Terrorists Were in Iraq Well Prior to the War

There are some who say the US is to blame for the current insurgency and terrorist activity in Iraq. They say the terrorists suddenly showed up in response to our "aggression". Those assertions are blatantly false. To those who blame U.S. intervention in Iraq for the terrorist violence, I would like to point out a group of Islamic terrorists who were terrorizing Iraq well before the war: they are called Ansar Al Islam There are indications that Ansar Al-Islam is one of the best organized and most formidable terrorist organizations operating in Iraq.

We know Ansar Al-Islam is a terrorist organization, not a benevolent group of guys trying to peacefully practice their religion. A few points need to be made:

The Human Rights Watch organization recognized Ansar Al-Islam as a perpetrators of evil deeds:

Ansar al-Islam came together as a group in September 2001, initially under the name of Jund al-Islam (Soldiers of Islam), but its constituent factions have existed for several years. Espousing an ultra-orthodox Islamic ideology reminiscent of Wahhabism, the group's leaders issued decrees imposing their strict interpretation of Islam on the local inhabitants and introducing harsh punishments for those who failed to comply with their decrees. Since its establishment, the group's armed fighters have engaged in intermittent clashes with the forces of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), in whose stronghold Biyara and Tawela are located.

During a mission to Iraqi Kurdistan in September 2002, Human Rights Watch investigated reports of human rights abuses perpetrated by members of Ansar al-Islam in areas under their control. These reports suggested that Ansar al-Islam had been responsible for arbitrary arrests of numerous Kurdish civilians, prolonged and illegal detention, the torture and ill-treatment of detainees, and the killing of combatants after surrender. In Sulaimaniya and Halabja Human Rights Watch interviewed a number of people who said they had been targeted by Ansar al-Islam or had fled for fear of further abuse. Among them were victims of torture, the relatives of detainees, and internally displaced persons.

Former detainees also described the routine use of torture and other forms of ill-treatment during interrogation. In one case, a former policeman employed by the PUK administration had acid poured onto his hands on the day of his release. He gave Human Rights Watch photographs taken shortly after his release of the burn marks on his skin. The scars from the burns were visible to the interviewer. He had been abducted from Halabja on March 11, 2001 by one of the factions that later formed Jund al-Islam and held for three days. During those three days he was beaten and forced to lie down in the snow overnight while semi-clad. In another case, a school teacher from Tawela was arrested on August 24, 2002 and held for five days. The teacher told Human Rights Watch that he had been beaten so badly on his back that he was unable to lie down for three weeks following his release. He showed Human Rights Watch photographs of the injuries he had sustained.(http://www.hrw.org/backgrounder/mena/ansarbk020503.htm)

Ansar Al Islam is an exporter of terrorism/Jihad. There are numerous references available discussing their involvement in terrorism outside of Iraq.

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. (http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GA15Ak02.html)

Ansar Al Islam is not exclusively Kurdish. The myth that the Iraqi insurgency is made up of a bunch of righteous, freedom-fighting Iraqis is a blatant falsehood. Human Rights Watch reported:

PUK officials have repeatedly accused Ansar al-Islam of having links with Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network, and that its members included Arabs of various nationalities who had received military training in Afghanistan. The PUK also said some fifty-seven "Arab Afghan" fighters had entered Iraqi Kurdistan via Iran in mid-September 2001. While Human Rights Watch did not investigate these alleged links, the testimonies of villagers who had fled Biyara and Tawela and were interviewed in September 2002 appeared to support this contention. A number of them, including former detainees, said that there were foreigners among Ansar al-Islam forces, that on occasion they were interrogated by non-Iraqis speaking various Arabic dialects, and that they had heard other languages spoken that they did not recognize.
(http://www.hrw.org/backgrounder/mena/ansarbk020503.htm)

Other reports estimate that there were hundreds of "foreign" mujahedin in Iraq well prior to the war.

Ansar Al Islam is intimately associated with Al Qaeda.

