'US attracted al-Qaeda to Iraq'

2003-09-09 10:42

Baghdad - The United States struggled before the war to convince the world there was a link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda network, but five months of US-led occupation of Iraq may have created precisely such an unholy alliance.

Stripped of their privileged positions under the ousted dictator's brutal regime, Saddam's henchmen may finally have thrown in their lot with their ideological adversaries in Osama bin Laden's terror network to wage war on their common foe, analysts say.

A quartet of arrests made by Iraqi police immediately after a massive car bombing that killed 83 people in the Shi'ite Muslim holy city of Najaf last week provided the hardest evidence yet of the fledgling marriage of convenience between Saddam and the militants.

Two of the detainees were Saudis espousing al-Qaeda's militant brand of Islam. The others were former henchmen of the ousted dictator.

"Even though they are two entirely different organisations with very different aims and objectives, they both have an interest in creating disorder and chaos in Iraq, and they have complementary capabilities," said Joost Hiltermann of the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think-tank.

"Regime elements have access to the explosives and the expertise, and al-Qaeda-like groups are prepared to kill themselves," the Baghdad-based analyst said.

But Hiltermann insisted that Washington's pre-war claims of ties between Saddam and al-Qaeda still remained entirely unconvincing.

Only since the war

"I see no information that links al-Qaeda to Saddam Hussein's people before the war, and the Americans never provided any hard evidence, so it is an alliance that postdates the war, not predates it," he said.

Professor Barry Buzan, international security specialist at the London School of Economics, agreed.

"I find it quite plausible that with the Americans having made such a big target of themselves in Iraq, an alliance should come into existence now purely on opportunistic grounds," he said.

"But I see no evidence of such a connection before the war and those people who made political mileage out of there being one have shut up."

Both analysts concurred that the US-led occupation had turned Iraq into a magnet for al-Qaeda.

Borders rendered porous by the collapse of Saddam's iron rule have opened the way for a host of foreign infiltrators, not only Islamic militants but also bank robbers and highwaymen.

A sweeping clampdown finally launched by the authorities in neighbouring Saudi Arabia following a triple suicide bombing in Riyadh in May has also helped to propel Islamic militants into Iraq to launch attacks on their US foes.

Americans are a target

"Al-Qaeda and Al-Qaeda-like groups have every reason for going into Iraq - it's a perfect recruiting ground, the Americans are there as a target and they have got the world's press," said Buzan.

Three deadly car bombings in as many weeks and a guerrilla war that has cost more US lives than the invasion itself have convinced even US officials here that they are now on a new frontline in their worldwide war with the militants.

"I think it's true that Iraq now faces an important terrorist threat," US civil administrator Paul Bremer told a Baghdad news conference this week.

"We have seen an influx of both foreign fighters and foreign terrorists in the last months. It shows that Iraq is one of the battlefields in the worldwide war on terrorism."

Many Iraqis at the receiving end of the violence plaguing the country are also convinced that al-Qaeda militants are at work here in league with members of the ousted regime.

Sayyed Ali al-Waadi al-Musawi, who was the target of the latest in a string of assassination attempts against Shi'ite clerics here earlier this week, said he believed they were a deliberate bid by militants and Saddam loyalists to stoke communal tensions.

"There are a lot of enemy groups that we know about such as followers of the old regime and al-Qaeda," said Sayyed Ali, the agent in the capital of Shi'ite Islam's top cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani.

"One of the problems is that there are lots of mercenaries here in Iraq now because of the open borders.

"We want Sunnis and Shi'ites to be united but there are foreign hands that are trying to fuel communalism here," he said.

- AFP