Are you talkin' 'bout Zarqawi. He's been linked in Iraq to Ansar al-Islam, a terrorist group that declared its opposition to Saddam. But Ansar al-Islam ...
>>>was able to develop relatively unhindered and beyond Saddam Hussein's control thanks to Western-enforced no-fly zones in the north of the country during the oil for sanctions programme in the 1990s.
Supporters set up an enclave near the Iranian border ruled by strict Islamic law.<<<
telegraph.co.uk
More on Ansar al-Islam:
>>>American officials maintain that Ansar al-Islam is closely associated with al-Qaeda, that its members trained in al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan, and that it continues to receive funding, training, equipment, and combat support from al-Qaeda. They say that Ansar al-Islam in turn provided safe haven for al-Qaeda fighters fleeing Afghanistan following the fall of the Taliban regime there in late 2001. In the run-up to its invasion of Iraq, the US accused former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein of links with al-Qaeda, a claim it could never substantiate. Subsequently, it named Ansar al-Islam as the "missing link" between the Iraqi government and al-Qaeda.
While Ansar al-Islam's ties with al-Qaeda might indeed be strong and growing, to describe it as an al-Qaeda surrogate, as have sections of the Western media, would be overstating the link. For one, Ansar al-Islam might have received seed money from al-Qaeda, but its origin and formation had more to do with local circumstances rather than with al-Qaeda's global mission. And the deepening relationship is more of a post-invasion phenomenon, with al-Qaeda seeing an opportunity in Ansar al-Islam as well as the chaotic situation in occupied Iraq to further its agenda.<<<
atimes.com
Note further that Iraq is not mentioned at all in the below testimony. Consider also that OBL viewed Saddam's secular government an "infidel government."
>>>Congressional Testimony December 18, 2001, Tuesday
SUBCOMMITTEE ON INTERNATIONAL OPERATIONS AND TERRORISM
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS, UNITED STATES SENATE
"GLOBAL REACH OF AL-QAEDA "
TESTIMONY-BY: J.T. CARUSO, ACTING ASSISTANT DIRECTOR
AFFILIATION: COUNTERTERRORISM DIVISION FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION
STATEMENT OF J. T. CARUSO ACTING ASSISTANT DIRECTOR COUNTERTERRORISM DIVISION FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION
TESTIMONY-BY: J.T. CARUSO, ACTING ASSISTANT DIRECTOR
AFFILIATION: COUNTERTERRORISM DIVISION FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION
Good morning, Madam Chairwoman and Members of the Subcommittee. My name is J.T. Caruso and I am the Acting Assistant Director of the FBI's Counterterrorism Division. I am pleased to appear before the Subcommittee to discuss Al Qaeda International.
From its inception until approximately 1991, the group was headquartered in Afghanistan and Peshawar, Pakistan. Then in 1991, the group relocated to the Sudan where it was headquartered until approximately 1996, when Bin Laden, Mohammed Atef and other members of Al-Qaeda returned to Afghanistan. During the years Al- Qaeda was headquartered in Sudan the network continued to maintain offices in various parts of the world and established businesses which were operated to provide income and cover to Al- Qaeda operatives.
AL-OAEDA TIES TO OTHER TERRORIST ORGANIZATIONS
Although Al-Qaeda functions independently of other terrorist organizations, it also functions through some of the terrorist organizations that operate under its umbrella or with its support, including: [I';m going to skip over this next bit] the Al-Jihad, the Al-Gamma Al-Islamiyya (Islamic Group - led by Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman and later by Ahmed Refai Taha, a/k/a "Abu Yasser al Masri, "), Egyptian Islamic Jihad, and a number of jihad groups in other countries, including the Sudan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Somalia, Eritrea, Djibouti, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bosnia, Croatia, Albania, Algeria, Tunisia, Lebanon, the Philippines, Tajikistan, Azerbaijan, the Kashmiri region of India, and the Chechen region of Russia. Al-Qaeda also maintained cells and personnel in a number of countries to facilitate its activities, including in Kenya, Tanzania, the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States. By banding together, Al-Qaeda proposed to work together against the perceived common enemies in the West - particularly the United States which Al-Qaeda regards as an "infidel" state which provides essential support for other "infidel" governments. Al-Qaeda responded to the presence of United States armed forces in the Gulf and the arrest, conviction and imprisonment in the United States of persons belonging to Al-Qaeda by issuing fatwahs indicating that attacks against U.S. interests, domestic and foreign, civilian and military, were both proper and necessary. Those fatwahs resulted in attacks against U.S. nationals in locations around the world including Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania, Yemen, and now in the United States. Since 1993, thousands of people have died in those attacks.<<<
Finally, there are the findings of America's 9/11 Commission which established no Saddam-Al Qaeda linkage:
washingtonpost.com |
