Word: ansar
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...government of Iraq, it's hard to imagine such a unit operating under Saddam's iron-fisted regime without official acquiescence. Al-Zarqawi's alleged poisons camp, however, is located in northern Iraq, which is under Kurdish rule, not Saddam's control. After Powell's speech, officials of Ansar al-Islam, a militant Kurdish group that includes veterans of al-Qaeda camps, escorted journalists to a ramshackle dirt encampment in the village of Serget whose layout appeared to match Powell's satellite photo. Reporters were allowed to wander freely and found only living quarters and a radio station. But Fareed...
...need to brandish some terrific intelligence to prove there are solid lines--and not just dots--between Saddam and terrorists. A knowledgeable intelligence official says whether Powell can provide sure-shot evidence lies "in the remains-to-be-seen category." Some officials say what they've glimpsed of the Ansar info tends to look convincing only to those predisposed to believe it. Says an intelligence official: "If they're trying to compel people, that's not the place I'd rest my argument." Some in Congress say it will take more than the one-time visit to Baghdad...
Until Sept. 11, 2001, the radical Islamic group Ansar al-Islam was considered a local problem. Based in the Kurdish controlled areas of northern Iraq, with a membership of militant fundamentalists determined to impose Islamic rule, the group raised its profile three years ago by blowing up beauty parlors and sloshing acid in the faces of unveiled Kurdish women. Ansar, like Saddam Hussein, is arrayed against the separatist Kurds of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and the Kurdestan Democratic Party (KDP), whose ragtag forces lie between it and Baghdad. Ansar hates all infidels, but mainly the ones...
...group is being touted by Bush Administration officials as a critical link between Saddam and al-Qaeda. Ansar has roughly 500 to 700 members, including several dozen so-called Arab Afghans, ethnic Arabs who trained in alQaeda camps in Afghanistan and fled to Ansar's enclave in Iraq after the fall of the Taliban. Kurds who have escaped the area say the group has set up a Taliban-like regime, under which women are veiled and Islamic law is h* Aonored--or else. According to a former Iraqi intelligence agent imprisoned by Kurdish authorities in northern Iraq, a member...
...group continues to pose a threat to the anti-Baghdad Kurds. Last year Ansar assailants attempted to assassinate the PUK's prime minister in Suleimaniya, leaving five bodyguards dead in a gun battle that coincided with a visit by U.S. officials. Interviewed in prison, the sole surviving attacker said he was working for the glory of Allah and later hanged himself with his black cotton belt. There are indications, however, that Ansar's strength may be waning. The Iranian government last November forced it to move back from the Iranian border, robbing the group of the cover of high mountains...