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IRBIL,
Iraq -- The group that claimed responsibility for
Tuesday's attack on a U.S. military base in Mosul is
an offshoot of a Kurdish militant group that
pioneered the use of suicide bombings in Iraq,
Kurd.ish security officials say.
Ansar al-Sunna took credit for the apparent suicide
bombing inside a dining tent on the U.S. base, which
killed 22 people including 14 American service
members. The group has absorbed members and leaders
from Ansar al-Islam, a militant organization that
fought a two-year civil war aimed at toppling
secular parties that rule the autonomous Kurdish
region in northern Iraq.
In 2001, Ansar al-Islam was the first group to
dispatch suicide bombers in Iraq during its battle
with other Kurdish factions. Ansar al-Islam
("Partisans of Islam") moved its operations to Mosul
after it was driven out of a remote, mountainous
part of northern Iraq by U.S. bombardment last year.
Kurdish officials say the group, which once had
about 700 members, has provided scores of recruits
for suicide attacks since the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
"During the war, many Ansar al-Islam members fled
from Iraq. They returned after the war, and they
split into several factions," said Dana Ahmad Majid,
head of security for the Patriotic Union of
Kurdistan, one of two parties that control the
autonomous Kurdish region. "There were some
ideological splits, and there was also a decision by
some of the leadership to create other groups."
Ansar al-Islam members splintered into small cells
and began working with Jordanian militant Abu Musab
al-Zarqawi, according to Majid and other Kurdish
officials. Some Ansar members gravitated toward two
groups with strong ties to al-Zarqawi: Tawhid wa
Jihad ("Monotheism and Holy War") and Ansar al-Sunna
("Partisans of the Right.eous Path").
"There are no defined boundaries between many of
these militant groups," said Sadi Ahmed Pire, head
of security operations in Mosul for the Patriotic
Union of Kurdistan. "People move between different
groups at different times."
Some Kurdish officials theorize that the leaders of
Ansar al-Islam effectively renamed the group Ansar
al-Sunna in order to shed its Kurdish identity and
attract Sunni Arabs into its ranks. The Sunna is the
collection of sayings and traditions of the Prophet
Muhammad, and most Sunni militants regard it as the
only other source of Islamic guidance besides the
Quran.
Ansar al-Sunna declared its existence on Sept. 20,
2003, by issuing a statement on an Islamist Web
site. "Jihad in Iraq has become an individual duty
of every Muslim after the infidel enemy attacked the
land of Islam," the group said in its founding
declaration.
A Kurdish intelligence official said Ansar al-Sunna
quickly began to draw Sunni Arabs from Iraq and
other Sunni fighters from neighboring Arab
countries. "They repackaged the message of Ansar
al-Islam as a pan-Islamic and pan-Arab movement,"
said the official, who spoke on the condition of
anonymity.
In a videotape circulated on the Internet, the group
presented seven young men who it described as
volunteers for suicide attacks. Six spoke Arabic
with a different accent than Iraqis, suggesting that
they were foreign jihadists. The seventh appeared to
be an Iraqi Kurd.
In a sign of how difficult it is to track Islamic
militant groups, Kurdish officials disagree on
exactly who is leading Ansar al-Sunna. Pire said the
group is led by Mahdi Al-Humaira, a Sunni Arab from
Mosul, and Sheik Abdullah Shafi, a Kurd and a former
leader of Ansar al-Islam. Between 2001 and 2003,
Shafi helped recruit and train more than 20 suicide
bombers for Ansar al-Islam, according to Kurdish
officials who have interrogated prisoners from the
group.
But the intelligence official, who is from the
Kurdistan Democratic Party, said Ansar al-Sunna is
led by Abu Abdullah bin Mahmoud, a Jordanian with
ties to al-Zarqawi. Bin Mahmoud has signed several
statements as the group's "emir," or prince.
Ansar al-Sunna claimed responsibility for twin
suicide bombings on Feb. 1 in Irbil, the capital of
Iraq's Kurdish region. The attacks killed 105 people
and injured 130 others. The bombings targeted
offices of the two major Kurdish parties, and
several of those killed were senior Kurdish leaders.
But some Kurdish security officials blamed Ansar
al-Islam for the Irbil attacks.
Over the past year, Ansar al-Sunna has claimed
responsibility for several suicide bombings,
beheadings, assassinations and kidnappings
throughout central and northern Iraq. One of its
most gruesome acts was the videotaped execution of
12 Nepalese hostages in August.
Ansar al-Islam was the most violent offshoot of an
Islamist movement that has a long history in Kurdish
politics. The largest group, the Islamic Movement in
Kurdistan, has renounced violence and is
participating in the Kurdish self-government led by
secular parties. Kurdish Islamists were inspired by
the 1979 Islamic Revolution in neighboring Iran,
even though most Kurds belong to the Sunni branch of
Islam while the majority of Iranians are Shia
Muslims. Militant Islam received another local boost
in 1988, when Saddam Hussein's regime, with chemical
weapons, killed 5,000 Kurds in the city of Halabjah.
The Islamists exploited the chemical attacks and the
poverty that followed the 1991 Gulf War.
The Kurdish Islamist parties adhere to Salafism, an
austere brand of Sunni Islam that was relatively
unknown in Iraqi Kurdistan until about two decades
ago. It arrived from Saudi Arabia, through Kurds'
exposure to Saudi fighters in Afghanistan and
through Saudi financial backing of charitable
activities in northern Iraq after the area was
opened up in the early 1990s. Most Kurds, by
contrast, are Shafiite Sunnis, a branch with a far
less stern interpretation of Islam. The majority of
Kurds display few signs of deep religious devotion.
Copyright © 2004, Newsday, Inc.
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