Saddam and Middle Eastern Terrorism: An Examination
Despite the assertions of many naysaying experts, the Iraqis maintained alliances with Islamist groups on the conditions that:
1) These groups opposed Iraq’s rivals in Syria and Iran during the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988).
2) These groups opposed the US after 1990.
Captured Iraqi documents and journalistic reporting confirmed this information. During the 1980s, the Iraqis trained members of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood in guerrilla warfare, usage of firearms, rocket-propelled grenades, and document forgery. Referring to the Saddam-Muslim Brotherhood relationship, one former Muslim Brotherhood terrorist stated, “He used us, and we used him.” During the 1990s, the Iraqis sponsored “Popular Islamic Conferences” at the luxurious al-Rashid Hotel, which drew radical Islamists from all over the Middle East. Journalist Christopher Dickey, who attended those conferences, stated “Every time I hear diplomats and politicians, whether in Washington or the capitals of Europe, declare that Saddam Hussein is a ‘secular Baathist ideologue’ who has nothing do with Islamists or with terrorist calls to jihad, I think of that afternoon and I wonder what they’re talking about. If that was not a fledgling Qaeda itself at the Rashid convention, it sure was Saddam’s version of it.”[1] In October 1990, Sudan’s ideological guide Hasan al-Turabi led a delegation of Islamists to Jordan to meet with Iraqi government officials and emissaries of Bin Laden.[2] In 1993, Saddam Hussein ordered the formation of a terrorist group of Iraqi nationals to fight the Americans in Somalia. According to a 1993 internal Iraqi intelligence memo, the regime supported a secret Palestinian terrorist group devoted to “armed jihad against the Americans and Western interests.” In the 1990s, the Iraqi General Military Intelligence Directorate trained and equipped “Sudanese fighters.” In 1998, the Iraqi regime offered “financial and moral support” to jihadists in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq. In 2002, Iraqi Intelligence issued passports for terrorists. In July 2001, an Iraqi Intelligence agent was ordered to work with an al-Qaeda group according to “priorities previously established.” According to an Iraqi Intelligence document, the Afghan Islamic Party maintained relations with Saddam’s regime since 1989. The Iraqis funded both the Afghan Islamic Party and the Egyptian Islamic Jihad. One document dated from March 28, 1992 and authenticated by the Defense Intelligence Agency, described Osama bin Laden as an Iraqi intelligence asset “in good contact” with the Iraqi Intelligence station in Syria. The former head of Iraqi Intelligence’s Directorate 4 met with bin Laden on February 19, 1995. Bin Laden successfully requested that Iraq’s state-run television network broadcast anti-Saudi propaganda.[3] Iraq provided funds to the al-Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf terrorist group in the Philippines in order to purchase weapons.[4] The Iraqis trained the Algerian Salafist Group for Call and Combat (GSPC) and the Algerian Armed Islamic Group (GIA).[5] In 2002, the Iraqi Intelligence services passed $100,000 to Ansar al Islam.[6] According to Iraqi document CMPC-2003-015588, a meeting was held between Iraqi officials in Damascus and the leadership of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). The PFLP pledged 500 of its fighters to battle American-led coalition forces in Iraq.[7] An Iraqi Intelligence document dated from 1995 titled “The Saudi Opposition and Achieving the Relation and Contact with Them” recorded how Bin Laden requested Iraq join them in joint attacks on Saudi Arabia.[8] According to the Iraqi government document ISGZ-2004-019920, Ahmad Fadil Nazal Al-Khalayla (a.k.a. Abu Musaab Al Zarqawi) was present in Saddam’s Iraq in 2002.[9]
It also seemed that the Iraqi government may had prior knowledge of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Virginia. This was openly conveyed in the Iraqi state-owned press. On July 21, 2001, the state-controlled Iraqi newspaper Al-Nasiriya predicted that Bin Laden “will strike America on the arm that is already hurting,” and that the US “will curse the memory of Frank Sinatra every time he hears his songs.” On September 12, 2001, Saddam proclaimed that “America is reaping the thorns planted by its rulers in the world…There is hardly a place (in the world) that does not have a memorial symbolizing the criminal actions committed by America against its natives.”[10] Highly controversial was the assertion that one of the al-Qaeda hijackers Mohamed Atta met with Iraqi intelligence officer Ahmad Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani (who served as Consul at Baghdad’s embassy in Prague) in the Czech Republic in April 2001. This charge was based on investigations by the Czech intelligence service (BIS) and passed to the Americans. While the Bush Administration accepted the veracity of the intelligence, it later disavowed the claims and stated the information was incorrect. Despite the Establishment’s rejection of this intelligence, journalist Edward Jay Epstein (who specialized in intelligence matters and knew many key Washington political players) visited the Czech Republic, where their government and intelligence service stood by these claims. According to a National Review article based on Epstein’s information, al-Ani, “whom the BIS was obviously interested in–interest that only intensified when the BIS learned he was trying to access explosives and make contacts with ‘foreign Arabs.’ It came to a head on or about April 9, 2001, when al-Ani was observed getting into a car with an unknown Arab male who was later identified as Atta–an identification that has never been disproved, despite Herculean efforts to knock it down.”