Al-Qaeda's Kurdish Allies Find Home in Iran

The Kurdish militant group Ansar al-Islam is reorganising in Iranian Kurdistan, say residents of the area, Iraqi security sources and local Iranian officials.

The radical group's presence - an open secret in the small towns of this mountainous region - appears to have, at the very least, the acquiescense of the Iranian authorities, and some sources report that Iranian intelligence offers logistics and possibly military training.

Indeed, IWPR spoke to an Iranian official who says that he was ordered to assist the militants, as well as a local Kurd who was recruited by them for training.

Despite the ideological gap between the radical Sunni Islamism of the Ansar and the Shia Islamism of the Tehran government, both Iranian and Iraqi observers believe that there is room for an alliance of convenience between the two parties.

While the Kurdish militants need room to rebuild, the Iranians can use them to undercut the influence of secular Kurdish nationalism in the area, and simultaneously have a bargaining chip in dealings with the Americans.

Ansar al-Islam was established in September 2001, first under the name Jund al-Islam, in Iraqi Kurdistan. Most of its founding members were Iraqi Kurdish Islamists who fought in Afghanistan and had strong ties with al-Qaeda.

According to Ansar prisoners in Iraq, many received al-Qaeda training in Afghanistan and then returned to Iraq to conduct attacks against the secular Kurdish political parties, and later against US targets in Iraq.

Ansar's fighters fled the mountains of Iraq last March after an American cruise missile pounded their headquarters. Ground assaults on Ansar-held areas continued throughout the war, and most of the surviving fighters, thought to be close to 800, fled east into Iran.

"When we were fleeing to Iran after the US bombing, the Iranian authorities singled out the Ansar fighters and their families, and took them away in military cars," said Golala Salih, a resident of the Iraqi town Tawela which sits on the Iraq-Iran border and was the former stronghold of Ansar al-Islam.

"They did not let us [ordinary refugees] cross into Iran."

Like most non-Ansar people named in this story, Salih is not her real name, as it has been changed for her protection. Most Ansar operatives are identified but they use code names, which change with their location.

The Ansar gunmen and their families who crossed the border are now in camps at the foot of an Iranian mountain range - the first in Baramawa village, 20 kilometres west of Mariwan, and the Darbandi Dizly camp further to the west, say residents of the area.

In addition to being outsiders, the militants, who wear the short-hemmed garment and grow the trimmed beard associated with Sunni radicals, are highly conspicuous in the region.

The area is renowned for its spectacular beauty, and, perhaps more importantly for the Ansar gunmen, it is surrounded by forests and rugged mountains and lies close to the Iraqi border.

Ansar fighters and their families are now mixed in with the local villages, leaving the residents feeling fearful and resentful.

"Since these gunmen and their families have been living here, we have been in constant fear," said Mam Rasoul, an elderly resident of the village. "The US might fire missiles at them, or the Kurdish peshmerga (soldiers) might come here to get them."

Others are resentful of the apparent financial support the Islamic fighters are receiving. "They get food rations and money every month," said Gulnaz, an elderly woman who lives in Daranaxa village near the Darbandi Dizly Ansar camp. She says that the Ansar group's living standards are better than long time residents of the area.

A high-ranking Iraqi security official said that while the foot soldiers of Ansar are living in these camps "their leadership and cohorts in other radical Islamic parties are spread over the Iranian Kurdish cities and towns of Bokan, Sanandij, Mariwan and Saqiz".

Two prominent Kurdish newcomers in the area bear the same names as Iraqi Ansar activists known to Iraqi intelligence.

Both of them have been spotted by locals going to a three-story house in Mariwan's Zrebar Road occupied by Iraqi Kurds with beards and short-hemmed trousers, which locals say was until recently one of Ansar's two headquarters in the town. The second is a two-story marble building near its Stadium Roundabout.

One of the two local Ansar leaders is Sheikh Jamal, who lives in the Laylakh district of Mariwan. His neighbours told IWPR that he spent the last five years in Afghanistan fighting with al-Qaeda and that he is now teaching military tactics to Ansar al-Islam new recruits.

