BY MOHAMAD BAZZI
MIDDLE EAST CORRESPONDENT

December 24, 2004

IRBIL, Iraq -- The group that claimed responsibility for Tuesday's attack on a U.S. military base in Mosul is an offshoot of a Kurdish militant group that pioneered the use of suicide bombings in Iraq, Kurd.ish security officials say.

Ansar al-Sunna took credit for the apparent suicide bombing inside a dining tent on the U.S. base, which killed 22 people including 14 American service members. The group has absorbed members and leaders from Ansar al-Islam, a militant organization that fought a two-year civil war aimed at toppling In 2001, Ansar al-Islam was the first group to dispatch suicide bombers in Iraq during its battle with other Kurdish factions. Ansar al-Islam ("Partisans of Islam") moved its operations to Mosul after it was driven out of a remote, mountainous part of northern Iraq by U.S. bombardment last year. Kurdish officials say the group, which once had about 700 members, has provided

"During the war, many Ansar al-Islam members fled from Iraq. They returned after the war, and they split into several factions," said Dana Ahmad Majid, head of security for the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, one of two parties that control the autonomous Kurdish region.
"There were some ideological splits, and there was also a decision by some of the leadership to create other groups."

Ansar al-Islam members splintered into small cells and began working with Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, according to Majid and other Kurdish officials. Some Ansar members gravitated toward two groups with strong ties to al-Zarqawi: Tawhid wa Jihad ("Monotheism and Holy War")

"There are no defined boundaries between many of these militant groups," said Sadi Ahmed Pire, head of security operations in Mosul for the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. "People move between different groups at different times."

Some Kurdish officials theorize that the leaders of Ansar al-Islam effectively renamed the group Ansar al-Sunna in order to shed its Kurdish identity and attract Sunni Arabs into its ranks. The Sunna is the collection of sayings and traditions of the Prophet Muhammad, and most Sunni militants regard it as the only other source of Islamic guidance besides the Quran.

Ansar al-Sunna declared its existence on Sept. 20, 2003, by issuing a statement on an Islamist Web site. "Jihad in Iraq has become an individual duty of every Muslim after the infidel enemy attacked the land of Islam," the group said in its founding declaration.

A Kurdish intelligence official said Ansar al-Sunna quickly began to draw Sunni Arabs from Iraq and other Sunni fighters from neighboring Arab countries. "They repackaged the message of Ansar al-Islam as a pan-Islamic and pan-Arab movement," said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

In a videotape circulated on the Internet, the group presented seven young men who it described as volunteers for suicide attacks. Six spoke Arabic with a different accent than Iraqis, suggesting that they were foreign jihadists. The seventh appeared to be an Iraqi Kurd.

In a sign of how difficult it is to track Islamic militant groups, Kurdish officials disagree on exactly who is leading Ansar al-Sunna. Pire said the group is led by Mahdi Al-Humaira, a Sunni Arab from Mosul, and Sheik Abdullah Shafi, a Kurd and a former leader of Ansar al-Islam. Between 2001 and 2003, Shafi helped recruit and train more than 20 suicide bombers for Ansar al-Islam, according to Kurdish officials who have interrogated prisoners from the group.

But the intelligence official, who is from the Kurdistan Democratic Party, said Ansar al-Sunna is led by Abu Abdullah bin Mahmoud, a Jordanian with ties to al-Zarqawi. Bin Mahmoud has signed several statements as the group's "emir," or prince.

Ansar al-Sunna claimed responsibility for twin suicide bombings on Feb. 1 in Irbil, the capital of Iraq's Kurdish region. The attacks killed 105 people and injured 130 others. The bombings targeted offices of the two major Kurdish parties, and several of those killed were senior Kurdish leaders. But some Kurdish security officials blamed Ansar al-Islam for the Irbil attacks.

Over the past year, Ansar al-Sunna has claimed responsibility for several suicide bombings, beheadings, assassinations and kidnappings throughout central and northern Iraq. One of its most gruesome acts was the videotaped execution of 12 Nepalese hostages in August. 

Ansar al-Islam was the most violent offshoot of an Islamist movement that has a long history in Kurdish politics. The largest group, the Islamic Movement in Kurdistan, has renounced violence and is participating in the Kurdish self-government led by secular parties. Kurdish Islamists were inspired by the 1979 Islamic Revolution in neighboring Iran, even though most Kurds belong to the Sunni branch of Islam while the majority of Iranians are Shia Muslims. Militant Islam received another local boost in 1988, when Saddam Hussein's regime, with chemical weapons, killed 5,000 Kurds in the city of Halabjah. The Islamists exploited the chemical attacks and the poverty that followed the 1991 Gulf War.

The Kurdish Islamist parties adhere to Salafism, an austere brand of Sunni Islam that was relatively unknown in Iraqi Kurdistan until about two decades ago. It arrived from Saudi Arabia, through Kurds' exposure to Saudi fighters in Afghanistan and through Saudi financial backing of charitable activities in northern Iraq after the area was opened up in the early 1990s. Most Kurds, by contrast, are Shafiite Sunnis, a branch with a far less stern interpretation of Islam. The majority of Kurds display few signs of deep religious devotion.