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Ansar al-Islam spreads its
wings
By Sudha Ramachandran
BANGALORE - Ansar al-Islam's battlefield
appears to be expanding. Until recently, this
Islamist extremist group was known mainly for its
violent attacks inside Iraq. Now indicators
suggest that it poses a growing threat to Europe
as well.
In early December, a plot to
assassinate Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi
during his visit to Berlin was unearthed. Three
Iraqis with suspected links to Ansar-al Islam were
taken into custody in Germany. A few months
earlier, Ansar al-Islam's hand was suspected in a
plot to attack a North Atlantic Treaty
Organization summit meeting in Istanbul.
The presence of Ansar al-Islam members in
Germany or elsewhere in Europe is not new. At
least 20 known supporters of Ansar al-Islam have
been rounded up in Germany alone over the past
year, and, according to German officials, about
100 Ansar al-Islam members are based in the
country. The group is believed to have recruited
volunteers in Italy and Britain. And its
founder/leader Mullah Krekar has lived as a
refugee in Norway since 1991.
According to
the US State Department, Ansar al-Islam is a
radical Islamist group comprising Iraqi Kurds and
Arabs who have vowed to establish an independent
Islamic state in northern Iraq. Ansar al-Islam
came together as a group, initially under the name
of Jund al-Islam (Soldiers of Islam) in September,
2001, a week before the attacks on the Pentagon
and the World Trade Center. Its constituent
groups, however, were active for several years
earlier in Iraqi Kurdistan. Jonathan Schanzer, a
specialist in radical Islamic movements at the
Washington Institute for Near East Policy, traces
the roots of Ansar al-Islam to the splintering of
the Islamic Movement of Kurdistan in the
mid-1990s.
The emergence of Islamist
organizations in Iraqi Kurdistan (Kurdish
nationalism has on the whole been secular) has
been attributed often to the 1979 Islamic
revolution in neighboring Iran. But this argument
overlooks the fact that this revolution fueled
Shi'ite, rather than Sunni, extremism worldwide.
Middle East analysts like Mahan Abedin attribute
the rise of Ansar al-Islam to the "local political
and economic dynamics" of the Kurdish areas of
Iraq. "After the ejection of Iraqi forces from
Iraqi Kurdistan in 1991, the two main Kurdish
factions, the Kurdish Democratic Party and the
Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, quickly established
their hegemony over much of that region," said
Abedin. But bitter rivalry and bloodletting
between them gave space for the rise of Islamist
organizations, especially radical ones like Ansar
al-Islam, he argues.
Ansar al-Islam's goal
is to transform Iraqi Kurdistan into an Islamic
state. According to Human Rights Watch, the group
enforced the veiling of women and made it
obligatory for men to have beards. It banned
music, called for segregation of the sexes and
barred women from education and employment. It
announced Islamic punishments of amputation,
flogging and stoning to death for offenses such as
theft, the consumption of alcohol and adultery.
Initially it directed its attacks against
the secular Kurdish groups and anyone who did not
fall in line with its Islamization agenda. Since
the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq, Ansar
al-Islam has been targeting the US-led coalition
and Iraq's US-backed interim government. It is
said to have carried out over 40 suicide bombings
in Iraq and some of the attacks it had a hand in
include the bombing of the Jordanian Embassy and
the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad, the
two suicide bombings in Irbil at offices of the
two main Kurdish political parties, the suicide
bombings of Shi'ite shrines in Baghdad and Karbala
and the recent attack on the US base in Mosul.
American officials maintain that Ansar
al-Islam is closely associated with al-Qaeda, that
its members trained in al-Qaeda camps in
Afghanistan, and that it continues to receive
funding, training, equipment, and combat support
from al-Qaeda. They say that Ansar al-Islam in
turn provided safe haven for al-Qaeda fighters
fleeing Afghanistan following the fall of the
Taliban regime there in late 2001. In the run-up
to its invasion of Iraq, the US accused former
Iraqi president Saddam Hussein of links with
al-Qaeda, a claim it could never substantiate.
Subsequently, it named Ansar al-Islam as the
"missing link" between the Iraqi government and
al-Qaeda.
While Ansar al-Islam's ties with
al-Qaeda might indeed be strong and growing, to
describe it as an al-Qaeda surrogate, as have
sections of the Western media, would be
overstating the link. For one, Ansar al-Islam
might have received seed money from al-Qaeda, but
its origin and formation had more to do with local
circumstances rather than with al-Qaeda's global
mission. And the deepening relationship is more of
a post-invasion phenomenon, with al-Qaeda seeing
an opportunity in Ansar al-Islam as well as the
chaotic situation in occupied Iraq to further its
agenda.
In September 2003, a hitherto
unknown group, Ansar al-Sunna - officially
declared its existence in a statement issued on
the Internet, claiming that it had evolved from
the coming together of Kurdish Ansar al-Islam
operatives, foreign al-Qaeda fighters and newly
mobilized Iraqi Sunnis. Kurdish newspaper Hawlati
traced the formation of the group to a split
within Ansar al-Islam a year earlier, but the core
of Ansar al-Sunna appears to consist of Ansar
al-Islam members, prompting some analysts to
describe Ansar al-Sunna as reflective of the
evolving Ansar al-Islam.
The composition
of Ansar al-Islam has changed significantly over
the years. Most of its suicide bombers who have
given pre-operation videos appear to be non-Iraqi
Arabs. While the goal of Ansar al-Islam in its
early incarnation was to achieve in Iraq "the
Muslims' hope of an Islamic country where Islam
and its people are strong", the organization
increasingly presents itself as a pan-Islamic
movement. Several of its fighters today are from
outside Iraq - Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria and even
Europe.
According to the New York Times,
Ansar al-Islam was among the groups that recruited
Muslims in Europe to fight in Iraq. They were
recruited through mosques, Muslim centers and
militant websites. The network of recruiters first
appeared in Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Italy
and Norway within months of the US-led invasion.
That recruitment effort has now spread to other
countries in Europe, including Belgium and
Switzerland. The network apparently provides
forged documents, financing, training and
information about infiltration routes into Iraq.
Italy is said to be an important link in
this network. Its thriving false-document industry
is apparently being put to good use by the
network. While in the past Italy was seen as an
essential stopover point for terrorists looking
for false documents, now this country is emerging
as a recruiting ground for the war in Iraq. The
attack on the UN headquarters in 2003 is said to
have been carried out by a suicide bomber from
Italy.
While the recruiting of fighters
from Europe has evoked unease in Western capitals,
what is causing mounting anxiety is the likely
return home of these fighters, with combat
experience in Iraq. In recent years, almost all
major militants arrested in Europe were those who
had fought in Chechnya, Afghanistan and Bosnia. On
returning home, these European fighters used their
combat experience acquired from these
battlegrounds to plot and carry out attacks in
Europe.
Now European governments fear that
battle-hardened fighters returning home from Iraq
will put their expertise to use on European soil.
The plot to assassinate Allawi in Berlin indicates
that such fears might not be misplaced.
Sudha Ramachandran is an
independent journalist/researcher based in
Bangalore.
(Copyright 2005 Asia Times
Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us
for information on sales, syndication and republishing.)
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