Ansar al-Sunnah

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Jayj Ansar al-Sunnah ( Arabic جيش أنصار السنة Dschaisch Ansar as-Sunna , DMG Ǧayš Anṣār as-Sunna  'Army of the Defender of Tradition') is a militant Kurdish - Arab Islamist group of Sunni characteristics, which represents a radical interpretation of Islam and the holy war in Iraq .

history

Five months after the US occupation of Iraq , the group was founded in September 2003 by several Islamist groups under the leadership of Abu Abdallah al-Hasan bin Mahmud in order to fight against the occupation army and at the same time from the Shiite Mahdi army of Muqtada as - Delineate Adr and other Shiite groups. The United States and the interim government in Iraq suspect that Ansar al-Sunna are closest to al-Qaeda .

In a self-description in the newspaper al-Quds al-Arabi (London) on November 4, 2003 it says: “A group of mujahideen , people with knowledge, political prudence and military knowledge, and also those who have long experience ... Waging the Islamic ideological struggle with the infidels brought different groups and different jihad factions together. "

Ansar as-Sunna operates in southern and central Iraq as well as in the Iraqi part of Kurdistan . She had excellent relations with Abu Mus'ab al- Zarqawi's group Qaidat al-Jihad fi Bilad ar-Rafidain . In October 2004, Ansar al-Sunna posted a video on its website showing the beheading of a Turkish truck driver. The killers in the video described themselves as members of al-Tawheed wa l-Jihad.

The attack targets included the interim government in Iraq of Iyad Allawi and the Kurdistan Autonomous Region in northern Iraq. Ansar al-Sunna claimed to be responsible for the simultaneous bomb attacks on the PUK and the KDP headquarters on February 1, 2004 in Erbil with 109 dead, the bomb attack on October 14, 2003 on the Turkish embassy in Baghdad , the bomb attack on November 20, 2003 on the PUK office in Kirkuk , as well as numerous mortar attacks on coalition troops. Apart from a few Iraqi Arab and Kurdish Sunnis, the suicide bombers are predominantly foreign Islamists.

The site institute documents the activities of Ansar as-Sunna in detail.

Other groups that are assigned to the Ansar al-Sunnah are: the al-Shahid-Aziz-Taha command, the al-Tauhid battalion, the Sa'd-bin-Abi-Waqqas group, the Asad-al- Islam Brigade, the Hanifa-al-Nu'man Brigades, the Abdallah-bin-az-Zubair Command, the Mu'ad-ibn-Jabal Unit, the Ansar al-Tawhid wa l-Sunna, and the Yasin -al-Bahr regiment.

designation

The former commander of Ansar al-Sunna, Abu Abdullah al-Shafi , published a notice in Iraq in 2007 that attracted little public attention. He had first admitted that Ansar al-Sunna was just another name for the Kurdish Islamist group Ansar al-Islam , which was headed by Mullah Krekar . Abu Abdullah al-Shafi was the highest-ranking leader ("Emir") of Ansar al-Sunna / Islam. He was arrested in 2010 by US and Kurdish special forces.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See the index of the Site Institute .
  2. ^ Gus Martin: The SAGE Encyclopedia of Terrorism . 2nd Edition. SAGE Publications, Inc, New York 2011, ISBN 978-1-4129-8016-6 .
  3. ↑ Evan Kohlmann: Ansar al-Sunnah Acknowledges Relationship with Ansar al-Islam, Reverts to Using Ansar al-Islam Name ( Memento of October 13, 2009). In: Counterterrorism Blog , December 16, 2007. Retrieved October 19, 2010.