Fugitive henchmen of ousted Iraqi president Saddam Hussein have adopted the cover of influential Muslim mystic groups to pose a real threat to stability in ethnically divided northern Iraq, Iraqi and US commanders said.
The so-called Sufi orders have a large historical following in the disputed oil-rich region and commanders said that the exploitation by Saddam Hussein loyalists of the orders’ extensive network of lodges holds more dangers than al-Qaeda.
“They have a pretty significant long-term potential to be a threat to the powers that be,” said Major Chuck Assadourian, the intelligence chief of the US Army’s 2nd Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division, who is based outside the oil city of Kirkuk.
Known as the Army of the Followers of the Naqshbandiya Order, or JRTN from its Arabic acronym, the insurgent group operates under the cover of the order’s many lodges across Kirkuk and neighboring provinces, and counts Saddam Hussein’s fugitive No. 2 Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri among its leaders.
It was founded under the auspices of Ibrahim and former Iraqi interior minister Mohammed Yunus on the night of Saddam Hussein’s execution for crimes against humanity at the end of the end of 2006, Assadourian said.
The members of its military wing are mainly made up of Sunni Arab former members of the Baath party and Saddam Hussein’s disbanded armed forces, even though the Sufi orders traditionally claim to draw support from across the region’s ethnic divide.
The JRTN has capitalized on the unpopularity of al-Qaeda and its foreign fighters, whose brutal tactics and enforcement of a strict version of Islam out of kilter with local traditions has alienated the region’s population.
TURN-OFF
“They’re [al-Qaeda] not really as concerned with winning the hearts and minds of the people, they still have their extremist ideology — no alcohol, no smoking, those sort of things — and that’s a big turn-off for the population,” Assadourian said.
Provincial police chief Major General Jamal Taher Bakr agreed that the JRTN were now “the big threat,” surpassing even al-Qaeda despite its continued mounting of spectacular, mass-casualty bombings.
However, he took issue with the JRTN’s claim to focus its campaign of violence on US targets rather than Iraqi ones.
“They will attack civilian targets in cities, everywhere,” Bakr said.
Assadourian said that overcoming the JRTN threat would take time and would need a political approach as much as a military one to woo former rank-and-file Baathists away from the diehards of the ousted regime.
“Obviously national elections would help, if there was a more proportional representation of Sunnis,” he said in allusion to the widespread boycott among Sunni Arabs of the last parliamentary elections in 2005. “And really there needs to be some determination as far as political accommodation for technocrats from the former regime, non-ideological individuals, because there’s a significant population of those folks.”
“With some of the political dynamics right now, a lot of the Baathists are excluded from holding positions and of course that’s very contentious,” Assadourian said.
SLOW PROGRESS
Progress has been slow on re-integrating former Baathists into government employment, after all but the most junior members of the party were barred from government jobs following the US-led invasion of 2003 in what is now regarded as one of the most misguided policies of the occupation.
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