Wanted Iraqi May Be Al Qaeda Link

A mystery in the U.S.-declared war on terrorism is unfolding in a warren of mountain caves in northeastern Iraq known as Little Tora Bora, home to a core group of Al Qaeda fighters and a small army of local allies.

The mystery is personified by an enigmatic Iraqi based in the remote mountains who has U.S. intelligence asking: Who exactly is Abu Wael?

The answer could be pivotal in determining whether Iraqi President Saddam Hussein really has connections to Osama bin Laden. So far, the evidence is both intriguing and contradictory.

One body of evidence points to Abu Wael as a senior Iraqi intelligence officer and as Hussein’s secret liaison with Al Qaeda and its Iraqi affiliate, Ansar al-Islam, or Supporters of Islam. That would make him the long-sought connection between Iraq and Al Qaeda -- and justification for tying a U.S.-led military operation in Iraq to the war on terrorism.

But other evidence suggests that Abu Wael is a senior official in Ansar who deeply opposes Hussein as an autocrat in a secular regime that has brutally repressed Muslims.

The intelligence behind both claims comes largely from prisoners held at an unassuming compound of whitewashed buildings that houses the intelligence headquarters and jail in this bustling Kurdish city about an hour from Little Tora Bora. In recent months, the Kurds who run an autonomous statelet in northern Iraq and are allied with the United States have taken dozens of prisoners who have provided new pieces of the puzzle for U.S. intelligence.

That puzzle is still far from complete. But some facts are not disputed: Shortly before the Sept. 11 attacks, a group of Al Qaeda fighters left Afghanistan, and traveled smugglers’ routes through Iran into northern Iraq’s Kurdistan. Their goal was to establish a backup base for Al Qaeda, according to Al Qaeda members, U.S. intelligence and Kurdish officials.

The Al Qaeda fighters set up in the town of Al Biyara and nearby mountain villages where Kurdish militants had begun imposing the strict Islamic rule used by Afghanistan’s ousted Taliban regime. Ansar was then led by the charismatic Mullah Krekar, who had trained in the 1990s in Pakistan under Abdullah Azzam, one of Bin Laden’s early mentors. Abu Wael, who spent time in the 1990s in Afghanistan with Al Qaeda, was one of Krekar’s top lieutenants, the sources said.

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Post-9/11 Tension

Local tensions quickly escalated after Sept. 11. Within two weeks of the terrorist attacks in the United States, Ansar extremists attacked security forces of the pro-U.S. Kurdish government here. More than 20 Kurds were killed, their throats slit and bodies mutilated. Sporadic and deadly clashes have ensued.

In April, Ansar tried to assassinate Barham Salih, the prime minister of the eastern sector of Iraqi Kurdistan, and only missed through a fluke of timing. But five bodyguards were slain. In its Little Tora Bora redoubt, Ansar also tested primitive chemical weapons, including a cyanide gas, on farm animals this year, U.S. and Kurdish officials say.

For the Kurds, the 600 to 700 Ansar fighters and the 35 to 100 Al Qaeda members are now the most serious threat in Kurdistan, the only Iraqi region not under Hussein’s control -- and the only region that would welcome U.S. troops to oust him. Fighting broke out again Wednesday when Ansar guerrillas launched a surprise attack on Kurdish security forces, reportedly killing dozens.

So what has Abu Wael been doing in Kurdistan? Beyond the basic facts, stories from several prisoners diverge widely -- and the mystery deepens. The tales from two men illustrate the intelligence quandary.

Qassem Hussein Mohammed, 36, is a hulking Iraqi with a neat mustache who bears a slight resemblance to the Iraqi president. He claims to be an Iraqi intelligence agent captured by the Kurds in January en route to find Abu Wael, a colleague of 20 years.

According to Mohammed, Abu Wael was a major in the Iraqi army who joined Hussein’s top intelligence unit after finishing law school. He eventually became the clandestine link between Hussein’s regime and Al Qaeda, he said.

“In 1995, Abu Wael was instructed by Baghdad to go to Afghanistan to be the connection between Al Qaeda and Baghdad. He did this five years, until he came back to Kurdistan in 2000,” said Mohammed, who slowly chain-smoked through a long interview at the intelligence headquarters here.

Mohammed says he knows the details because he was the courier between Abu Wael and Baghdad -- traveling to both Afghanistan and Kurdistan.

The Kurds are eager to believe the linkage, which might bring U.S. intervention. But Hussein and Al Qaeda are odd bedfellows, U.S. officials and analysts note, in light of the Iraqi leader’s political paranoia about militant Islam, often a threat during his 23-year rule. He has ruthlessly quashed any Islamic stirrings.

But Mohammed, sentenced by the Kurds to six years in prison for spying, said the unusual alliance emerged out of a shared hatred for the United States and, more recently, a desire to uproot their joint U.S.-backed Kurdish rivals.

“Saddam’s long-term interests,” said Mohammed, “were more important than the ideology of an Islamic group.”

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Turning Point

The turning point was the 1991 Persian Gulf War. In 1992, Hussein hosted Ayman Zawahiri, Bin Laden’s top strategist and founder of Egypt’s Islamic Jihad, said Mohammed, who claimed to be in charge of guarding the delegation. Iraqi intelligence has also occasionally trained both Ansar and Al Qaeda operatives in explosives, chemical weapons and suicide missions, he alleged.

If true, this would be the most damning evidence yet uncovered about Hussein’s links to Al Qaeda -- a theory of top Bush administration officials that came into question after recent denials by Czech officials that Sept. 11 hijacker Mohamed Atta and Iraqi intelligence had met in Prague, the Czech capital.

But none of it is true, insisted Qayis Ibrahim Qadir, 27, a wiry assassin with a long, unkempt beard who said he worked closely with Abu Wael. Qadir was captured after trying to assassinate Salih, the Kurdish prime minister, and killing his bodyguards. The only one of three assassins to survive, he described himself as a “jihadi” and member of Ansar who also spent time in Yemen and worked with Al Qaeda in Kurdistan.

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Another Version

“Abu Wael is one of our leaders who spent many years in Afghanistan and knew Osama bin Laden. He would never work for Saddam, the worst kind of nonbeliever and a tyrant,” Qadir said with vehement assurance in a separate interview.

“In practical terms, it might be useful to have the support of a ruler or to play one ruler off against another,” he added. “That’s what they want you to believe. But I can promise you -- 1 million percent I promise you -- that Abu Wael had no ties to Saddam Hussein. We don’t have ties to any rulers.”

Ansar’s immediate mission is to expand its following and territory in Kurdistan and later to challenge the secular rule in Baghdad, Qadir said.

The identity and status of Abu Wael have become all the more important lately because Mullah Krekar, whose real name is Najm Din Faraj Ahmad, was stopped in Iran in September and deported to Amsterdam, where he is still being held. U.S. intelligence believes Ansar now wants to take Americans hostage to press for a swap.

But the whereabouts of Abu Wael are also in question. Mohammed, the Iraqi intelligence agent, says he had been dispatched to Kurdistan because Baghdad had lost contact with the Ansar official late last year. The last Iraqi intelligence knew, he said, Abu Wael was going to Afghanistan to meet Bin Laden.

Again, not so, said Qadir, the confessed assassin. Abu Wael was still working this year around Little Tora Bora.

And so the picture gets fuzzier. Said one senior U.S. official: “It’s one of the bottomless mysteries we face these days. We’re not sure where he is -- or if he’s even alive.”