Saddam, the Insurgency, and Terrorists
What role did Saddam Hussein play in forging the insurgency? That is, did Saddam have a hand in bringing together the coalition of former Baathists, al Qaeda terrorists, and ultra-loyal Fedayeen Saddam fighters who form the backbone of the insurgency? And what does Saddam's role in laying the groundwork for the insurgency say about his pre-war ties to terrorism, if anything?
Thanks to several recent accounts we have learned much. Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was a powder keg of terrorism. While Saddam did not unilaterally direct the insurgency from the rat hole in which he was captured, he most certainly did lay a significant portion of the groundwork for the insurgency.
Consider the following pieces of evidence. (Note throughout all of the material cited below how much of it refers to captured Iraqi Intelligence documents.)
(1) From Michael Gordon and General Bernard Trainor's account of the mistakes made in planning for the war, Cobra II:
Even as the Iraqi general staff focused on defending the nation with the Republican Guard and Regular Army divisions, Saddam and his sons focused on preventing a Shiite uprising by deploying the Fedayeen. Saddam did not want to distribute ammunition too soon for fear that restive tribes might confiscate it and use it to grab control of the region. With the prospect of an American bombing campaign, however, in early March the regime ordered that ammunition be dispersed throughout the country, including to the Fedayeen. Iraq had also trained foreign fighters over the years as a gesture of support for the Palestinian and other Arab causes, and in March it summoned some of the fighters back. Documents retrieved by American intelligence after the war show that the Iraqi Ministry of Defense coordinated border crossings with Syria and provided billeting, pay, and allowances and armaments for the influx of Syrians, Palestinians, and other fighters." [Emphasis Added.]
(2) From the new Iraqi Perspectives Report (which is a detailed study of regime documents and testimony):
Beginning in 1994, the Fedayeen Saddam opened its own paramilitary training camps for volunteers, graduating more than 7,200 "good men racing full with courage and enthusiasm" in the first year. Beginning in 1998, these camps began hosting "Arab volunteers from Egypt, Palestine, Jordan, 'the Gulf,' and Syria." It is not clear from available evidence where all of these non-Iraqi volunteers who were "sacrificing for the cause" went to ply their newfound skills. Before the summer of 2002, most volunteers went home upon the completion of training. But these training camps were humming with frenzied activity in the months immediately prior to the war. As late as January 2003, the volunteers participated in a special training event called the "Heroes Attack." This training event was designed in part to prepare regional Fedayeen Saddam commands to "obstruct the enemy from achieving his goal and to support keeping peace and stability in the province." [Emphasis Added.]
(3) From Paul Bremer’s book My Year In Iraq:
There had always been doubt about Saddam’s role in the insurgency. Some analysts believed that he might have given it some strategic direction. Most felt that if there were any center, it was directed by former regime vice president Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, the zealous red-haired Baathist killer. The secret Mukhabarat document I’d seen back in July showed that Saddam had made plans for an insurgency. And the insurgency had forces to draw on from among several thousand hardened Baathists in two northern Republican Guard divisions that had joined forces with foreign jihadis. There were also the almost 100,000 convicted criminals Saddam had released from prison before the war. In any event, it was obvious that Saddam Hussein had not been exercising tactical control of the insurgents from that muddy hole near Ad-Dwar. [Emphasis Added. Note: Bremer briefly discusses the role of Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri in the insurgency. For more on al-Douri’s role see here.]
(4) From Steve Hayes’s piece Saddam’s Terror Training Camps:
THE FORMER IRAQI REGIME OF Saddam Hussein trained thousands of radical Islamic terrorists from the region at camps in Iraq over the four years immediately preceding the U.S. invasion, according to documents and photographs recovered by the U.S. military in postwar Iraq. The existence and character of these documents has been confirmed to THE WEEKLY STANDARD by eleven U.S. government officials.
