Ansar Al Islam terrorist group would not possibly exist without the backup and support of Saddam regime. Both Saddam and Ansar Al Islam had a common enemy: “The Kurds”.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Utilities/printer_preview.asp?idArticle=5851&R=ED839E
Such current ties to al Qaeda and its allies raise the inevitable question of whether or not any existed prior to the war. According to a March 2002 New Yorker article by Jeffrey Goldberg, another Iraqi imprisoned intelligence officer named Qassem Hussein Muhammed, who had been captured by Kurdish forces en route to the Ansar al-Islam enclave, had claimed that Abu Wael was “the actual decision-maker” for the group and “an employee of the Mukhabarat,” the Arabic name for Iraqi intelligence.
While traveling through northern Iraq in 2002, Jonathan Schanzer, a specialist in radical Islamic movements at the Washington Institute for Near East policy, met a former member of Iraqi intelligence named Abdul Rahman al-Shamari, who had been imprisoned by the Kurds since March 2002. Al Shamari revealed a wealth of purported information about pre-war ties between Iraq and al Qaeda, including details about the activities of Colonel Saadan Mahmoud Abdul Latif, a member of Ansar al-Islam's ruling council far better known as Abu Wael. Al-Shamari went even further than Muhammed, claiming that Abu Wael had married one of al-Douri’s cousins and had even met with Saddam Hussein “four or five times.” Claims of Iraqi assistance to Ansar al-Islam are even supported by the 9/11 Commission which—despite having been widely reported as having “debunked” claims of such a link—also noted cryptically: “There are indications that by then [2001] the Iraqi regime tolerated and may even have helped Ansar al-Islam against the common Kurdish enemy.”
Joseph
I spoke with Jonathan Schanzer on the phone when looking for the U.S. delegation that visited the Communist Party in Iraq. Mark gave me his name as a contact. He was very helpful.