Ансар аль-Ислам: Иракская курдская группировка джихадистов

Salafi jihadist militant group in Iraq and Syria

Ahrar al Sham|
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| battles = Iraq War
Islamist insurgency in Iraqi Kurdistan
Syrian civil war
Battle of Aleppo
Aleppo summer campaign
Idlib demilitarization simply called Ansar al Islam , is a Kurdish Islamist militant and separatist group. It was established in northern Iraq around the Kurdistan Region by Kurdish Islamists who were former Taliban and former Al Qaeda volunteers, which were coming back from Afghanistan in 2001 after the Fall of Kabul. Its motive is to establish an Islamic state around the Kurdistan region and to protect Kurdish people from other armed insurgent groups. It imposed strict Sharia in villages it controlled around Byara near the Iranian border. The group was a designated terrorist organization in the United Nations, Australia, Canada, Israel, the United Kingdom, and the United States, and a known affiliate of the al Qaeda network. On 29 August 2014, 50 members and commanders of Ansar al Islam announced that they were joining ISIS individually, however Ansar al Islam continued to oppose ISIS and kept functioning independently. Abu Khattab al Kurdi was among those who left Ansar al Islam for ISIS, and he later became an ISIS commander. When a previously unknown Kurdish militant group using white flags appeared in Iraq in 2017, Iraqi security and intelligence officials argued that this was splinter group of Ansar al Islam, which reportedly still had hundreds of fighters operating in the Hamrin Mountains. because it was made up of Kurds who fought for the Taliban in Afghanistan, and for their similarity with the Taliban, including how both of them established Islamic Emirates under Sharia law, both of their fighters were Islamist but had some nationalism (Taliban with Pashtun, Ansar with Kurdish), and both of them harshly persecuted non Muslims.

Ansar al Islam seeks to establish an "Islamic state" under Sharia law, as well as to obtain and preserve the "legitimate rights" of the Kurds. Ansar al Islam was formed in September 2001 from a merger of Jund al Islam (not the Egyptian Jund al Islam), led by Abu Abdullah al Shafi'i, and a splinter group from the Kurdistan Islamic Movement led by Mullah Krekar. Krekar became the leader of the merged Ansar al Islam, which opposed an agreement made between IMK and the dominant Kurdish group in the area, Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). The group later made allegiance to al Qaeda and allegedly received direct funds from the terror network. Ansar al Islam initially comprised approximately 300 men, many of them Kurdish veterans of Jihad in the Soviet–Afghan War. The two IMK splinter groups that formed Jund al Islam on 1 September 2001, had some early battlefield successes in the same month when it killed 42 PUK Peshmerga fighters in an ambush, which led to them drawing in more IMK leaders in their ranks, on 10 December 2001, the group became known as AAI (Ansar al Islam). The roots of Ansar al Islam can be traced to the mid 1990s. The group consists of various Islamist factions that splintered from the Islamic Movement of Kurdistan (IMK). In 2001, shortly before the 9/11 attacks, leaders of several Kurdish Islamist factions visited the al Qa'ida leadership in Afghanistan planning to create a base for al Qa'ida in northern Iraq. A document found in Kabul stated the group's objective which was to "expel those Jews and Christians from Kurdistan and join the way of jihad, and rule every piece of land with Islamic Sharia law." This was also confirmed by the Los Angeles Times, based upon interviews with an Ansar prisoner, which stated that in October 2000, Kurdish Islamist leaders sent jihadists to Osama bin Laden's camps, and they received the message from bin Laden that all Kurdish Islamist groups should unite into a single group.

Upon its founding, Ansar al Islam declared a holy war on all secular political parties in Iraqi Kurdistan. Throughout 2002, AAI carried out attacks on those Kurdish groups and targeted assassinations, particularly on high level PUK members, as well as engaging in battles and skirmishes with the PUK. The attacks allowed the AAI to control their own area in northeast Iraq, called the Islamic Emirate of Byara, under its spiritual founder and leader Mullah Krekar. Sharia Law was implemented, enforcing it through the bombing of businesses it deemed in Islamic, acid attacks on women it deemed immodest and beheading of those it deemed apostates. In late 2001 and early 2002, AAI received an inflow of foreign jihadist volunteers fleeing Afghanistan following the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan. AAI took advantage of the larger numbers and used them for better defense from PUK. One of the foreign jihadists was Abu Musab al Zarqawi, who stayed with them shortly. After about fifteen reporters (including NY Times, LA Times, ABC, and BBC) visited Sargat, they searched another location that was supposed to be a chemical weapons factory, which Colin Powell spoke about, they saw nothing but a studio which AAI planned to turn to a TV and radio station. They claimed that the studio was going to be used to make Ansar al Islam propaganda.

