Displaced Militants Adapt, Widen Their Scope

BIYARA, Iraq — Icy roads wind through the mountains of northern Iraq. A pro-U.S. Kurdish military patrol perches on a hilltop above town. Men with raw hands and rifles peer through the mist, searching for what they know is out there but can't always see: Islamic militants sneaking south.

The extremist group Ansar al Islam once controlled this terrain along the Iranian border, but U.S. missile strikes early in the Iraq war chased the guerrillas from their strongholds. Over the last two years, according to Kurdish security officials, Ansar has altered its strategy and expanded its theater of operations, aiming suicide bombers and ambushes toward cities in the interior, such as Mosul and Kirkuk.

The organization is small but has remained a key threat to U.S. forces in Iraq. It has recently carried out beheadings, dozens of kidnappings and some of the deadliest attacks against U.S. troops and their allies.

The Ansar al Sunna Army, a guerrilla group descended from Ansar al Islam, claimed responsibility for the Dec. 21 assault on an American base in Mosul that killed 22 people, including 14 U.S. soldiers. Ansar al Islam's suicide bombers also killed 109 people last year, when they attacked the offices of two Kurdish political parties in the northern city of Irbil.

Intelligence officials say Ansar has a history of using bomb vests and striking at holiday celebrations, a tactic that U.S. and Iraqi security forces will be watching for when Iraqis go to the polls Sunday.

Ansar emerged in 2001 as a group of religious extremists, mainly Sunni Muslim Kurds, bent on destroying the two main secular Kurdish parties. Circumstances have shifted Ansar's territory and ambition. Kurdish militias and Iraqi national guard units have tightened Iraq's northern border and added at least 41 checkpoints.

Kurdish authorities have arrested more than 100 suspected Ansar members since March 2003. As the group's northern bases withered, Ansar's leadership, influenced by militants trained in Afghanistan, focused on the broader campaign to disrupt U.S. plans in the region. With many of its leaders dead or imprisoned, the group has merged with other insurgent cells to form the Ansar al Sunna Army, which claimed responsibility for the Mosul attack.