Human Rights Watch reported:

There are also other indications of possible Ansar al-Islam connections with al-Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan. Documents discovered in an al-Qaeda guest house in Afghanistan by the New York Times discuss the creation of an "Iraqi Kurdistan Islamic Brigade" just weeks prior to the formation of Ansar al-Islam in December 2001, and some Ansar al-Islam members in PUK custody have described in credible detail training in al-Qa'ida camps in Afghanistan. The existence of any ongoing links between al-Qa'ida and Ansar al-Islam is unknown.
(http://www.hrw.org/backgrounder/mena/ansarbk020503.htm)

Ansar Al Islam is associated with Iran. This is particularly important to note because of Iran's recent public comments about Israel, and their potential nuclear weapons capability. Additionally, I believe if we find Osama, he will be found in Iran (just a guess).

Human Rights Watch reported:

[T]he location of the group's bases very close to the Iranian border, taken together with credible reports of the return of some Ansar al-Islam fighters to Iraqi Kurdistan through Iran, suggest that these fighters have received at least limited support from some Iranian sources. Villagers living under Ansar al-Islam control, and mainstream Islamists who have visited those areas, reported to Human Rights Watch that Iranian agents had been present on occasion. However, the exact nature of relations between the two sides is unclear: PUK and other sources acknowledged that Iran had played a mediating role aimed at ending the clashes between PUK and Ansar al-Islam forces.

Ansar Al Islam is intimately associated with Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi. Zarqawi is well known for claiming credit for brutally killing Nicholas Berg and openly swearly his allegiance to Osama Bin Laden. He was originally known for conducting the assassination of Laurence Foley. Foley's assassination made the need to destroy Zarqawi very personal.

Laurence Foley was a senior U.S. diplomat working for the U.S. Agency for International Development in Jordan. On October 28, 2002, he was assassinated outside his home in Amman. Under harsh interrogation by Jordanian authorities, three suspects confessed that they had been armed and paid by Zarqawi to perform the assassination. U.S. officials believe that the planning and execution of the Foley assassination was led by members of Afghan Jihad, the International Mujaheddin Movement, and al-Qaida. One of the leaders, Salim Sa'd Salim Bin-Suwayd, was paid over USD $50 thousand for his work in planning assassinations in Jordan against U.S., Israeli, and Jordanian government officials. Suwayd was arrested in Jordan for the murder of Foley. Zarqawi was again sentenced in absentia in Jordan; this time, as before, his sentence was death. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Musab_al-Zarqawi)

We know clearly that Zarqawi has Al-Qaeda connections. We know he is associated with an indigenous Iraqi terrorist group. We know he was welcomed in Iraq and was given aid and comfort by Saddam Hussein. We know all of these things occurred prior to the invasion of Iraq. Can we then assume there is something more than a "tentative" connection between all the entities?

Ansar Al-Islam had connections to Saddam Hussein's government. In the
article: Saddam's Ambassador to al Qaeda from the March 1, 2004 issue of the Weekly Standard: An Iraqi prisoner details Saddam's links to Osama bin Laden's terror network by Jonathan Schanzer 03/01/2004, Volume 009, Issue 24 he talked about a man called Abu Wael.

In the course of my research, several sources had claimed that Abu Wael was on Saddam's payroll and was also an al Qaeda operative, but few had any facts to back up their claim. For example, one Arabic daily, al-Sharq al-Awsat, stated flatly before the Iraq war, "all information indicates [that Abu Wael] was the link between al Qaeda and the Iraqi regime" but neglected to provide any such information. Agence France-Presse after the war cited a Kurdish security chief's description of Abu Wael as a "key link to Saddam's former Baath regime" and an "intelligence agent for the ousted president originally from Baghdad." Again, nothing was provided to substantiate this claim.

In my own analysis of this group [Ansar Al Islam], I could do little but weakly assert that Wael was "reportedly an al Qaeda operative on Saddam's payroll." The best reporting on Wael came from a March 2002 New Yorker article by Jeffrey Goldberg, who had visited a Kurdish prison in northern Iraq and interviewed Ansar prisoners. He spoke with one Iraqi intelligence officer named Qassem Hussein Muhammed, whom Kurdish intelligence captured while he was on his way to the Ansar enclave. Muhammed told Goldberg that Abu Wael was "the actual decision-maker" for Ansar al Islam and "an employee of the Mukhabarat [Iraqi Intelligence Service]."

