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Syria, Iran aid in terror, Iraqis say

"I do not want to accuse anyone, but we are not getting sufficient cooperation from our neighbors. If they believe they can play with the security of Iraq, they are playing with fire."

Hoshyar Zebari, Iraqi foreign minister

Senior Iraqi intelligence officials believe an Islamic militant group that has claimed responsibility for two suicide bombings in Irbil and a spate of deadly attacks in Baghdad, Fallujah and Mosul is receiving significant help from Syria and Iran.

The officials, who have been tracking the activities of domestic and foreign jihadists in northern Iraq, claim members of Jaish Ansar al-Sunna (the army of the supporters of the sayings of the prophet) have been "given shelter by Syrian and Iranian security agencies and have been able to enter Iraq with ease."

The group is suspected of training and deploying suicide bombers against US forces in Iraq, as well as against Iraqis deemed to be collaborating with the US.

Jaish Ansar al-Sunna was among a dozen Islamic militant organizations that issued a joint statement two weeks ago in Ramadi and Fallujah, warning Iraqis against cooperating with the occupation.

It distributed CDs carrying video footage of some of its operations, which included attacks on US military convoys using roadside bombs.

US officials believe that since the capture of Saddam Hussein in December the insurgency in Iraq is increasingly being fought by Islamic guerrillas rather than former regime loyalists.

The emergence of Islamist extremist groups has added to the challenges faced by occupation authorities and local security forces in Iraq.

While Iraqi authorities are struggling to establish an effective intelligence operation in the center and south of the country, in the north they have been able to build on the existing intelligence network in the self-rule area that was the Kurds' first line of defense during the Saddam era.

An intelligence official in the northern city of Kirkuk said: "We have arrested a number of foreign Arabs that we believe may be connected to the global terror network.

"They all seemed to have Iranian or Syrian visas in their passports. A number of them told us they had received assistance in those countries."

He said Hassan Ghul, a suspected al-Qaeda operative found to be carrying a document calling for fomenting civil war in Iraq, had been arrested by Kurdish forces on the Iraqi side of the Iranian border near the town of Kalar. The Americans have said the 17-page letter was written by Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian fugitive allegedly linked to Osama bin Laden.

Jaish Ansar al-Sunna is also suspected of coordinating the infiltration of foreign militants -- experienced terrorists and young foot soldiers -- from Europe through Syria, the intelligence official said.

"We are not talking huge numbers, perhaps 100 since the war, but that is too much," he said. "We believe that there is a safe house for them near Damascus. They are crossing the border west of Mosul, then heading for Mosul before dispersing to other cities."

The official said Iran and Syria wanted to use the militant issue as a bargaining point in their relations with the US.

Hoshyar Zebari, the Iraqi foreign minister, said: "There are incidents of infiltration [into Iraq] from the outside.

"I do not want to accuse anyone, but we are not getting sufficient cooperation from our neighbors. If they believe they can play with the security of Iraq, they are playing with fire. It's very dangerous."

Damascus and Tehran reject allegations they are harboring or facilitating jihadists and point to their increased cooperation with George Bush's global war on terror.

According to the Iraqi intelligence officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, Jaish Ansar al-Sunna is believed to be a splinter group of Ansar al-Islam (supporters of Islam), an extreme Kurdish group with suspected links to al-Qaeda.

The group's leader is identified on its Web site as Abu Abdullah al-Hassan bin Mahmoud, thought to be the brother of a leading Ansar al-Islam fighter. Until the invasion of Iraq Ansar al-Islam controlled a string of villages high in the Zagros mountains near the Iranian border.

There they introduced Taliban-style rule and despised the secular, pro-American administrations of the two main Kurdish parties in the self-rule area, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, led by Jalal Talabani, and the Kurdistan Democratic party, led by Massoud Barzani, whose Irbil offices were targeted with synchronized suicide bombs on Feb. 1.

A total of 109 people were killed and scores more injured in that attack, the worst since the fall of Saddam.

Ansar al-Islam was ousted from its stronghold at the beginning of the war by a joint operation involving PUK peshmerga forces and US air power. Some 200 fighters fled to Iran, the intelligence official said. They had now had time to reorganize and had been filtering back into Iraq where they have joined Sunni Arab extremists to form the new group.
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