The secret training took place primarily at three camps--in Samarra, Ramadi, and Salman Pak--and was directed by elite Iraqi military units. Interviews by U.S. government interrogators with Iraqi regime officials and military leaders corroborate the documentary evidence. Many of the fighters were drawn from terrorist groups in northern Africa with close ties to al Qaeda, chief among them Algeria's GSPC and the Sudanese Islamic Army. Some 2,000 terrorists were trained at these Iraqi camps each year from 1999 to 2002, putting the total number at or above 8,000. Intelligence officials believe that some of these terrorists returned to Iraq and are responsible for attacks against Americans and Iraqis. … [Emphasis Added. Note: Hayes has said that the reporting on these documents is now corroborated by fifteen officials.]
(5) From Abdel Bari Atwan's The Secret History of al Qaeda [Note that Atwan quotes a known al Qaeda mouthpiece, Dr. Mohammed al-Masri]:
Like Zarqawi, many Arabs fleeing American retaliation in Afghanistan after 9/11 found refuge with Ansar al-Islam. But then came an unexpected development. According to Dr Muhammad al-Masari, a Saudi specialist on Al-Qaeda’s ideology, Saddam established contact with the “Afghan Arabs” as early as 2001, believing he would be targeted by the US once the Taliban was routed.
In this version, disputed by other commentators, Saddam funded Al-Qaeda operatives to move into Iraq with the proviso that they would not undermine his regime. Sources close to the Ba’ath regime have told me that Saddam also used to send messengers to buy small plots of land from farmers in Sunni areas. In the middle of the night soldiers would bury arms and money caches for later use by the resistance.
According to Masari, Saddam saw that Islam would be key to a cohesive resistance in the event of invasion. Iraqi army commanders were ordered to become practising Muslims and to adopt the language and spirit of the jihadis.
On arrival in Iraq, Al-Qaeda operatives were put in touch with these commanders, who later facilitated the distribution of arms and money from Saddam’s caches. [Emphasis Added.]
There you have it: Two independent studies of Iraqi intelligence documents and the evolution of the Iraqi insurgency, documents shown to Paul Bremer, documents corroborated by fifteen officials in Steve Hayes’s reporting, and the testimony of a known al Qaeda mouthpiece all confirm that Saddam: (a) Had a hand in laying out the insurgency’s footprint across Iraq and (b) that he most certainly trained, funded, and armed terrorists to fight American forces.
More to come...
Thanks to several recent accounts we have learned much. Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was a powder keg of terrorism. While Saddam did not unilaterally direct the insurgency from the rat hole in which he was captured, he most certainly did lay a significant portion of the groundwork for the insurgency.
Consider the following pieces of evidence. (Note throughout all of the material cited below how much of it refers to captured Iraqi Intelligence documents.)
(1) From Michael Gordon and General Bernard Trainor's account of the mistakes made in planning for the war, Cobra II:
Even as the Iraqi general staff focused on defending the nation with the Republican Guard and Regular Army divisions, Saddam and his sons focused on preventing a Shiite uprising by deploying the Fedayeen. Saddam did not want to distribute ammunition too soon for fear that restive tribes might confiscate it and use it to grab control of the region. With the prospect of an American bombing campaign, however, in early March the regime ordered that ammunition be dispersed throughout the country, including to the Fedayeen. Iraq had also trained foreign fighters over the years as a gesture of support for the Palestinian and other Arab causes, and in March it summoned some of the fighters back. Documents retrieved by American intelligence after the war show that the Iraqi Ministry of Defense coordinated border crossings with Syria and provided billeting, pay, and allowances and armaments for the influx of Syrians, Palestinians, and other fighters." [Emphasis Added.]
(2) From the new Iraqi Perspectives Report (which is a detailed study of regime documents and testimony):
Beginning in 1994, the Fedayeen Saddam opened its own paramilitary training camps for volunteers, graduating more than 7,200 "good men racing full with courage and enthusiasm" in the first year. Beginning in 1998, these camps began hosting "Arab volunteers from Egypt, Palestine, Jordan, 'the Gulf,' and Syria." It is not clear from available evidence where all of these non-Iraqi volunteers who were "sacrificing for the cause" went to ply their newfound skills. Before the summer of 2002, most volunteers went home upon the completion of training. But these training camps were humming with frenzied activity in the months immediately prior to the war. As late as January 2003, the volunteers participated in a special training event called the "Heroes Attack." This training event was designed in part to prepare regional Fedayeen Saddam commands to "obstruct the enemy from achieving his goal and to support keeping peace and stability in the province." [Emphasis Added.]
