.
October 18: Killing of nine Iraqi policemen
returning after training in Jordan.
August 31: Kidnapping and killing of 12 Nepalese
construction workers.
According to knowledgeable
Iraqi sources, after the defeat of Iraq in the first
Gulf War of 1991, a group of fundamentalist Sunni
clerics had tried to organize a Salafi movement in Iraq
for the overthrow of Saddam Hussain's Ba'athist regime
with the aim of setting up an Islamic state. On coming
to know of it, Saddam crushed their movement and jailed
some leaders, while others managed to escape to Jordan,
Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Afghanistan. Among the
leaders of this Salafi movement were Omar Hussein Hadid,
reportedly a former electrician turned mullah; Sheikh
Abdullah al-Janabi; Sheikh Zafir al-Ubaidi; Moyaed Ahmed
Yasseen, reportedly arrested by the Iraqi army on
November 14; and Abu-Abdullah al-Hassan bin-Mahmud.
These sources claim these Salafi elements are in the
forefront of the anti-US insurgency.
B
Raman is additional secretary (retired), Cabinet
Secretariat, government of India, New Delhi, and
currently director, Institute for Topical Studies,
Chennai, and distinguished fellow and convenor, Observer
Research Foundation (ORF), Chennai Chapter. E-mailcorde@vsnl.com.
