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[Previous entry: "Bombing in Baghdad"] [Main Index] [Next entry: "The Norm of Humanity"] 20 August 2003: "The role of Ansar al-Islam revisited"
On 10-Aug-2003, the New York Times ran an article in which Paul Bremer, the administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq warned that hundreds of members of Ansar al-Islam had infiltrated back into Iraq from Iran, where they had fled after being dislodged by American special forces in March. Oliver Kamm has the goods on evidence of pre-war links between al-Qaida and the Baathist regime.I disagree. The baseline article most people are familiar with is "The Great Terror" by Jeffrey Goldberg, published in the New Yorker in March 2002 (particularly sections "The Prisoners" and "The Al Qaeda Link"). A few weeks later, the Christian Science Monitor ran "Iraqi funds, training fuel Islamic terror group" by Scott Peterson. These two articles set the tone for the bulk of subsequent allegations regarding Ansar al-Islam. The problem is that these allegations all, ultimately, stem from a single source: the political leadership of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). The PUK, led by Jalal Talabani, is the weaker of the two factions which have run the enclave of Iraqi Kurdistan since 1991, the other being the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) led by Massoud Barzani. The KDP controls the western part of the enclave, abutting Turkey, while the PUK controls the eastern part, which borders on Iran. The two leaders settled on a power-sharing agreement which culminated in Iraqi Kurdistan's first and only parliamentary election in 1992. However, this arrangement did not last. The KDP was skimming a percentage off the smuggling trade, which by necessity passed through its territory: Iraqi diesel was smuggled to Turkey, and luxury goods destined for the Ba'athist Inner Circle went the other way. This skimming was producing some serious revenue for the KDP, and before long, the PUK demanded a cut. The KDP refused, and in May 1994, Iraqi Kurdistan was plunged into fratricidal warfare as the two factions engaged each other in open combat. This also marked the end of even a pretence of democracy in Iraqi Kurdistan for the next eight years. The KDP and the PUK may have been egged along the path to war by the governments of Turkey, Iran and Iraq, all of which had their reasons to prevent Iraqi Kurdistan from becoming a viable Kurdish state. Certainly, there is no question that developments within the enclve have been influenced by actors in the wider area. Throughout the fighting, the KDP found itself backed by Turkey, while the PUK found itself receiving support from Iran and the PKK, the rebel Turkish Kurds. In 1996, the PUK received a fresh shipment of weapons from Iran, and reportedly some "military advisers" as well; this aid allowed the PUK to mount an offensive in September of that year, in which it captured the town of Arbil, the capital of Kurdistan and the KDP's home base. In response, Barzani called upon the aid of none other then Saddam Hussein, who sent a Republican Guard column which drove the PUK out of Arbil, destroyed the headquarters of the Iraqi National Congress (INC), captured and executed several hundred INC members, and sent the local CIA team scurrying for the Turkish border. It has been argued that Barzani's move set the cause of resistance against Saddam back by several years, since the Iraqi security services were able to capture a significant portion of the INC's archives. Of course, given that Barzani's primary source of income was sanctions-busting, he was probably in no hurry to see sanctions against Iraq lifted. Fighting continued, and in October 1997 the PUK—armed with a fresh shipment of Iranian-supplied weapons—mounted another offensive north-east of Arbil. In November, an estimated 30,000 Turkish troops (between two and three divsions) advanced deep into the enclave, driving the PUK into retreat. In a jaw-dropping development, Saddam Hussein offered himself as a neutral mediator between the Kurdish factions, and both parties sent delegations to Baghdad for exploratory talks. Relations between Barzani and the Turkish government deteriorated in late 2001. In order to weaken Barzani's power base, the Turks cracked down on the cross-border smuggling (thus drying up Barzani's cash supply) and started supplying aid to the PUK. In turn, Iran, fearing the PUK might grow too powerful, cut its support and went looking for a group which could act as a thorn in the PUK's side. They found it in Jund al-Islam, the group which was to become Ansar al-Islam (see "Thinking federal thoughts," The Economist, 23-Mar-2002). It should be noted that from an ideological aspect, Iran and Ansar have little common ground; the Iranians are Shi'ites, Ansar is hardline Sunni (Oliver cites a Human Right Watch report which