(3) From Paul Bremer’s book My Year In Iraq:
There had always been doubt about Saddam’s role in the insurgency. Some analysts believed that he might have given it some strategic direction. Most felt that if there were any center, it was directed by former regime vice president Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, the zealous red-haired Baathist killer. The secret Mukhabarat document I’d seen back in July showed that Saddam had made plans for an insurgency. And the insurgency had forces to draw on from among several thousand hardened Baathists in two northern Republican Guard divisions that had joined forces with foreign jihadis. There were also the almost 100,000 convicted criminals Saddam had released from prison before the war. In any event, it was obvious that Saddam Hussein had not been exercising tactical control of the insurgents from that muddy hole near Ad-Dwar. [Emphasis Added. Note: Bremer briefly discusses the role of Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri in the insurgency. For more on al-Douri’s role see here.]
(4) From Steve Hayes’s piece Saddam’s Terror Training Camps:
THE FORMER IRAQI REGIME OF Saddam Hussein trained thousands of radical Islamic terrorists from the region at camps in Iraq over the four years immediately preceding the U.S. invasion, according to documents and photographs recovered by the U.S. military in postwar Iraq. The existence and character of these documents has been confirmed to THE WEEKLY STANDARD by eleven U.S. government officials.
The secret training took place primarily at three camps--in Samarra, Ramadi, and Salman Pak--and was directed by elite Iraqi military units. Interviews by U.S. government interrogators with Iraqi regime officials and military leaders corroborate the documentary evidence. Many of the fighters were drawn from terrorist groups in northern Africa with close ties to al Qaeda, chief among them Algeria's GSPC and the Sudanese Islamic Army. Some 2,000 terrorists were trained at these Iraqi camps each year from 1999 to 2002, putting the total number at or above 8,000. Intelligence officials believe that some of these terrorists returned to Iraq and are responsible for attacks against Americans and Iraqis. … [Emphasis Added. Note: Hayes has said that the reporting on these documents is now corroborated by fifteen officials.]
(5) From Abdel Bari Atwan's The Secret History of al Qaeda [Note that Atwan quotes a known al Qaeda mouthpiece, Dr. Mohammed al-Masri]:
Like Zarqawi, many Arabs fleeing American retaliation in Afghanistan after 9/11 found refuge with Ansar al-Islam. But then came an unexpected development. According to Dr Muhammad al-Masari, a Saudi specialist on Al-Qaeda’s ideology, Saddam established contact with the “Afghan Arabs” as early as 2001, believing he would be targeted by the US once the Taliban was routed.
In this version, disputed by other commentators, Saddam funded Al-Qaeda operatives to move into Iraq with the proviso that they would not undermine his regime. Sources close to the Ba’ath regime have told me that Saddam also used to send messengers to buy small plots of land from farmers in Sunni areas. In the middle of the night soldiers would bury arms and money caches for later use by the resistance.
According to Masari, Saddam saw that Islam would be key to a cohesive resistance in the event of invasion. Iraqi army commanders were ordered to become practising Muslims and to adopt the language and spirit of the jihadis.
On arrival in Iraq, Al-Qaeda operatives were put in touch with these commanders, who later facilitated the distribution of arms and money from Saddam’s caches. [Emphasis Added.]
There you have it: Two independent studies of Iraqi intelligence documents and the evolution of the Iraqi insurgency, documents shown to Paul Bremer, documents corroborated by fifteen officials in Steve Hayes’s reporting, and the testimony of a known al Qaeda mouthpiece all confirm that Saddam: (a) Had a hand in laying out the insurgency’s footprint across Iraq and (b) that he most certainly trained, funded, and armed terrorists to fight American forces.
More to come...
posted by Thomas Joscelyn at 3:39 PM
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