Review Operation Hotel California, The Clandestine War Inside Iraq

Tucker, Mike Faddis, Charles, Operation Hotel California, The Clandestine War Inside Iraq, Guilford: The Lyons Press, 2009

 

Operation Hotel California, The Clandestine War Inside Iraq is based upon the recollections of a CIA officer who was sent into Iraqi Kurdistan in 2002 to prepare for the U.S. invasion. There are short parts by the two authors Mike Tucker and Charles Faddis but the vast majority of the book are long transcripts of the agent recollecting his experiences. The CIA agent loved working with the Kurds and felt like they accomplished a lot but he was very critical of Turkey, the CIA leadership and the Bush administration who he blames for all kinds of problems with the invasion and the postwar chaos.

Review The Master Plan, ISIS, Al-Qaeda, and the Jihadi Strategy For Final Victory

Fishman, Brian, The Master Plan, ISIS, Al-Qaeda, and the Jihadi Strategy For Final Victory, New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2016

 

Brian Fishman’s The Master Plan, ISIS, Al-Qaeda, and the Jihadi Strategy For Final Victory has an inherent problem. The start of the book tries to link a plan for the future jihad written by Al Qaeda’s security chief and the book The Management of Savagery with the Islamic State. The problem was the Islamic State came up with its own strategy and had a history of not listening to Al Qaeda. If that part was removed The Master Plan would be a very good book on how Zarqawism developed and IS’s relationship with other Islamists.

Islamic State’s Appeal To Iraq’s Kurds

The Islamic State recently issued a video attempting to appeal to Kurds. It had four IS members talk about the Kurdish role in Islam from scholars to Salahaddin al-Ayubi who defeated the Crusaders trying to relate his struggle against the Christians to the Islamic State’s fight versus the west. The video also touched on modern times accusing Massoud Barzani and Jalal Talabani of being tyrants and condemning Kurdish nationalism with an appeal to Islam as their true calling. It’s believed that around 500 Iraqi and Turkish Kurds have joined the organization over the years. Iraqi Kurdistan also has a history of Salafism in the rural areas of Sulaymaniya.

Kurdistan had its own Islamist parties that eventually became more radicalized and moved towards Salafism. In the late 1970s spurred on by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the Iranian Revolution Islamic radicalism spread to Kurdistan. One early group was known as the Islamic Kurdish Army, which sent fighters to Afghanistan. Another was the Islamic Movement in Iraqi Kurdistan based out of Halabja. The group was led by Mullah Osman Abdul al-Aziz who came out of the Muslim Brotherhood. He declared jihad against the Iraqi government. The Anfal campaign in the late 80s scattered the group, but it made a comeback in the aftermath of the Gulf War. Later two more radical Salafi groups were formed in the area, Kurdish Hamas and Tawhid, with many veterans of the war in Afghanistan amongst them. Those two groups later joined together in 2001 to become Jund al-Islam. It called for jihad against the ruling Kurdish parties. Mullah Krekar later assumed control of the group and it became Ansar al-Islam that formed ties with Al Qaeda and hosted Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in 2002. After 2003 Ansar fighters would help create Ansar al-Sunna and join the Iraqi insurgency. When the Islamic State of Iraq was rebuilding in 2013 had a Kurdish wing headed by Syrians. (1) After IS took Mosul the group had a Kurdish commander named Abu Khattab al-Kurdi who had many fighters from Halabja that took part in the fighting for Kobane, Syria in 2014. Given that history it appears that there are still young Kurds who are open to Salafism in the rural areas of Kurdistan like Halabja that might heed the Islamic State’s latest video.