describes Ansar as bordering on the Wahhabist). But it may be evident from the events of the 1990s alone that Iran and Turkey have pursued a policy of "divide and rule." That is, keep the Iraq Kurds divided and continue to rule one's own Kurdish population. Simultaneously, we notice, if a neighbouring government supports one faction, it will switch its support when another government starts to support the same faction (e.g. Iran's cessation of support to the PUK when Turkey switched its support to the PUK). It is due to the latter point that I find it difficult to believe that Ansar was receiving support from the Ba'athi régime. Had this been the case, I doubt Iran would have been supporting Ansar at the same time. Given that Saddam Hussein was universally hated in Iran, it is even more incredible that the Iranians would support any group Saddam was supporting. Note that the Iranians did not support the KDP at any stage. Oliver comments: As Christopher Hitchens has noted, it was as difficult to get into Baathist Iraq as it was to get out of it. Yet Ansar's terrorists had no trouble at all in crossing the border. It doesn't take a great leap of logic to infer that they were welcome in Iraq in order to cause death and mayhem in democratic Iraqi Kurdistan.That's actually rather open to question. During the 1991 Gulf War, even before the start of the ground war, with the Iraqi armed forces on full alert, several motorised British SAS patrols managed to slip across the Saudi border and deep into Iraqi territory before encountering a single Iraqi. But be that as it may, Ansar al-Islam's enclave was quite some distance into Iraqi Kurdistan, about 100 kilometres—through mountainous terrain—from Iraqi government-controlled territory. The Iraqi government did not control who crossed the border there. In this regard, it is worth taking a look at Colin Powell's presentation to the UN Security Council of 05-Feb-2003, but besides looking at what he did say, let's also look at what he didn't say. Iraq today harbours a deadly terrorist network headed by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, an associate and collaborator of Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda lieutenants.Note that Powell describes al-Zarqawi (the name means "father of Mussab, from Zarqaw" which is a town in Jordan) as "an associate" of Bin Laden "and his al-Qaeda lieutenants"; i.e. Powell is not actually stating that al-Zarqawi was a member of al-Qaeda, merely that he associated with the al-Qaeda leadership. It's a subtle point, but it means there is a degree of separation. When our coalition ousted the Taliban, the Zarqawi network helped establish another poison and explosives training centre camp. And this camp is located in north-eastern Iraq. [...] Those helping to run this camp are Zarqawi lieutenants operating in northern Kurdish areas outside Saddam Hussein's controlled Iraq.Note Powell explicitly states that Ansar's territory is "outside Saddam Hussein's controlled Iraq." Perhaps more interesting is Powell's mention of the Iraqi government agent. The fact that Powell only mentions one agent—rather than, say, a number of agents, one of whom is in "the most senior levels"—suggests that there is no evidence to indicate the presence of others. And this would suggest that the single Iraqi agent may be an infiltrator whose actual role is unknown to the rest of the Ansar leadership, let alone to the rank and file. Which would seem awfully strange for an organisation which is supposedly openly sponsored by the Ba'athist régime, assuming Powell's information is even correct. Powell's description sounds remarkably similar to the claims made by PUK officials. Jeffrey Goldberg states the following [Ansar's] real leader, [PUK] officials say, is an Iraqi who goes by the name Abu Wa'el, and who, like the others, spent a great deal of time in bin Laden's training camps. But he is also, they say, a high-ranking officer of the Mukhabarat.To back up these claims, these officals produced a person to be interviewed by both Goldberg and Peterson, who confirmed the officials' story. Purportedly, this man is one Qassem Hussein Muhammed (or Mohamed), a member of the Mukhabarat for at least twenty years. Unfortunately, his story is less than airtight. From Peterson's article: "[Ansar] and Al Qaeda groups were trained by graduates of the Mukhabarat's School 999 — military intelligence," says Mr. Mohamed [...]Ba'athi Iraq possessed a plethora of intelligence and security agencies. Of these, three are the most worthy of note, not in the least part because they reported directly to the Revolutionary Command Council (In listing their full names, I have placed in bold the shorter names by which they are more commonly known):
