SULAIMANIYA, Iraq, Aug.
11 — 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."
Agence France-Presse
Barham Saleh, the
prime minister Kurdish area of northern Iraq.
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."
THE NEW YORK TIMES
August 13, 2003