FOOTNOES

1. Al Rayy, “Security expert: Daash establish a new mandate in Kurdistan,” 12/21/13

SOURCES

International Crisis Group, “Radical Islam In Iraqi Kurdistan: The Mouse That Roared?” 2/7/03

Nance, Malcolm, The Terrorists of Iraq, Boca Raton, London, New York: CRC Press, 2015

Al Rayy, “Security expert: Daash establish a new mandate in Kurdistan,” 12/21/13

Salih, Mohammed, “How Islamic State is trying to lure Kurds to its ranks,” Al Monitor, 8/12/16

Speri, Alice, “Not All Kurds Are Fighting Against the Islamic State – Some Are Joining It,” Vice, 11/7/14

Iran’s Ties With Al Qaeda In Iraq’s Abu Musab al-Zarqawi

The history of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi the founder of Al Qaeda in Iraq has largely been written. He grew up as a petty criminal in Jordan, travelled to Afghanistan twice after the war with the Soviets was over and set up his own camp with the help of Al Qaeda, was imprisoned in Jordan, and eventually went to Iraq to fight the Americans. The one part of his life that has not been written about much was his two stints in Iran in 2001 and 2003 and his ties with the government there. Zarqawi originally began running his supply lines through Iran to his camp in Afghanistan, and later received direct support from Tehran when he was building up his terrorist network in Germany and Iraq.

When Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was organizing his jihadist organization in Afghanistan called Jund al-Sham it included cells and routes through Iran. In 1999, Zarqawi travelled to Afghanistan for the second time after he was amnestied from prison in Jordan. When he arrived in the country he stayed in an area under the control of the warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Zarqawi then met with Osama bin Laden in Kandahar. The two did not get along as they had different views on jihad, but prominent Al Qaeda leader Saif al-Adel thought that the group should maintain contacts with Zarqawi That led Al Qaeda to provide Zarqawi with $200,000 to help him set up his own camp in Herat along the Afghanistan-Iranian border in 2000. There he went about creating his own network that stretched to Europe and Iran. The Iranian city of Mashhad for example, became an important way station for men and material to enter Zarqawi’s camp. His top operative in Iran was a man named Abu Ali who ran and coordinated a cell in Germany. Afghanistan had become a failed state controlled by various factions and warlords after the Soviet withdrawal in 1989. Zarqawi had missed out on the war against the communists in the country, but like many other jihadists felt it provided a perfect setting to start his own organization. This was probably where Tehran first became aware of his activities as it supported both Hekmatyar and Al Qaeda. It also did nothing about him establishing his supply lines through Iran.

Zarqawi would become more involved with Iran after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. In October 2001 the Americans began their campaign to overthrow the Taliban. Zarqawi and his men fought alongside Al Qaeda in Herat and Kandahar, during which time he was wounded by a U.S. airstrike. The war drove Zarqawi and 300 of his men to flee to Iran in December. He then went to Tehran for medical treatment on his injury. Zarqawi ended up staying in Iran until April 2002, and was initially hosted by a follower of Hekmatyar who he’d met from his time in Afghanistan. Zarqawi then set about rebuilding his organization, setting up camps and safe houses in Zahedan, Isfahan, and Tehran. He also established ties with Ansar al-Islam in Iraq’s Kurdistan, and travelled to Lebanon, Syria and the rest of Iraq to recruit. Germany’s Federal Office of Criminal Investigation (BKA) in an investigation that ended in the arrest of a Zarqawi cell found evidence that Iran was actively supporting him at this time. According to the German Federal Intelligence Service (BND), the Iranian Revolutionary Guard provided Zarqawi with phone numbers he could use. Jordanian intelligence seconded the Germans, and claimed that Iran provided weapons, uniforms, and equipment to the terrorist. When Zarqawi was based in Afghanistan, the Iranian authorities turned a blind eye to his activities in their country. When he relocated there in 2001, they became more actively involved in his operations. As long as he was focused upon striking the west and Arab governments Tehran didn’t appear to have any problems with him being in the country.

During this time Zarqawi met back up with Al Qaeda leader Saif al-Adel in Iran, and the two decided that Iraq should be their next focus due to the impending U.S. invasion. Adel would later write that Iraq would be the perfect opportunity to create an Islamic State. The American intervention could be used as a rallying cry for the Islamic masses to be radicalized and turned towards jihad. Zarqawi then decided upon a two-part plan. First, most of his men would move to Kurdistan and work with Ansar al-Islam in preparation for the American arrival. Other would go to Germany where they were to carry out terrorist attacks upon Jewish targets. Zarqawi and Adel were right, Iraq did provide a turning point for jihadists, and turned the former into an international terrorist that would rival even bin Laden. His activities in Germany would also hasten his move into Iraq.

