Al Qaeda's local Iraqi franchise is apparently behind the latest wave of suicide bombings and other terrorist attacks in Iraq. It's unfortunate we weren't able to take out more of them last year when the Ansar stronghold in northern Iraq was cleaned out -- maybe if the 4th Infantry Division had been allowed passage through Turkey there would have been sufficient forces to better seal off the area.
A terrorist group with ties to al-Qaida that escaped a U.S.-led attack in March has reconstituted itself and is involved in the recent wave of car bombings and other suicide attacks that have killed and wounded hundreds in Iraq, U.S. and Iraqi officials said.Posted by Alan at February 16, 2004 05:23 PMIn much the same way that Osama bin Laden escaped from a U.S.-led offensive in Afghanistan, some members of Ansar al Islam fled into Iran from their enclave in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq in March as U.S. and Kurdish troops closed in. Now they're returning to become a terrorist threat in postwar Iraq.
U.S. and Kurdish officials believe Ansar has regrouped in small Iranian towns near the border. Members have been quietly returning to Iraq singly and in pairs to train local Iraqis not only in the tactics of building bombs, but also in their extremist brand of Islam that advocates suicide bombings, the officials said.
The Kurdish officials said they based their assessment in large part on intercepted phone calls, interrogations of captured Ansar members and documents confiscated from detainees.
A high-ranking U.S. Army official in Baghdad, who spoke on the condition that his name not be used, confirmed that the U.S. military suspects that Ansar has been involved in bombings across Iraq, including one in August that killed more than 80 in the southern city of Najaf, and most of the recent suicide bombings in and around Baghdad. "We've seen elements of what we think are Ansar Islam throughout Iraq," he said.
The Ansar fighters have formed alliances of convenience with local Saddam Hussein loyalists, providing them with training and expertise in making improvised bombs and conducting guerrilla warfare, said Hikmat Mohammad Karim, a top Kurdish politician who goes by the name of Mullah Bakhtiar. In return, the Saddam loyalists provide safe houses, weapons and money.
Via the Houston Chronicle