As stated previously, Ansar al-Islam was a thorn in the PUK's side. By August 2002, Ansar had some 700 fighters, while the PUK had roughly 3,000 peshmergas (irregulars) facing them. Despite the overwhelming numerical superiority, the PUK was hesitant to attack. As one peshmerga officer told Tim Judah of The Observer, If the Iranians don't interfere we can finish them easily.(See "Kurdish guerrillas poised to fire first shots in war on Iraq," The Observer, 11-Aug-2002. See also "Looking both ways," The Economist, 15-Aug-2002. Note: though The Economist does not identify its correspondents, I believe the latter article was also written by Tim Judah; aside from some striking similarities between the two articles, how many British journalists would visit Darashish, Iraqi Kurdistan, in a single week?) Possible Iranian intereference was indeed not to be underestimated, since the Iranian army could provide artillery support which the peshmergas would be unable to match. The most obvious way for the PUK to ensure that Iranians would not interfere would be to get troops involved upon whom the Iranians would be unwilling to fire; Americans would be perfect. Now, in mid-2002, what would really grab the US government's attention? Could there be anything more tempting than claiming you've identified the link between al-Qaeda and the Iraqi régime? Establishing a connection between Ansar al-Islam and al-Qaeda was no tall order. Many members of Ansar had travelled to Afghanistan in the 1980s to fight the Soviets, and while there they would likely have hooked up with various people who would later form al-Qaeda. After the toppling of the Taliban, between 50 and 70 non-Kurds showed up in the ranks of Ansar, many of whom were probably fugitive al-Qaeda members.* But a connection is one thing; active co-operation is quite another. For the fugitive al-Qaeda members, Ansar may simply have been a convenient port in a storm, and there is no indication that these men were more than foot-soldiers in al-Qaeda. To establish a connection between Ansar al-Islam and the Ba'athi régime is more challenging. Indeed, it is a challenge which has not be adequately met. All the claims originated from PUK officials, or from prisoners with less than convincing stories; they might have been coached or, indeed, not been prisoners at all. In his article in The Observer, Tim Judah displays a well-founded skepticism sorely lacking in Goldberg and Peterson's accounts: In jail in Sulaimaniya, the PUK holds a man convicted of being an Iraqi agent. An Iranian Arab, he has told them he smuggled arms from Baghdad to bin Laden in Kandahar, Afghanistan, and drugs from al-Qaeda that were used to buy more arms.Emphasis in bold mine. There is, bluntly, no "evidence of pre-war links between al-Qaida and the Baathist regime," at least not if we take the word "link" to mean a pattern of active co-operation. There are assertions by the PUK, with no corroborating evidence, and a very real ulterior motive for making those assertions. In the introduction to the 1998 edition of Republic of Fear, Kanan Makiya made an observation on victimhood: [T]he all-too-human mistake we might have fallen into [...] was that of allowing ourselves to believe that there is something morally redeeming in the quality of victimhood itself.The Kurds have certainly been victims, but we should not assume that this means they are incapable of anything other than virtuous behaviour themselves; the course of events in Iraqi Kurdistan in the 1990s is more than sufficient evidence of this. The Kurds are just as capable of dissembling and backstabbing as anyone else, and to my mind, the PUK has been lying through its teeth in this matter for well over a year in this matter. I'm afraid that Oliver Kamm, in his eagerness to take another swipe at the Liberal Democrats, has allowed himself to be hoodwinked, not unlike Jeffrey Goldberg and Scott Peterson before him. In September 2003, Stephen Hayes of the Weekly Standard asked, "Why Can't the CIA Keep Up with the New Yorker?" The answer is, evidently, that Goldberg was not hampered by any urge to check his facts. * - To which extent (any element of) the Iranian government was complicit in this is very much open to question. Iran is a major conduit for smuggled Afghan heroin, despite the best efforts of the Iranians to combat the trade. In 1999, Iranian army and police seized 204 metric tons of opium and 29 tons of heroin ("Another powder trail," The Economist, 18-Oct-2001), yet but by 2001, at least 2m Iranians were addicted to opium, morphine or heroin ("Drugs and decay," The Economist, 31-Mar-2001, and "What the Taliban banned," The Economist, 16-Mar-2003). Given the volume of drugs being smuggled into and across Iran, the possibility of 70 al-Qaeda members being transported in similar fashion is far from remote indeed. It should also be noted that by December 2002, Iran had drastically cut its support to Ansar, presumably because the costs of being associated with Ansar outweighed the benefits. |
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