In April 2002 Zarqawi’s cell in Germany was arrested leading to the West to put pressure on Iran to crackdown on his group. The detention of Zarqawi’s men in Germany alerted the western authorities to his presence in Iran and how his network was working. Both Germany and the United States complained to Tehran about it harboring the terrorist. The Iranians responded by arresting Zarqawi and almost all of his operatives in the country. They were released after a few weeks. That led Zarqawi to leave the country for Syria, and then Iraqi Kurdistan. By May 2002 Zarqawi was in Baghdad organizing for the U.S. invasion. Zarqawi was still a rather minor jihadist leader at the time. While Tehran had supported him to keep tabs on the radical Islamist community, he was not important enough to be protected. Zarqawi could see that and he was already planning on moving to Iraq, so these events simply moved forward his timetable.

The Iraq war actually made Zarqawi turn to Iran one more time. Zarqawi and his allies in Ansar al-Islam had their camps wiped out in Kurdistan during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Both ended up going to Iran as a result as both had ties with Tehran. There, Zarqawi met up with Saif al-Adel once again who asked for help getting Al Qaeda operatives into Iraq. Zarqawi agreed to funnel them via his networks in Syria, and many of them joined his organization Tawhid wal Jihad, which would later become known as Al Qaeda in Iraq.

The major question that comes to mind when reading these reports of ties between Iran and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was why would they work together when Zarqawi was so vehemently anti-Shiite? There are many possible answers. First, many governments in the Middle East maintained ties to jihadist organizations even ones they didn’t agree with to surveil them. Second, Tehran saw that Zarqawi could further its foreign policy goals. This started in Afghanistan as Zarqawi was setting up his first camp. The Iranian government might have thought they could use him later on if he made anything out of himself. That happened when Zarqawi decided to move to Iraq as both he and Iran were interested in fighting the Americans and undermining their plans for a post-Saddam nation. For Zarqawi he apparently found Tehran a marriage of convenience. He could use Iran as a way station for his men that did not rely upon routes through Pakistan, which were dominated by the established jihadist groups in Afghanistan. After Zarqawi returned to Iraq for good after the U.S. invasion there was little on his ties with Tehran. What is clear is that he established relations with the Iranian government that lasted from 2000 to at least 2003. They both benefited as Zarqawi found a base and safe haven to work out of, while Iran ended up backing the deadliest insurgent faction against the U.S. occupation of Iraq. Tawhid wal Jihad’s bombings in Baghdad in 2003 drove off many foreign countries, companies, and international organizations that might have helped the Americans, thus immediately undermining reconstruction. Today, Iran is fighting Zarqawi’s successor the Islamic State, but at one time the two worked together. Such is the Byzantine nature of Middle Eastern politics.

SOURCES

Brisard, Jean-Charles Martinez, Damien, Zarqawi: The New Face of Al-Qaeda, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2005

Bunzel, Cole, “From Paper State to Caliphate: The Ideology of the Islamic State,” The Brookings Project on U.S. Relations with the Islamic World, March 2015

Darling, Dan, “The Cicero Articles,” Long War Journal, 10/30/05

Debat, Alexis, “Vivisecting the Jihad,” National Interest, 6/23/04

Gambill, Gary, “Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi: A Biographical Sketch,” Jamestown Foundation, 12/15/04

Isikoff, Michael, “Distorted Intelligence?” Newsweek, 6/25/03

Kirdar, M.J., “Al Qaeda In Iraq,” Center for Strategic and International Studies, June 2011

Leiken, Robert and Brooke, Steven, “Who Is Abu Zarqawi?” Weekly Standard, 5/18/04

Napoleoni, Loretta, Insurgent Iraq, Al Zarqawi and the New Generation, New York: Seven Stories Press, 2005

New York Times, “Militants linked to al Qaeda rallying in Iraq, Bremer says,” San Francisco Chronicle, 8/10/03