[11] Atta was fingered by the BIS as the student visiting Prague from Hamburg Germany. He was observed meeting with al-Ani of the Iraqi embassy on April 8, 2001. Al-Ani was expelled by the Czechs and the problem became in the words of the former Czech Republic Foreign Minister and intelligence coordinator Jan Kavan (who Epstein interviewed in November 2003) “in the hands of American intelligence.” The CIA liaison with the BIS contacted their Czech counterparts to request an explanation about al-Ani’s expulsion. Hence, the matter was in the hands of the CIA and FBI to investigate. Kavan pointed out to Epstein that it would have been embarrassing “if American intelligence had failed before 9/11 to adequately appreciate the significance of the April meeting.” After this meeting became publicized on September 18, 2001, the FBI claimed that Atta was in Virginia at the time of the Prague meeting with al-Ani. However, the FBI’s assertion seemed to have holes. As Epstein wrote, “All these reports attributed to the FBI were, as it turns out, erroneous. There were no car rental records in Virginia, Florida, or anywhere else in April 2001 for Mohamed Atta, since he had not yet obtained his Florida license. His international license was at his father’s home in Cairo, Egypt (where his roommate Marwan al-Shehhi picked it up in late April). Nor were there other records in the hands of the FBI that put Atta in the United States at the time.” Epstein also quoted the CIA Director George Tenet, who testified before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in June 2002, “It is possible that Atta traveled under an unknown alias” to “meet with an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague.” According to Epstein, the Czech Deputy Foreign Minister Kmonicek located a “paper trail of passport records showing that Atta had applied for a visa to visit the Czech Republic on May 26, 2000 in Bonn, Germany. Atta must have had business there, since he could have transited through the Czech Republic on Czech Air without a visa.” Even stranger was the blank spaces in Atta’s duration spent at Prague Airport’s transit lounge, where much of his time was unaccounted for by the Czech security cameras. As Epstein reported, “Although a large part of this area is surveilled by cameras, he managed to spend all but a few minutes out of their range. After some six hours, he then caught a flight back to Hamburg. From this visaless round trip, Czech intelligence inferred that Atta had a meeting on May 30 (presumably with al-Ani) that could not wait, even a day—and that whoever arranged it was probably familiar with the transit lounge’s surveillance. Finally, the BIS determined that the Prague connection was not limited to a single appointment since Atta returned to Prague by bus on June 2 (now with visa BONN200005260024), and, after a brief wait in the bus station, disappeared for nearly 20 hours before catching a flight to the United States.” The Czechs assumed that Atta’s visits to Prague were related to the 9/11 attacks, since the large amounts of laundered funds began to flow to the al-Qaeda hijackers in June 2000 (which was after Atta left Prague). Epstein speculated, “Even more ominous, if the BIS’s subsequent identification of Atta in Prague was accurate, then some part of the mechanism behind the activities of hijacker-terrorists may have been based in Prague at least until mid-April 2001.”[12] While Epstein’s information does not constitute “smoking gun” evidence, it does suggest that the Establishment’s (i.e. the 9/11 Commission, etc.) denial of an Iraqi connection to Mohamed Atta may not be accurate. Furthermore, this essay discredits the notion that secular Sunni Muslim socialists (Iraq) could never cooperate with Shia and Wahhabi Muslims even in the face of a common enemy. In fact, Saddam Hussein and his Ba’th Party government extended the hand of cooperation and assistance to al-Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood, and other terrorist groups when faced with a common enemy (whether Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, or the United States).
[1] Stephen F. Hayes “Saddam’s Terror Training Camps” The Weekly Standard January 16, 2006
[2] Stephen F. Hayes and Thomas Joscelyn “The Mother of All Connections” The Weekly Standard July 18, 2005
[3] Stephen F. Hayes “Saddam’s Dangerous Friends” The Weekly Standard March 24, 2008
[4] Stephen F. Hayes “Saddam’s Philippines Terror Connection” The Weekly Standard March 27, 2006
[5] Stephen F. Hayes “Read All About It” The Weekly Standard January 30, 2006
[6] Stephen F. Hayes and Thomas Joscelyn “Another Link in the Chain” The Daily Standard July 22, 2005
[7] Saddam Terrorist Regime: Finding and Analysis Based on Captured Iraqi Documents Accessed From: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1823454/posts
[8] Saddam Regime Document: Iraqi Intelligence met with Bin Laden in 1995 (Translation)
Pentagon/FMSO website about Iraq Pre-War Documents Accessed From: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1600579/posts
[9] Document: Zarqawi in Iraq Long Before the War Started (See translation and interesting finds) Pentagon/FMSO Pre-war Iraq documents Accessed From: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1598259/posts
[10] Stephen F. Hayes “Body of Evidence” The Weekly Standard June 30, 2005
[11] “Atta in Prague” National Review November 21, 2005 Accessed From: https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2005/11/21/atta-in-prague/
[12] Edward Jay Epstein “Prague Revisited: The evidence of an Iraq/al-Qaida connection hasn’t gone away” Slate November 18, 2003 Accessed From: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2003/11/the-iraq-al-qaida-connection-hasn-t-gone-away.html