Home | Site Index | FAQs | Contact | RSS  | Podcast

• Related Materials

  • Profile: Al-Qaeda in Iraq (a.k.a. al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia)
    By Greg Bruno, Staff Writer
    Backgrounder
    Updated: December 14, 2007

  • Inside the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK)
    By Greg Bruno, Staff Writer
    Backgrounder
    October 19, 2007

  • Al-Qaeda in Iraq: Resurging or Splintering?
    By Lionel Beehner
    Backgrounder
    Updated: July 16, 2007

  • Cook: Turkish-U.S. Tensions ‘Great Underreported Story of Iraq War’
    Interview
    March 29, 2007

  See Also

  Iraq, Terrorist Organizations

  ISN Security Watch

  • The world's water future
    
  • ISN Podcasts: The Cyprus issue
    
  • Rattling imaginary sabres
    
  • ISN Podcasts: China, more friend than foe
    
  • East Timor: Hard rock, soft water
    

  More From:

  International Relations and Security Network

  '

  • Iraq: The Problem with Creating a New Police Force
    
  • The Pentagon's Three-Star Wise Man: Gen. Bill Odom
    
  • Minorities, Women Highly Satisfied by Military Work
    
  • The Booze Is Back in Baghdad
    
  • ‘He Should Never Have Gone to Iraq’
    

  More From:

  Newsweek International

  Ansar al-Islam (Iraq, Islamists/Kurdish Separatists )

  Updated: November 2005

  • What is Ansar al-Islam?
  • What are Ansar al-Islam’s origins?
  • Where does Ansar al-Islam operate?
  • How big is Ansar al-Islam?
  • Is Ansar al-Islam connected to other terrorist organizations?
  • What major attacks has Ansar al-Islam been responsible for?

  ---

  What is Ansar al-Islam?

  Ansar al-Islam (Supporters of Islam) is a group of Kurdish separatists and Islamic fundamentalists seeking to transform all ofIraq into an Islamic state. Mullah Krekar, also known as Faraj Ahmad Najmuddin, reportedly founded Ansar in December 2001 with funding and logistical support from al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. The group continues to target secular Iraqi Kurds—particularly members of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) —and, since the war in Iraq, U.S. officials have accused Ansar al-Islam of training and deploying suicide bombers against U.S.-led coalition troops in Iraq. Ansar was officially designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) by the U.S. Department of State on March 22, 2004. Human Rights Watch has accused Ansar of kidnapping and torture.

  In late 2003, Abu Abdallah al-Shafii (a.k.a. Warba Holiri al-Kurdi) reportedly took over leadership of Ansar from Mullah Krekar, who, as of August 2004 has been in exile in Norway. Al-Shafii claimed in September 2003 the organization’s name had changed from Ansar al-Islam, but he has not disclosed the new name. Experts have speculated he may have been referring to an offshoot of Ansar al-Islam called Ansar al-Sunna (Supporters of Sunni). The name change could portend a shift in strategy, according to some analysts, toward broadening Ansar al-Islam’s appeal beyond its Kurdish origins.

  What are Ansar al-Islam’s origins?

  A group known as Jund al-Islam (Soldiers of Islam), led by al-Shafii, seized control of several villages near Halabja in September 2001 and established a local administration governed according to Sharia law. Mullah Krekar formed Ansar al-Islam in December 2001 as a merger of Jund al-Islam and a splinter group of his Islamic Movement in Kurdistan . In the area then under its control, Ansar barred women from education and employment, confiscated musical instruments and banned music both in public and private, banned satellite receivers and televisions, and threatened the use of Islamic punishments of amputation, flogging, and stoning to death for offenses such as theft, the consumption of alcohol, and adultery, according Human Rights Watch.

  Where does Ansar al-Islam operate?

  Originally based in an enclave wedged between Iraqi Kurdistan and Iran , it has been active throughout northern Iraq . While Ansar is not known to have previously operated outside Iraq , it is suspected of involvement in a plot to attack a NATO summit meeting in Istanbul in June 2004. Some analysts say Ansar has received logistical support from Iran and Syria and recruited members in Italy . Iran , especially, is thought to assist the organization, harboring Ansar militants within its borders and providing a route for foreign fighters to enter Iraq and join Ansar’s ranks. “It’s very clear that there are fighters streaming in over the Iranian border tied to this group,” says Jonathan Schanzer, an expert on militant Islam at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. In January 2005 the group assassinated an assistant to senior cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Sheik Mahmoud Finjan (Mahmoud al-Madaeeni), in the Salman Park area of Baghdad as he was returning from saying evening prayers.

  How big is Ansar al-Islam?

  In the last week of March 2003, coalition and Kurdish forces bombed Ansar’s bases in Biyara, in northeastern Iraq , killing roughly 250 of its 700 members, according to U.S. military sources. Ansar subsequently regrouped in nearby Kurdish communities, experts say, and started attacking occupation forces and other targets in Iraq . Having replenished its ranks with new recruits and foreign fighters, Ansar is believed to have less than 500 members, according to the U.S. State Department.