Roggio, Bill, “Saif al-Adel, Zarqawi, al Qaeda and Iran,” Long War Journal, 6/16/05

Schanzer, Jonathan, “Ansar al-Islam: Back in Iraq,” Middle East Quarterly, Winter 2004

Symon, Fiona, “The devil America knows,” Financial Times, 9/24/04

Weaver, Mary Anne, “The Short, Violent Life of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi,” The Atlantic, July/August 2006

Weiss, Michael Hassan, Hassan, ISIS, Inside the Army of Terror, New York: Regan Arts, 2015

Why Didn’t Bush Strike Zarqawi And Ansar al-Islam In 2002?

The August 2009 issue of the Journal of Strategic Studies contains an article by Micah Zenko entitled, “Foregoing Limited Force: The George W. Bush Administration’s Decision Not to Attack Ansar Al-Islam.” Before 2003, the Bush White House singled out Ansar al-Islam, a Kurdish Islamist group, and its camp in Kurdistan as a reason to invade Iraq. The U.S. claimed hundreds of Al Qaeda fighters had fled there after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. One of these was Abu Musab al-Zarqawi who the administration said was an Al Qaeda terrorist leader. Finally, they said that Ansar was producing weapons of mass destruction (WMD), and was supported by Saddam’s government. The base appeared to fit all of the criteria of President Bush’s new war on terror because it was an intersection of a dictator that supported terrorists working with Al Qaeda on WMD. In 2002 the U.S. drew up several plans to destroy Ansar’s base, but Bush vetoed the idea with no explanation. Zenko argues that the President made this decision because he thought that military action could derail the invasion of Iraq.

9/11 forever changed the Bush administration’s foreign policy. In the president’s first speech after the attack he said that the U.S. would not only go after terrorists, but the states that supported them. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz went even farther on September 13, 2001 when he said that the U.S. would end states that sponsored terrorism. This new stance was solidified in the President’s January 2002 Axis of Evil State of the Union where he said that preventing countries from possessing weapons of mass destruction and providing them to terrorists would be America’s new top priority. How this was going to be achieved was outlined in an address the President gave at West Point in June 2002 where he said the U.S. had the right to conduct pre-emptive wars to deal with threats in the newpost-9/11 world. This idea was incorporated into the White House’s September 2002 National Security Strategy that was very similar to a Defense Policy Guidance paper written by Wolfowitz in 1992, who was then Undersecretary of Defense for Policy under the 1st President Bush that called for unilateralism in foreign policy and pre-emptive war.

In a March 2002 issue of the New Yorker Jeffrey Goldberg wrote a piece about a Kurdish terrorist group called Ansar Al-Islam entitled “A Reporter at Large: The Great Terror.” While on a trip to Kurdistan he was taken to a jail controlled by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) where he interviewed three prisoners who claimed, amongst other things, that Ansar was secretly controlled by Iraqi intelligence. This article caught the eye of the Bush administration.

Ansar was a breakaway group from the Islamic Movement of Iraqi Kurdistan, formed at the beginning of September 2001. They operated in a small camp near the town of Khurmal along the Iranian border. They declared war on the PUK and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), and invited Islamist militants to join their fight. They received support from Al Qaeda, Saudi Arabia, and Iran. They had about 600-1,000 fighters, who were quickly joined by thousands of militants, including Al Qaeda members, fleeing the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his Jund al-Sham group, Soldiers of the Levant, were one such group who arrived in the Ansar camp in December 2001.

Beginning in March 2002 the Bush administration began discussing what to do about Ansar, its growing camp of militants, and Zarqawi. In May the Joint Chiefs of Staff received its first intelligence briefing that said Ansar was a separate group from Al Qaeda, and that it was working on poisons. The Pentagon also began working on military plans against the camp. In the meantime officials were split over what to do, some were for taking action, and others were not. By June the White House was presented with a recommendation for a joint air-ground strike against the Khurmal base. The President vetoed the plan, but with no explanation even though it seemed like a perfect case to apply the new Bush doctrine to fight terrorism, the spread of WMD, and their state sponsors.

