Ansar al-Islam in Kurdistan (), simply called Ansar al-Islam (), is a Kurdish Islamist militant and separatist group. It was established in northern Iraq around the Kurdistan Region by Kurdish Islamists who were former Taliban and former Al-Qaeda volunteers, which were coming back from Afghanistan in 2001 after the Fall of Kabul. Its motive is to establish an Islamic state around the Kurdistan region and to protect Kurdish people from other armed insurgent groups. It imposed strict Sharia in villages it controlled around Byara near the Iranian border. Its ideology follows a traditionalist interpretation of the Quran and Salafism.
The group was a designated terrorist organization in the United Nations, Australia, Canada, Israel, the United Kingdom, and the United States, and a known affiliate of the al-Qaeda network.
On 29 August 2014, 50 members and commanders of Ansar al-Islam announced that they were joining ISIS individually, however Ansar al-Islam continued to oppose ISIS and kept functioning independently. Abu Khattab al-Kurdi was among those who left Ansar al-Islam for ISIS, and he later became an ISIS commander. When a previously unknown Kurdish militant group using white flags appeared in Iraq in 2017, Iraqi security and intelligence officials argued that this was splinter group of Ansar al-Islam, which reportedly still had hundreds of fighters operating in the Hamrin Mountains.
Name
Their official name is "Ansar al-Islam in Kurdistan", meaning "Supporters of Islam in Kurdistan", but they are called "Ansar al-Islam" for short.
The group received the nickname "Kurdish Taliban" because it was made up of Kurds who fought for the Taliban in Afghanistan, and for their similarity with the Taliban, including how both of them established Islamic Emirates under Sharia law, both of their fighters were Islamist but had some nationalism (Taliban with Pashtun, Ansar with Kurdish), and both of them harshly persecuted non-Muslims.
History
Formation
Ansar al-Islam seeks to establish an "Islamic state" under Sharia law, as well as to obtain and preserve the "legitimate rights" of the Kurds.
Ansar al-Islam was formed in September 2001 from a merger of Jund al-Islam (not the Egyptian Jund al-Islam), led by Abu Abdullah al-Shafi'i, and a splinter group from the Kurdistan Islamic Movement led by Mullah Krekar. Krekar became the leader of the merged Ansar al-Islam, which opposed an agreement made between IMK and the dominant Kurdish group in the area, Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). The group later made allegiance to al-Qaeda and allegedly received direct funds from the terror network.
Ansar al-Islam initially comprised approximately 300 men, many of them Kurdish veterans of Jihad in the Soviet–Afghan War.
The two IMK splinter groups that formed Jund al Islam on 1 September 2001, had some early battlefield successes in the same month when it killed 42 PUK-Peshmerga fighters in an ambush, which led to them drawing in more IMK leaders in their ranks, on 10 December 2001, the group became known as AAI (Ansar al-Islam).
During the Islamic Emirate of Byara near the Iranian border, there were allegations of logistical support from "powerful factions in Iran".
The roots of Ansar al-Islam can be traced to the mid-1990s. The group consists of various Islamist factions that splintered from the Islamic Movement of Kurdistan (IMK). In 2001, shortly before the 9/11 attacks, leaders of several Kurdish Islamist factions visited the al-Qa'ida leadership in Afghanistan planning to create a base for al-Qa'ida in northern Iraq. A document found in Kabul stated the group's objective which was to "expel those Jews and Christians from Kurdistan and join the way of jihad, and rule every piece of land with Islamic Sharia law." This was also confirmed by the Los Angeles Times, based upon interviews with an Ansar prisoner, which stated that in October 2000, Kurdish Islamist leaders sent jihadists to Osama bin Laden's camps, and they received the message from bin Laden that all Kurdish Islamist groups should unite into a single group.