Nineteen US troops and three others were reportedly killed on December 21, 2004, in an attack on an improvised dining hall of an American military base at Mosul in northern Iraq. An organisation called Jaish Ansar al-Sunnah (JAAS) has claimed responsibility for the attack.
While the JAAS has projected it as a suicide bombing thereby giving the impression that it has been able to penetrate the US military base, local US army spokesmen have described it as a mortar attack, similar to the mortar attacks on the Green Zone in Baghdad, which one witnesses frequently.
The JAAS, which came to notice for the first time in February, 2004, for a major terrorist strike in the Kurdish areas, has claimed the responsibility for many killings of kidnapped hostages, including 12 Nepalis, and a number of daring attacks---not only in and around Mosul, but also in different areas of the Sunni Triangle. The incidents outside Mosul show that it has a wide reach in the Sunni majority areas of Iraq.
It advocates a hard-line fundamentalism, similar to that of the Afghan Taliban. It describes its objectives as not only the defeat of the US-led occupation troops and the liberation of Iraq from their subjugation, but also as the establishment of an orthodox Islamic rule in Iraq after its liberation. It says that those Iraqis, who had willingly sacrificed their lives in the jihad against the occupiers, would have died in vain if a secular government was to be restored in Iraq after the defeat of the occupying forces.
In a statement of December 6, 2004, attributed to it, it said: "It is known that jihad in Iraq has become the obligatory required duty of every Muslim after the infidel enemy fell upon the land of Islam. It was the followers of the Prophet's Sunnah and Jamma`h, the people of unification and following of ancestors, who raised the blessed banner of jihad and acted in groups, each in their area but spontaneously, receiving the directions and orders for their jihad from the Book of Allah and the Sunna of His Noble Prophet. They included clerics, sheikhs, and military fighters. The task is great and the situation is momentous. It concerns the nation's fate and does not terminate by the end of the occupation.
The aim does not end with their defeat, but with the upholding of Allah's religion and the application of the shari'ah of Allah to rule this Islamic land. What is the use of shedding of Muslim Mujahdeen's blood to throw out the forces of occupation if after that, the fruits are enjoyed by a secular Iraqi or a puppet agent of the Americans working to fulfill their plans and programs? Then, we return to the control of a puppet government that rules with the laws of infidels in the name of Islam and is, in fact, controlled by the Jews and the Christians. A faithful does not get bitten twice. Because of this, a group of resistance fighters and knowledgeable people, who have the political and military savvy and who have the record in managing the Islamic struggle against the enemies of Islam, have brought together a number of divided groups and platoons of resistance that operated in the field from the north to the south to make up a huge army that comes under a unified command.
A command that will establish a locally devised unimported practical plan based on their knowledge of the battlefield and on the basis of the shari'ah in the Koran and the Sunnah. We called it the Ansar al-Sunnah Army. We call on our brethren in faith and jihad to come together under the banner of this army to fulfill the hope of an Islamic nation that honors Islam and Muslims. Allah's hand is with the group; the devil is in the company of the single. The wolf attacks the straggler sheep."
Its projection of itself as "a group of resistance fighters and knowledgeable people, who have the political and military savvy and who have the record in managing the Islamic struggle against the enemies of Islam" is significant. This seeks to show that it is a mixed group of local resistance fighters and others who had participated in jihad elsewhere. However, it also projects itself as an indigenous organisation carrying on a jihad against the occupation troops on the basis of a "locally devised unimported practical plan."
Its statements generally refer to one Abu-Abdullah al-Hassan Bin-Mahmud as its Amir. Not much is known about him except that he is an Arab, who used to be a member of the Ansar al-Islam till October last year. It is said that he broke away from the organisation in October last year and formed the Ansar al-Sunnah. The reasons for the split are not known.
Before their invasion of Iraq last year, the Americans, without credible evidence, had projected the Ansar al-Islam, an anti-US group operating in the Kurdish areas of Iraq, as the local branch of Al Qaeda. Some reports also projected it as aided by Iran, again without any credible evidence.
On February 1, 2004, 105 persons were killed when an Arab and a Kurd carried out simultaneous twin suicide bombings directed respectively at the offices of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), both in the Kurdish city of Arbil.This was the terrorist strike for which the Ansar al-Sunnah had first claimed responsibility. "Hawlani", a Kurdish newspaper, had identified at that time Abu-Abdullah al-Hassan Bin-Mahmud as the Amir of the organisation.
This is apparently his assumed name. His real name is not known. The newspaper described him as the brother of one Abdullah Al-Shami, an Ansar al-Islam leader, who, according to it, was killed last year while fighting against the PUK near the Iranian border. Kurdish sources describe bin-Mahmud as a Jordanian, like Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and not an Iraqi Arab, and as a close associate of Osama bin Laden. He is assisted by one Abdullah Shafi, who is also projected by Kurdish sources as an Al Qaeda operative, who had lived for some time in Afghanistan.
After February, the following are some of the terrorist strikes for which the Ansar al-Sunnah has claimed responsibility:
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Dec. 5, 2004: A machine gun attack in Tikrit killing 17 Iraqi civilians working for the U.S. military.
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Dec. 1: The kidnapping and killing of three Iraqis working for the U.S. Marines.
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Nov. 25: A mortar attack on Baghdad's Green Zone that killed four Gurkha security guards and 12 others.
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Nov. 20: The killing of two hostages identified as members of a Kurdish political group in Mosul.
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Nov. 4: Beheading of a captured Major of the new Iraqi Army raised by the Americans.
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Oct. 28: Kidnapping and killing of 11 Iraqi soldiers south of Baghdad.
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Oct. 18: The killing of nine Iraqi policemen returning after training in Jordan.
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Aug. 31: The kidnapping and killing of 12 Nepalese construction workers.
According to knowledgeable Iraqi sources, after the defeat of Iraq in the first Gulf War of 1991, a group of fundamentalist Sunni clerics had tried to organise a Salafi movement in Iraq for the overthrow of Saddam Hussain's Baathist regime and setting up an Islamic state. On coming to know of it, Saddam crushed their movement, jailed some leaders while others managed to escape to Jordan, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Afghanistan. Amongst the leaders of this Salafi movement were Omar Hussein Hadid, reportedly a former electrician turned Mullah; Sheikh Abdullah al-Janabi, Sheikh Zafir al-Ubaidi, Moyaed Ahmed Yasseen (reportedly arrested by the Iraqi army on November 14, 2004) and Abu-Abdullah al-Hassan Bin-Mahmud. These sources claim that these Salafi elements are in the forefront of the anti-US insurgency.
The writer is Additional Secretary (Retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute for Topical Studies, Chennai, and Distinguished Fellow and Convenor, Observer Research Foundation (ORF), Chennai Chapter. E-mail: [email protected]
Courtesy: South Asia Analysis Group, New Delhi, Paper No. 1198, December 22, 2004.
* Views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Observer Research Foundation.
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