DAGA SHERKHAN, Iraq — In this mountain crease beyond the orchards, a stream meanders past abandoned houses scattered with prayer caps, sunflower seeds, religious scrawling, a ski mask, spent bullet casings and the remote control for a half-finished bomb.
Before U.S. Special Forces and Kurdish fighters overran the region last month, this was the redoubt of Ansar al Islam, the radical Islamic group that the Bush administration alleged was the nexus between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, and therefore part of the justification for invading Iraq. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell asserted in February that Ansar was running a "poison factory" and was intent on exporting terrorism from the Middle East through Europe and into the United States.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Tuesday April 29, 2003 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 3 inches; 110 words Type of Material: Correction
A front-page headline Sunday about the radical Islamic group Ansar al Islam was inaccurate and unbalanced. The headline said, "Militants' Crude Camp Casts Doubt on U.S. Claims," and its subheadline said, "Ansar al Islam's bases show that the Al Qaeda surrogate posed no serious threat beyond its mountain borders, despite what Powell asserted before the war."
The article described a more ambiguous picture of the group than the headline reflected. The article said, among other things, that Ansar was experimenting with toxic chemicals and had international connections to terrorist organizations. Also, the article should have stated more prominently that it remains unproved whether Ansar had links to Saddam Hussein's government.
Many of the guerrillas who lived here are dead now. Others vanished through the white-rock canyons of northern Iraq. They left behind thousands of pages of documents, letters, wills and computer files that reveal the extent of their ambitions -- and call into question the U.S. allegations.
Documents obtained by the Los Angeles Times, along with interviews with U.S. and Kurdish intelligence operatives, indicate the group was partly funded and armed from abroad; was experimenting with chemicals, including toxic agents and a cyanide-based body lotion; and had international aspirations.
But the documents, statements by imprisoned Ansar guerrillas and visits to the group's strongholds before and after the war produced no strong evidence of connections to Baghdad and indicated that Ansar was not a sophisticated terrorist organization. The group was a dedicated, but fledgling, Al Qaeda surrogate lacking the capability to muster a serious threat beyond its mountain borders.
The main intent of the group's 700 to 800 guerrillas was to battle the secular U.S.-backed Kurdish government in northern Iraq. Last month, they were swept from their camps in a three-day campaign by 6,000 Kurdish fighters supported by U.S. warplanes and Special Forces. An estimated 250 Ansar members were killed, and 40 to 100 Arabs in the group fled to neighboring Iran and other countries. Under U.S. pressure, Iran denied refuge to 300 other guerrillas, some of whom surrendered to Kurdish authorities. About 200 others are believed to be hiding in caves and villages near Iran.