"Do you know this man?" I asked al-Shamari. His eyes widened and he smiled. He told me that he knew the man in the picture, but that his graying beard was now completely white. He said that the man was Abu Wael, whose full name is Colonel Saadan Mahmoud Abdul Latif al-Aani. The prisoner told me that he had worked for Abu Wael, who was the leader of a special intelligence directorate in the Mukhabarat. That directorate provided assistance to Ansar al Islam at the behest of Saddam Hussein, whom Abu Wael had met "four or five times." Al-Shamari added that "Abu Wael's wife is Izzat al-Douri's cousin," making him a part of Saddam's inner circle. Al-Douri, of course, was the deputy chairman of Saddam's Revolutionary Command Council, a high-ranking official in Iraq's armed forces, and Saddam's righthand man. Originally number six on the most wanted list, he is still believed to be at large in Iraq, and is suspected of coordinating aspects of insurgency against American troops, primarily in the Sunni triangle.

Why, I asked, would Saddam task one of his intelligence agents to work with the Kurds, an ethnic group that was an avowed enemy of the Baath regime, and had clashed with Iraqi forces on several occasions? Al-Shamari said that Saddam wanted to create chaos in the pro-American Kurdish region. In other words, he used Ansar al Islam as a tool against the Kurds. As an intelligence official for the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (one of the two major parties in northern Iraq) explained to me, "Most of the Kurdish fighters in Ansar al Islam didn't know the link to Saddam." They believed they were fighting a local jihad. Only the high-level lieutenants were aware that Abu Wael was involved.

Al-Shamari also told me that the links between Saddam's regime and the al Qaeda network went beyond Ansar al Islam. He explained in considerable detail that Saddam actually ordered Abu Wael to organize foreign fighters from outside Iraq to join Ansar. Al-Shamari estimated that some 150 foreign fighters were imported from al Qaeda clusters in Jordan, Turkey, Syria, Yemen, Egypt, and Lebanon to fight with Ansar al Islam's Kurdish fighters. (http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/003/768rwsbj.asp?pg=1)

Other reporting also backs up the assertion that both Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein actively supported Ansar Al Islam in their terrorist mission after the 9/11 attacks and before the war. In the Christian Science Monitor

Catherine Taylor conducted interviews in northern Iraq prior to the war.

"We have captured two of [Ansar's] bases and found the walls covered with poems and graffiti praising bin Laden and the Sept. 11 attacks on the US," says Mustapha Saed Qada, a PUK commander. "In one, there is a picture of the twin towers with a drawing of bin Laden standing on the top holding a Kalashnikov rifle in one hand and a knife in the other." He adds that the group has received $600,000 from the bin Laden network, and a delivery of weapons and Toyota landcruisers.

Commander Qada also claims that Ansar al-Islam has ties to agents of Saddam Hussein operating in northern Iraq. "We have picked up conversations on our radios between Iraqis and [Ansar] al-Islam," he says from his military base in Halabja. "I believe that Iraq is also funding [Ansar] al-Islam. There are no hard facts as yet, but I believe that under the table they are supporting them because it will cause further instability for the Kurds."

Barhim Salih, a PUK leader, says a second group affiliated with Ansar al-Islam is working from the Baghdad-controlled city of Mosul.
The Kurdish sources say Hussein's involvement in any mission to destabilize their autonomous ministate would not surprise them. Since 1991, Baghdad has been unable to control the north, because of the no-fly zone created by the US and England and enforced by the US military from a base in Turkey. (http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0315/p01s04-wome.html)

We must not underestimate the strength and complexity of the fundamentalist Muslim terrorist networks in Iraq, nor should we deceive ourselves into believing that US intervention in Iraq was the cause of Islamic terrorism there.

Do you own research and you will find information that will lead any reasonable, logical thinker to see the Saddam Hussein/Al Qaeda nexus. Perhaps it existed for Saddam's desire to control the Kurds more than it did to attack the US, but nonetheless it existed. Saddam surely adhered to the adage, "An enemy of my enemy is a friend of mine."

It is clear that hundreds of non-Iraqi, Islamic fundamentalists affiliated with Al-Qaeda were already in Iraq before the invasion. President Bush gave his word that those who conduct or support terrorist acts would be dealt with accordingly. I believe he kept his word as any real man should.