Hinting at Hussein’s Links to Al Qaeda

Three months before the 2001 terrorist attacks, Rebwar Mohammed Abdul left this crowded city and moved to the mountains. He studied radical Islam and learned how to hurl grenades under the tutelage of a mullah accused of helping Al Qaeda set up sanctuaries in backwater villages of northern Iraq.

The villages along the Iranian border, part of an autonomous region of Iraq under the control of ethnic Kurds, have since fallen into the grip of a Taliban-like rigidity. Music is forbidden. Satellite dishes are confiscated. Bars of Lux soap bearing the image of a bare-shouldered woman are yanked from market stalls. Lessons in religious piety proliferate in the mosques. Bearded men with knives and Kalashnikovs keep order in the streets.

These hamlets and men like Abdul are one focus of the Bush administration’s assertions of connections between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. The White House claims that northern Iraq’s terrorist group, Ansar al-Islam, is a bridge between Osama bin Laden and Baghdad. That link, although largely unsubstantiated, is part of the administration’s argument that war against Hussein is justified.

The mountains here are laced with secrets and smugglers’ routes. It is hard to know what exists and what is shadow. There is little doubt, however, that Ansar al-Islam -- in its battle against a Kurdish government militia -- has become a surrogate for Al Qaeda. Bin Laden’s operatives are hiding in the rugged terrain of northern Iraq, and Ansar has sent teams to train at Al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan. Proving a strategic alliance between Ansar, Bin Laden and Hussein is more problematic.

One possible link U.S. authorities are investigating is Abdul’s mentor, Mullah Krekar, a radical Kurdish cleric with a history of association with top Al Qaeda members. Krekar was detained in September in the Netherlands on suspicion of terrorist activities and heroin trafficking. He was interrogated twice by FBI agents. The Dutch government released him for lack of evidence in January and sent him to Norway, where he has had refugee status since 1991.

The Bush administration is also suggesting that two other fugitives -- Abu Wael, a suspected senior Iraqi intelligence agent, and Abu Musab Zarqawi, an Al Qaeda chemical weapons expert -- connect Hussein to the terrorist network. Both are believed to have ties to Ansar, which U.S. officials surmise may also have connections to a group of Algerians arrested in Britain last month on suspicion of planning attacks with ricin, a biological toxin.

No direct evidence has been made public yet that Krekar, Wael and Zarqawi were acting with the blessing, or under the command, of Baghdad.

“It was crystal-clear what Al Qaeda wanted to set up in northern Iraq,” said Abdul, who spent nearly seven months in Ansar territory, much of it with Krekar’s guerrillas. “But I have no information about any links between Al Qaeda and Saddam.”

Abdul’s odyssey from shopkeeper to militant, and now prisoner, provides a glimpse into the hidden world of Ansar. According to Abdul, it also suggests that Al Qaeda was seeking a foothold in northern Iraq from which it could infiltrate the Middle East and Europe and tap Islamic extremist cells in Iran. This would be done beneath a “no-fly” zone patrolled by U.S. and British warplanes to protect 3.5 million Kurds from Hussein’s army.

Today, Abdul is housed behind the pale-green doors of Sulaymaniyah’s prison. He was arrested April 3 after an attempt on the life of Barham Salih, the prime minister of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, one of two main parties controlling the autonomous enclave in northern Iraq. Abdul was not involved in the attempt. He was arrested because of his links to Ansar terrorists, including his brother.

During interviews over recent days, Abdul said he was attracted to the teachings of radical Islamists but grew disillusioned. He was trained to fire rocket-propelled grenades, and he guarded an Islamist-held village in the mountains, but he said he ultimately rejected violence and extremism. He left the Ansar stronghold and returned to Sulaymaniyah in late 2001.

Abdul’s first encounter with radical Islam came in 1994, when, angered by secular politics, he joined the Islamic Movement of Kurdistan.

“I liked their teachings on the life of the prophet and their charitable works,” said Abdul, sitting in a prison interview room. “I came to believe that Islam was not just for morality but for ruling a government as well.”

