Organisation overview:
Name: Ansar al-Islam (AAI)
Founded: December 2001
Headquarters: Northwest Syria
Cells/Branches: Iraq
Ideology: Jihadism
Typology: Armed group/insurgent
Alliances: Independent
Analysis Index: History of the Group, AAI today, area of operations, objectives, leadership, propaganda.
The history of Ansar-Islam: birth and evolution from Iraq to Syria.
Ansar al-Islam (AAI) is a Salafi-jihadist group that was formed in September 2001 in Iraqi Kurdistan from the fusion of several small groups: Kurdish Hamas, the al-Tawhid Islamic Front, the Second Soran Unit, Jund al-Islam, then led by Abu Abdullah al-Shafi’i, and a splinter group of the Islamic Movement of Kurdistan, the “Islah” faction led by Mullah Krekar[1], who later became the group’s leader in December 2001. Ansar al-Islam[2] initially comprised about 300 men, many of them Kurdish Jihad veterans of the 1980s Soviet-Afghan war in Afghanistan[3].