Links. Ties. Operational links. Sponsorship. These terms have vastly different meanings to different members of the media when they discuss relations between Saddam Hussein’s regime and the al-Qaeda network. This became clear yet again last week when news outlets reported on the Department of Defense-sponsored Iraqi Perspectives Project (all five volumes of which are now available
here). The vast majority of news reports focused on a single sentence that was incorrectly taken to mean that no ties, links, relations or connections of any sort existed between Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and the al-Qaeda movement.
What exact word or phrase best describes the relations between Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and al-Qaeda, as well as other Islamic terror groups, is certainly debatable. What is not debatable, based on the Iraqi Perspectives Project, is that Saddam Hussein’s regime funded, trained, and assisted terrorist groups (including al-Qaeda proxies), and sometimes actually ordered them to attack American citizens, American interests, and American allies. To compound the danger, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was simultaneously using its intelligence and security apparatus to plot and conduct terror attacks of its own.
The most contentious issue regarding Saddam Hussein and terrorism may be the extent to which Saddam supported anti-American terrorist groups (as opposed to his more agreed-upon support for anti-Israeli groups), particularly Islamic terrorist groups. On this topic the report says that Saddam’s animosity towards the United States continued after the first Gulf War, so he reached out to and supported Islamic-fundamentalist and related terrorist organizations that also saw the U.S. as an enemy. Internal Iraqi documents reveal that Saddam’s regime knew it had to keep these relations top secret, due to the increased Western scrutiny that Islamic terrorism began receiving during the 1990s because of Iran’s open support for Hezbollah.
Saddam supported groups that either associated directly with al-Qaeda (such as the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, led at one time by bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri) or that generally shared al-Qaeda's stated goals and objectives.
Captured documents reveal that the regime was willing to co-opt or support organizations it knew to be part of al-Qaeda — as long as that organization's near-term goals supported Saddam's long-term vision.
From 1991 through 2003 the Hussein regime “regarded inspiring, sponsoring, directing and executing acts of terrorism as an element of state power.” White House National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe commented to me that the report confirms that Saddam “had ties to regional terrorism” and that in a region where there was “no lack of terrorist groups willing to attack the U.S.,” it was not surprising to see who Saddam had been supporting.
The former regime’s stash of documents includes a list of some of the groups that were willing to commit these attacks on behalf of the Iraqi regime. The “Renewal and Jihad Organization” was one group willing to “carry out operations against American interests at any time.” The Egyptian Islamic Jihad (al-Qaeda second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri’s group, which merged with Osama bin Laden’s terrorists to form al-Qaeda) is described in the report as having “agreed” on a plan for attacks against the Egyptian government. The Islamic Scholars Group in Pakistan is described by Iraqi officials as willing to “carry out any assignment we task them with.” Another Pakistani organization, which the report refers to as the Pakistan Scholars Group, is listed as not being “tasked with commando operations during the (Gulf) war,” possibly implying that the group was available to commit “operations” at Iraq’s beckoning. (For more on Saddam Hussein’s associations with Islamic groups in Pakistan and Afghanistan, Ray Robison’s “Both in One Trench” is a must read.)
The report also reveals that in the late 1990s Saddam was willing to “support or co-opt” a group named “Army of Muhammad” that it knew to be loyal to Osama bin Laden. Iraq was aware that the group had plans to attack American military bases in Arab countries (a goal that Saddam’s regime shared) and American embassies (another shared goal). Internal Iraqi documents note that the group was seeking Iraqi assistance, though they do not mention what Iraq’s response was. Saddam was impressed with al-Qaeda attacks on American embassies and other targets, and his pattern of support for groups wishing to attack American interests suggests that refusing to grant the desired assistance to the Army of Muhammad would have been a deviation from normal behavior.
Another document lists an Islamic militant group in Afghanistan as dependent on Iraq for financing, and an Islamic group in Egypt as agreeing to make attacks in exchange for financing and training from Iraq. Saddam’s regime also provided supervision and oversight, as well as 30,000 rifles and 10,000 pistols, to help get a Sudanese terrorist training camp off the ground at a time when anti-American Islamic terror groups were prevalent in the country. According to the report, Saddam’s regime also maintained in-country training camps for all kinds of non-Iraqi groups, many of which were looking to destabilize America’s allies in the Middle East.
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