He was intrigued by the teachings of Krekar, a cleric with a long relationship with Abdullah Azzam, a Palestinian and one of Al Qaeda’s founders. Krekar taught in Pakistan. He traveled frequently to Europe and Afghanistan, where in the 1980s he reportedly fought with Azzam against the Soviet army.

Abdul said Krekar seemed different from other Islamic leaders: “He was college-educated, and he had traveled. He had a broader view than just Kurdistan. At the time, he wasn’t interested in money or corruption. He was precise, and the way he spoke allowed him to reach the illiterate and the educated. He said Muslims should live in Europe to broaden themselves. He spoke of rights for women.”

But internal divisions weakened the Islamic movement in Kurdistan. By 2001, several groups had established themselves in the mountains and valleys along the Iranian border. Their goal was to forge a radical Islamic enclave and battle the Kurdish militia of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan for wider territory. Krekar, said Abdul, at first attempted to keep the Islamic Movement of Kurdistan united, but he eventually broke away and took 300 fighters into the mountains. Abdul was one of them.

Krekar used his earlier, more moderate teachings to attract followers, Abdul said. But in the mountains, things changed.

“It was then that his true radical nature appeared,” Abdul said. “When the Sept. 11 attacks happened in New York, he felt time was running out.

“I criticized Krekar after he praised the 9/11 attacks as being a great thing,” Abdul said. “I told him that Islam should be at war with the warriors of the U.S., not women and children.... But he said it was a duty for us all.”

Militant cells in northern Iraq had already been rotating teams to terrorist training camps in Afghanistan. In October 2000, according to Abdul, Krekar sent a guerrilla with the alias Mala Namo and two bodyguards into Iran and then on to Bin Laden’s camps. Other teams were also dispatched, including one from a group that included Wael, the suspected Iraqi agent.

“I never talked to Wael,” Abdul said, “but I saw him three times in meetings with Mullah Krekar. The mullah told us that Wael was a friend of his for 23 years and that they had met in Baghdad while Wael was an intelligence officer.”

When teams began returning from the Afghan camps in 2001, Abdul said, they carried a message from Bin Laden that Kurdish Islamic cells should unite. By that time, a number of Al Qaeda operatives had left Afghanistan and moved to northern Iraq. One of them, Abu Rahman Shami, was killed in a firefight with Patriotic Union of Kurdistan forces.

In December 2001, the cells united under the name Ansar al-Islam. Abdul said that militant leaders in Kurdistan were replicating Al Qaeda-type camps on military training, terrorism and suicide bombers but that the effort was slowed by fighting with the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan.

“Some of its recruits for the suicide camps were killed in battles before their training was complete,” he said.

Abdul said that he was told Ansar was working on chemical weapons but that he never saw them.

Kurdish and U.S. authorities allege that Ansar is manufacturing ricin, cyanide and aflatoxin. Kurdish officials say a cyanide-laced ointment was smuggled from northern Iraq into Turkey. A senior U.S. official said recently that there might be a link between Ansar and the group of Algerians arrested in Britain with ricin.

“Sept. 11 and the American attack on Afghanistan changed things,” Abdul said. “The plans and intentions to link Ansar and Al Qaeda became slower and weaker. The number of Al Qaeda Arabs escaping the bombing of Afghanistan began increasing. There were about 30 to 40 there before the bombing, and that went to about 70.... Ansar’s only real connection now with Al Qaeda is through the Internet.”

Krekar says he was interviewed by the FBI about connections between Ansar and Al Qaeda. He denies that Ansar has chemical weapons or ties to either Al Qaeda or Iraq.

Wael, the suspected Iraqi intelligence agent, has disappeared. Zarqawi, the Al Qaeda chemical weapons expert, also has vanished. He is wanted for involvement in the assassination last year of a U.S. aid worker in Jordan. Zarqawi reportedly had his leg amputated in a Baghdad hospital and may have sought refuge with Ansar in northern Iraq.