Maggie's Farm

Actually the beginnings of AQI can be seen in this MIPT entry ( http://www.tkb.org/Group.jsp?groupID=3501 ):

"Ansar al Islam

Ansar al-Islam is an Islamic fundamentalist organization headquartered in the Kurdish area of northern Iraq. Ansar was created in December 2001 from the merger of Jund al-Islam (Soldiers of Islam) and an unnamed group led by Mullah Krekar. Jund al-Islam was itself a conglomerate, formed from smaller groups that had broken off from the Islamic Movement of Kurdistan in the mid-nineties, such as Hamas (not the Palestinian group), the Second Soran Unit, and the Tawhid Islamic Front. Evidence suggests that al-Qaeda played a role in the formation of Ansar and that it continues to provide some funding and training. Ansar al-Islam's founding philosophy called for the establishment of a Kurdish theocracy under sharia, or strict Islamic law. Its radically religious stance put Ansar at odds with Kurdistan"s secular parties, such as the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). In February 2003, members of Ansar al Islam assassinated Shawkat Hajji Mushir, Kurdish parliamentarian and PUK founder, as he left a meeting. The gunmen also killed two officials accompanying Mushir, and then proceeded to open fire on the village of Oamesh Tapa where the meeting had taken place. The group has also been accused of involvement in a failed 2002 assassination attempt against Kurdish leader Barham Saleh."

That is the group that Zarqawi would run to, and incorporate his own Tawid organization into it, so as to have a more extensive network to encompass Europe and N. Africa. The result would be an organization that went through a few name changes in 3-4 years, but is more easily referred to as AQI.

I went over a number of those connections to look at exactly how aQ worked with Saddam to go after Kurds, using his cronies and disaffected militants there. Simply put: al Qaeda was in the mountainous terrain between Kurdish Iraq and Iran long before OIF. We do like to obsess on the present, but those past ties point to infrastructure and sustainment that is not wholly from Saddam nor al Qaeda itself. The present definition of AQI is guide to the current organization only, and the pre-Zarqawi one, as locals have related to Michael Yon, had recruited teenagers and boys for nearly a decade.

My previous post looking at the organization that would become AQI: http://ajacksonian.blogspot.com/2007/03/congress-loses-will-for-anything.html