In 2003, many Kurdish youths of Ansar al Islam were killed by Iraqi Arab members of Al Qaeda in Iraq in Baghdad due to fears that Kurds were taking over the Jihad movement in Iraq. In September 2003, some members of Ansar al Islam, who had fled to Iran after the 2003 joint Iraqi US operation against them, announced their allegiance to a new group called Jamaat Ansar al Sunna, which was mostly Arab and was dedicated to expelling U. S. forces from Iraq. Ansar al Sunna became a prominent insurgent group active in the so called Sunni Triangle, carrying out kidnappings, suicide bombings, and guerilla attacks. In November or December 2007 the Ansar al Sunna group acknowledged that it was an offshoot of Ansar al Islam, and briefly went to using that name, before changing it to Ansar Al Ahlu Sunna.

Ansar al Islam remained active after the withdrawal of U. S. troops from Iraq of 2011, taking part in the insurgency against Iraq's central government. The group has claimed attacks against Iraqi security forces, particularly around Mosul and Kirkuk. later under its own name. The group cooperated with the Ahfad al Rasul Brigades to bomb Syrian military compounds in Damascus in August 2012. It also played a role in the Battle of Aleppo and collaborated with several other Salafist groups including al Qaeda's al Nusra Front and the Islamic Front. In 2016, they fought alongside the Al Nusra Front in Aleppo during a major offensive in the city. By July 2018, the Syrian faction of Ansar al Islam (not to be confused with the Syrian Ansar al Sham group, which fought in the same area) was active in Idlib and Latakia Governorate, raiding local Syrian Army outposts. Following the Turkish Russian agreement to demilitarize Idlib in September 2018, the Syrian branch of Ansar al Islam joined the Rouse the Believers Operations Room with other al Qaeda linked groups to oppose any attempts to demilitarize northwestern Syria. On 30 October 2019, Ansar al Islam claimed responsibility for an IED attack on a Popular Mobilization Forces vehicle in the Diyala Governorate in northeastern Iraq.

In a "Special Analysis" report from July 31, 2002, the U. S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) concluded the following regarding possible connections between Saddam's regime and Ansar al Islam: "The Iraqi regime seeks to influence and manipulate political events in the Kurdish controlled north and probably has some type of assets in contact with Ansar al Islam, either through liaison or through penetration by an intelligence asset." In January 2003, the U. S. alleged that Ansar al Islam provided a possible link between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda, and said to prepare to unveil new evidence of it. In March–April 2003, BBC reported that a captured Iraqi intelligence officer had indicated that a senior Ansar al Islam leader, Abu Wail, was a former Iraqi intelligence officer. In January 2004, Colin Powell acknowledged that his claims about Ansar al Islam's alleged ties to Saddam Hussein had no reliable evidence; he told reporters at a State Department press conference that "I have not seen smoking gun, concrete evidence about the connection, but I do believe the connections existed." The Senate Report on Pre war Intelligence on Iraq, issued in 2004, concluded that Saddam Hussein was aware of Ansar al Islam and al Qaeda's presence in northeastern Iraq, and that he considered the groups a threat to his regime and the intelligence collection operations which his regime attempted against them. The Defense Intelligence Agency stated that senior Ansar al Islam detainees revealed that the group viewed Saddam's regime as apostates, and denied any relationship with them. The U. S. Select Committee on Intelligence in September 2006 confirmed that: "Post war information reveals that Iraq viewed Ansar al Islam as a threat to the regime and attempted to collect intelligence on the group". After Powell had left office, in an interview, he told Barbara Walters that he considered his claims of ties between Saddam Hussein and Ansar al Islam made a "blot" on his record, and that he felt "terrible" about the claims that he made which turned out to be false. He said, "There were some people in the intelligence community who knew at that time that some of these sources were not good and shouldn't be relied upon, and they didn't speak up. That devastated me." When asked specifically about a Saddam–al Qaeda connection, Powell responded, "I have never seen a connection. I can't think otherwise because I'd never seen evidence to suggest there was one."

Ansar al Islam's first leader was Abu Abdullah al Shafi'i, until shortly after 11 September 2001. Mullah Krekar in 2001 replaced Shafi'i as leader of Ansar al Islam, and Shafi'i became his deputy. A post about the group was published on Twitter in November 2015, by Abu al Waleed al Salafi, stated that "a number of leaders of the group, including Abu Hashim Al Ibrahim, the emir of the group, were arrested in early 2014"; the article does not mention a new leader. Two previous attempts had been made on his life in Erbil in 1994 and 1997 at the same place and the same street, but he escaped from both. On March 22, 2003, Ansar al Islam detonated a car bomb, killing Australian journalist Paul Moran and several others. The group was also accused of the attempted bombing of a United States Department of Defense office in Erbil, on September 9, 2003, which killed three people. On February 1, 2004, suicide bombings hit parallel Eid celebrations arranged by the two main Kurdish parties, PUK and KDP, in the Kurdish capital of Erbil, killing 109 and wounding more than 200 celebrators. Ansar al Sunnah claimed responsibility, and stated that the motive was to support "our brothers in Ansar al Islam". In November 2008, an archbishop in Mosul received a threat signed by the "Ansar al Islam brigades", warning all Christians to leave Kurdistan or else be killed. Another attack was the stabbing of a police officer in Berlin on September 17, 2015, by Ansar al Islam operative Rafik Yousef, who previously attempted to assassinate Ayad Allawi.