Author: NEIL MacFARQUHAR
Publication: The New York Times
Date: August 13, 2003
In much the same way as the Russian
invasion of Afghanistan stirred an earlier generation of young Muslims
determined to fight the infidel, the American presence in Iraq is prompting
a rising tide of Muslim militants to slip into the country to fight the
foreign occupier, Iraqi officials and others say.
"Iraq is the nexus where many issues
are coming together - Islam versus democracy, the West versus the axis
of evil, Arab nationalism versus some different types of political culture,"
said Barham Saleh, the prime minister of this Kurdish-controlled part of
northern Iraq. "If the Americans succeed here, this will be a monumental
blow to everything the terrorists stand for."
Recent intelligence suggests the
militants are well organized. One returning group of fighters from the
militant Ansar al-Islam organization captured in the Kurdish region two
weeks ago consisted of five Iraqis, a Palestinian and a Tunisian.
Among their possessions were five
forged Italian passports for a different group of militants they were apparently
supposed to join, said Dana Ahmed Majid, the director of general security
for the region.
Long gone are the bearded men in
the short robes believed worn by the Prophet Muhammad that the Arabs who
went to Afghanistan favored. Instead, the same practices that allowed the
Sept. 11 attackers to blend into American society are evident.
The fighters steal over Iraq's largely
unpoliced borders in small groups with instructions to go to a safe house
where they can whisper a password to gain admittance and then lie low awaiting
further instructions, say Iraqi security officials in northern Iraq and
in Baghdad.
"They come across as civilians,
they shave their beards and have clean-cut hair," said a senior security
official in the Kurdish region.
Iraqi officials say they expect
a broad spectrum of Muslim militants to flood Iraq. They believe that Ansar
al-Islam, a small fundamentalist group believed to have links with Al Qaeda,
forms the backbone of the underground network. The group was forced out
of northern Iraq by a huge attack during the war.
Mullah Mustapha Kreikar, the founding
spiritual leader of Ansar al-Islam, said in an interview on Sunday with
LBC, the Lebanese satellite channel, that the fight in Iraq would be the
culmination of all Muslim efforts since the Islamic caliphate collapsed
in the early 20th century with the demise of the Ottoman Empire. "There
is no difference between this occupation and the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan
in 1979," he said from Norway, where he has political asylum.
"The resistance is not only a reaction
to the American invasion, it is part of the continuous Islamic struggle
since the collapse of the caliphate," he said. "All Islamic struggles since
then are part of one organized effort to bring back the caliphate."
Such appeals appear to be attracting
a wide range of militants. The fight against Al Qaeda and its numerous
offshoots worldwide during the last two years has severely disrupted their
coordination, but details emerging from either suspects captured in the
last few weeks or from recent surveillance indicates that Qaeda training
methods in everything from forgery to establishing sleeper cells are being
applied here.
Al Qaeda Web sites carry long treatises
on the need for jihad, or holy war, and argue that the effort should not
be dissipated in meaningless activities like peaceful demonstrations. Chat-room
discussions occasionally focus on how to sneak across borders.
Once established in Baghdad or in
the Sunni triangle north of the capital, where much of the armed resistance
occurs, the Islamic militants often make common cause with members of the
former Baathist government who are also determined to fight Americans.
At least one Saudi and one Egyptian
formerly linked to Al Qaeda helped establish an initial training camp three
weeks ago where new recruits are lectured on the theological underpinnings
of jihad, a security official in Baghdad said.
"All previous experiences with the
activities of the underground organizations proved that they flourish in
countries with a chaotic security situation, unchecked borders and the
lack of a central government - Iraq is all that," said Muhammad Salah,
an expert on militant groups and the Cairo bureau chief of the newspaper
Al Hayat. "It is the perfect environment for fundamentalist groups to operate
and grow."
United States troops have arrested
two clerics from Islamic Kurdish groups - once all part of one big organization
- suspected of providing logistics help to Ansar fighters, Iraqi officials
said. More than 150 members of Ansar al-Islam are believed to have slipped
into the country in recent weeks, said a security official in the Kurdish
region. Smugglers are believed to be bringing them over daily.
In addition, there are an estimated
100,000 former members of the Iraqi security services without gainful employment,
all concentrated in the Sunni triangle north of Baghdad. Perhaps 2,000
of them, especially those with no source of income and no hopes of gaining
any kind of amnesty, would be likely recruits for the fundamentalists,
the official said.
Although attacks like the deadly
car bombing outside the Jordanian Embassy that killed 17 people last Thursday
are most likely the work of militants, security officials say, some attacks
are carried out either for money or by Iraqis who just do not want Americans
here. But the officials anticipate that militant organizations will carry
out more attacks.
The training around Baghdad so far
has been in three stages, a security official said. Some sort of initial
contact is made - usually after prayers in a mosque - and then a second
meeting is arranged. Some recruits are weeded out then, but the third round
of likely candidates are the ones who make it to the training camp, the
official said. They are told to move away from their families and not communicate
with anyone.
Some candidates are believed to
be the men who worked for Muhammad Khtair al-Dulaimi in the Special Operations
Directorate, the branch of the Iraqi secret service that specialized in
remote control bombings, poisoning and other operations. The former chief
is still at large and is suspected of putting his employees to work against
the Americans, the source said.
But the main group organizing an
underground route of safe houses and coordinating the various efforts is
believed to be Ansar al-Islam, or the Islamic Partisans in English, whose
suspected ties to Al Qaeda were among the reasons the Bush administration
used to justify the war against Iraq. Although initially a strictly Kurdish
organization, its ranks swelled with Arab fighters after the United States
attacked Afghanistan in October 2001.
Before the Iraqi war the group was
believed to have some 850 members, but up to 200 were killed in the attack
against them by Kurdish and United States Special Forces troops in March.
Several hundred more were either captured or turned themselves in, leaving
an estimated 300 to 350 who fled to Iran.
The extent of their activities remains
cloudy. But Web sites believed linked to Al Qaeda are clear enough about
the envisaged fight: "The struggle with America has to be carefully managed,
the `electric shock method' must be applied, relentless shocks that haunt
the Americans all the time everywhere, without giving them a break to regain
balance or power."