The Iraqi security official said that they know of a Sheikh Jamal but could not confirm that he is the Mariwan Ansar official. "They use different code names in different cities," said the official. "Some had a codename in the town and different one in the mountain."

The second leader is Zryan Hawleri, whom Iraqi officials say is a top Ansar operative from Arbil in Iraq, now living in Mariwan.

Residents of Mariwan say that an out-of-town Kurd by that name currently owns a small corner shoe repair store.

A nearby shopkeeper said that he does not believe that Hawleri has come to Mariwan for business, "He is not working most of the time and receives many visitors."

According to a local Iranian interior ministry official, Hawleri has probably received a new identity from Iranian intelligence.

The official, who disapproves of the Islamists' presence in the region and fears they will radicalise the local population, showed IWPR a copy of an Iranian ID card with Hawleri's picture.

It was issued by the Islamic Hawza of Iran, the Islamic Shia school of Iran, with the name of Zryan Ali Pour, an Iranian surname.

The official said he was ordered by the Iranian Ittilaat intelligence service to provide special permits, required by foreigners to rent houses, to other likely militants, including two Afghans wearing Salafi garb who rented a mud-brick house in a district heavily populated by Ansar members.

A neighbour said that during Ramadan the two men received 15 to 20 visitors every night. Most had long beards and short Kurdish trousers, another Salafi trademark. "The meetings would last until midnight," the neighbour said.

The official, as well as an IWPR reporter, have also seen Kurdish Islamists being given rides in the Iranian-made pickups and landcruisers favoured by the Ittalat.

IWPR also met a young man who claims he signed up with the group in the town of Sanandij for 250 US dollars a month.

"Ansar al-Islam was able to attract 150 to 200 young Kurds from the poor neighborhoods of the town," the recruit said.

He said he is not a supporter of the group's ideology but joined only for the income. He further said that he disapproves of Ansar tactics which he says exploits needy people. "Leading people in Ansar would not themselves do what they are asking the poor foot soldiers to do," he said.

He told IWPR, on the condition of anonymity, that the Sanandij branch of the group has ties with a newly-formed group in Pakistan called Tabligh, or proselytizing.

Once Ansar leaders feel they can trust a recruit, he said, they are sent to the Iranian city of Zahedan on the Pakistani border for political and military training - and while he has not been trained himself, 35 new recruits left for training in two camps in May.

The local ministry of interior official also said that militants are sent for training in Baluchistan, the region of Iran in which Zahedan is located.

An Iranian journalist who has extensively covered militant affairs in Afghanistan says that before the toppling of the Taleban regime, Kurdish militants received training in the Afghan city of Herat.

After 2001, he says, the Iranians allowed fleeing al-Qaeda operatives to set up in two camps on the Afghan and Pakistani borders, one of which lies near Zahedan.

The Ansar presence in Iranian Kurdistan has coincided with the growth of Sunni radicalism in the region.

Mullah Muhammed is the most prominent preacher of Yakshawa village near the city of Bokan. Locals refer to this Iranian Kurdish cleric as the Ansar head there.

Mullah Muhammed is a popular preacher. One young government employee who attends Muhammed's Friday sermons regularly says that he understands Islam "better than anyone else" and can explain things very clearly.

"He attacks the Kurdish secular parties of Iran and Iraq, and says that jihad is the only right path for Islam," said the government worker.

Ansar also maintains what appears to be a propaganda apparatus in Mariwan. The sermons and speeches of Ansar leaders and other radical Sunnis are on sale in the town's shops.

Studio Dangi Islam, the Voice of Islam, is a record shop that sells CDs of speeches of Mullah Krekar, the Ansar leader, Osama Bin Laden, Taleban leader Mullah Omer, the Iraqi Kurdish Islamic Group leader Ali Bapir, and other hard-line mullahs. It also sells video CDs of Ansar battles in Iraqi Kurdistan.

In a number book stores, some of the most prominent titles are biographies of Bin Laden and Mullah Omer that were published in early 2003 by the Iranian ministry of culture. The ministry banned them in mid-2003 but copies still circulate.