Zenko goes over four theories for why Bush might have made this decision. The first was that the threat was not great enough. The problem with this was that the reports about Zarqawi’s presence in the Ansar camp and the group’s production of WMD was believed to be real and a growing danger. Administration officials, beginning in May 2002 also began mentioning the importance of Ansar as an example of Iraq’s alleged support for Al Qaeda. Second was that there was no actionable intelligence to base the attack upon, but that was countered by the National Security Council’s Director for Combating Terrorism, Kurdish intelligence, and others who all said that Zarqawi was at the camp at that time. Third was that the White House was afraid of any possible negative repercussions of an attack such as dead American soldiers or civilian casualties. Zenko refutes this by going through a series of limited strikes by other presidents that failed, but had no real repercussions. Bush himself was also not against limited strikes as he okayed several missile attacks against Al Qaeda operatives in western and central Asia. The last possible reason was that Bush did not want to derail the drive to overthrow Saddam by a sideshow like attacking the Ansar camp. Sometime in the first half of 2002 the President decided to remove Saddam by force. In April 2002 Bush told the BBC that, “I made up my mind that Saddam needs to go.” In a July 23, 2002 memo from the British cabinet, Sir Richard Dearlove, the head of British intelligence, said that after a recent trip to Washington he came away with the impression that the U.S. was now committed to using force to remove Saddam. Geoffrey Hoon, the Defense Minister said that the Americans had come to no specific decision yet, but he expected the invasion to begin by January 2003. Douglas Feith, former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy told Zenko in 2006 that a strike on the Ansar camp that turned up nothing would’ve been problematic for the push to remove Saddam. General Jack Keane, who was the Army Chief of Staff at the time, said that he kept asking about striking Ansar in the fall of 2002 and the spring of 2003 and was told that it was too close to the invasion date. To Zenko this was the most convincing reason for Bush’s decision.

During the 2003 invasion, U.S. and Kurdish forces took the Ansar camp after four days of fighting. There they found that Ansar was working on poisons and WMD. They did not find evidence that the group was supported by Baghdad however. The group did receive foreign aid, and was considering launching attacks in other countries. Zarqawi was no longer at the camp though, having left when plans for a military strike against Ansar began leaking out to the press in 2002. Khurmal turned out to be the only place in Iraq that the U.S. actually found WMD being produced, which was the major justification for the war in the first place.

Bush’s decision not to attack the Ansar camp and Zarqawi was not only a tactical error, but showed that removing Saddam was the centerpiece of the Bush administration by 2002. Zenko writes that this was a mistake because Zarqawi became a leader of the insurgency in Iraq, was also responsible for terrorist attacks in Jordan, and organized a network that reached into France, Germany, Italy, Norway, Saudi Arabia, Spain, and Turkey. In late 2004 he also joined Al Qaeda, and gave them a new base of operations outside of their strongholds in Afghanistan and Pakistan. His reign of terror could’ve been ended before the war. Bush’s decision not to attack the Ansar base also showed that by the summer of 2002 the President was focused upon planning and preparing for the invasion of Iraq, and apparently did not want other operations in the country that could detract from the ultimate goal of removing Saddam from power. This was seen in the fact that the Ansar camp and Zarqawi increasingly became talking points in speeches by the president and other administration officials advocating for war, while people like General Jack Keane were told that the U.S. would do nothing about them.

SOURCES

Eisenberg, Daniel, “’We’re Taking Him Out,’” Time, 5/5/02

Goldberg, Jeffrey, “A Reporter at Large: The Great Terror,” New Yorker, 3/25/02

Karon, Tony, “Why Saddam Remains a Tough Target,” Time, 1/30/02

PBS Frontline, “Chronology: The Evolution of the Bush Doctrine,” War Behind Closed Doors, 2/20/03
- “Interview Richard Perle,” Truth, War and Consequences, 10/9/03
- “The War Behind Closed Doors – Transcript,” War Behind Closed Doors, 2/20/03

Zenko, Micah, “Foregoing Limited Force: The George W. Bush Administration’s Decision Not to Attack Ansar Al-Islam,” Journal of Strategic Studies, August 2009