Word: ansar
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...explosion, everyone from top Administration officials to Pentagon brass to the cottage industry of experts on terrorism to coffeehouse and bazaar gossips in Baghdad itself offered opinions on the perpetrators. It was Baathists; or members of Fedayeen Saddam; or the U.N.'s own security guards; or remnants of Ansar al-Islam, a terrorist group supposedly routed in the war; or al-Qaeda; or foreign jihadists who have flocked to Iraq; or a noxious combination of all the above. Treat every such opinion as if it carried a health warning. The plain truth is that nobody knows who is responsible...
...suicide attack (though even that is not absolutely certain), which could be telling. Baath Party and Fedayeen Saddam guerrillas have not used suicide bombs before. "It's not part of the Iraqi culture, military or political," says Mohammed Abdullah Shahwani, a retired general of the Iraqi special forces. But Ansar al-Islam, which was driven from its base at the northeastern border with Iran during the war, used suicide attacks last spring near Halabja, and an Iraqi intelligence officer working with the CIA says, "Our feeling is that Ansar are the most likely ones, even if it was financed...
...since the fall of Saddam's regime. Though senior intelligence officials say they don't yet know who was behind the blast, Lieut. General Ricardo Sanchez, commander of allied forces in Iraq, declared it the work of terrorists. A senior intelligence official tells TIME that among the suspects is Ansar al-Islam, a group of Islamist fighters--Iraqi Kurds and Arabs--with suspected links to al-Qaeda. "They could be among those possibly involved," the official says...
...change in tactics is unclear; U.S. commanders say they have reports of foreign terrorists entering the country, but this assault may turn out to be homegrown. Still, the deployment of car bombs, or that most sanguine of weapons the suicide bomber, as was used by the terrorists of Ansar al Islam in northern Iraq earlier this year, could be the next step in the campaign against U.S. forces. "I think that what this shows is we've got some terrorists operating here, " says Coalition commander Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez. "It shows that we're still in a conflict zone...
...Wolfowitz warned, the evidence is murky: Zarqawi had been in Baghdad, but his relationship with bin Laden is in dispute - European interrogations of some of his subordinates suggest he was running a rival group. Ansar al-Islam certainly had links to al-Qaeda, but there is little to suggest that the group, which operated in the northeast of the country where the allied no-fly zone prevented Saddam from exercising control, had any links with Baghdad. And the reports of the meetings between Iraq and al-Qaeda also suggest that bin Laden had declined to pursue a relationship with...