US Blames Kurdistan-Based al-Qaeda Group in Embassy Bombing
by Eric Garris
August 8, 2003

Senior Pentagon officials have indicated they believe that the Ansar al-Islam terrorist group had a hand in Thursday's deadly car bombing at the Jordanian embassy in Baghdad. US intelligence on the group is sketchy, but officials have claimed that they are at least loosely tied to the al-Qaeda network.

What all of the news reports about this failed to mention is that Ansar al-Islam is a Kurdistan-based group. Before the start of the latest Iraq War, the Bush Administration tried to tie the group to Saddam, but many experts doubted such ties. At the beginning of the war, US troops wiped out the largest enclave of the group in Iraqi Kurdistan.

If Ansar al-Islam is behind this attack, it represents a new phase in Iraqi insurgency against US-led occupation.

Eric Garris is the Webmaster of Antiwar.com.