  Is Ansar al-Islam connected to other terrorist organizations?

  Then U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, in a February 5, 2003, address to the United Nations, said Ansar al-Islam has ties to al-Qaeda. Ansar fighters, experts say, trained in al-Qaeda camps inAfghanistan and sheltered al-Qaeda fugitives fleeing the 2001 U.S.-led war there. Al-Qaeda operative Abu Musab al-Zarqawi reportedly oversaw training of the terrorist group. According to the FBI, Ansar al-Islam also has ties to al-Qaeda Organization in the Land of the Two Rivers, Ansar al-Sunnah Army, and Tawhid and Jihad.

  What major attacks has Ansar al-Islam been responsible for?

  Ansar is believed to be responsible for at least thirty suicide bombings in Iraq. More than 800 people have been killed in attacks that include:

  • the August 7, 2003, bombing of the Jordanian Embassy inBaghdad, which killed nineteen;
  • the August 19, 2003, bombing of United Nations headquarters in Baghdad, which killed twenty-two;
  • the August 29, 2003, car bombing at a Najaf mosque, which killed eighty-five;
  • four car bomb attacks inBaghdad on October 27, 2003, which killed thirty-five;
  • the November 12, 2003, truck bombing of Italian military headquarters in southern Iraq, which killed thirty-three;
  • two suicide bombings inIrbil at offices of the two main Kurdish political parties on February 1, 2004, which killed 109 Kurds;
  • two car bombings inBaghdad on February 10 and 11, 2004, which killed more than a hundred Iraqis;
  • the suicide bombings of Shiite shrines in Baghdadand Karbala on March 2, 2004, which killed 181 and wounded more than 500;
  • the bombing of the Mount Lebanon Hotel in Baghdad on March 17, 2004, which killed seven and wounded more than thirty;
  • the April 21, 2004, Basra car bombings that killed seventy-four.

   

  Weigh in on this issue by emailing CFR.org.

• 

  New CFR Books

  

  In Termites in the Trading System, Jagdish Bhagwati reveals how the rapid spread of preferential trade agreements endangers the world trading system.

  

  America Between the Wars explores how the decisions and debates of the years between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Twin Towers shaped the events, arguments, and politics of the world we live in today.

  

  In The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State, Noah Feldman tells the story behind the increasingly popular call for the establishment of the sharia—the law of the traditional Islamic state—in the modern Muslim world.

  Complete list of CFR Books.

  

  

  New Independent Task Force Reports

  Confronting Climate Change

  This report argues that the United States must lead with domestic action on climate change and proposes a U.S. negotiating strategy for a global UN climate agreement that includes commitments from all major economies, while also promoting a less formal Partnership for Climate Cooperation that would focus the world's largest emitters on implementing aggressive emissions reductions.

  U.S.-Latin America Relations: A New Direction for a New Reality

  This Task Force report examines changes in Latin America and in U.S. influence there, while taking account of the region's enduring importance to the United States. The Task Force offers an agenda for U.S. policy toward Latin America and identifies four critical areas that should provide the basis of a new U.S. approach.

  About Independent Task Forces at the Council.

  

  

  New Council Special Reports

  Global FDI Policy

  After two decades of liberalization, many countries around the world are adopting new restrictions on foreign direct investment (FDI) that could retard continued progress. The authors make recommendations for correcting this protectionist drift by proposing guidelines for how countries can better regulate FDI yet still reap its economic benefits.

  Dealing with Damascus

  In this Council Special Report, the authors make a strong case that the Bush administration’s policy of diplomatic isolation of Syria is not serving U.S. interests, and offer informed history and thoughtful analysis of the country and its external behavior.

  Complete list of Council Special Reports.

  

  

  Robert Mugabe's 1987 Article

  • “Struggle for Southern Africa:” In a 1987 Foreign Affairs article, then Prime Minister Robert Mugabe urged international intervention to protect southern Africa.

  

  

  

  Publications Information

  To order Task Force reports, Council Special Reports, and Critical Policy Choices, please call, fax, or order online from our distributor, the Brookings Institution Press: phone +1-800-537-5487, fax +1-410-516-6998.

  For information on other reports that are not for sale, or for general publications information, please call +1-212-434-9516 or email publications@cfr.org.

  

  

  Permissions Requests

  To request permission to reuse Council materials, please email publications@cfr.org or fax +1-212-434-9859.

  Please include the complete information of the requested work—author, title, sections/pages to be copied or reprinted, and number of copies to be made—along with a brief description of where and how you would like to reuse the work.

  You may also request permission for Council material through Copyright Clearance Center. For more information, please click on the logo below.

  

  

•  

By Region  |  By Issue  |  By Publication Type  |  The Think Tank  |  For The Media  |  For Educators  |  About CFR

Home  |  Site Index  |  FAQ  |  Contact  |  RSS  |  Podcast

Copyright 2008 by the Council on Foreign Relations. All Rights Reserved.