Google Earth image/IraqSlogger.com.

A report in the Kurdish media claims that a banned party suspected of militant activities in the Kurdish area in northern Iraq is reorganizing its ranks with the material and logistical support from Iranian intelligence.

Reports published in the weekly Kurdish journal Awina, published in Suleimaniya, hold that the militants of the extremist Ansar al-Islam organization have taken the two cities of Mariwan and Bukan in Iranian Kurdistan as their headquarters and have conducted planning and organizational operations in preparation for military operations inside Iraqi Kurdistan.

According to the report, which has not been confirmed at this time, the Ansar al-Islam fighters number "more than twenty," and are under the command of two Kurdish brothers, identified as "Sawara" and "Salim."

Sawara is the commander of the group and was one of the veteran cadres of the shadowy group that nominally claims to follow the Kurdish Mullah Kreker, who is in Norway awaiting expulsion back to Iraq. The man identified as Sawara has reportedly returned recently from Britain, where he had fled as a refugee after the destruction of the group's base in the Huraman area of Iraqi Kurdistan in 2003 by US forces.

According to the report, Sawara is joined by Mullah Jalil, the reported mastermind of a 2005 attack in Suleimaniya in that targeted the convoy of Mullah Bakhtiyar, a member of the political leadership of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, and by Muhammad Mahmoud Karam who was a policeman in the town of Banjwin.

The report also indicates that an Arab from Iraq is responsible for the financial administration of the Ansar al-Islam organization.

Before it was The Sunni fundamentalist group at one time counted hundreds of fighters in its ranks, and has fought fierce battles with the secular Kurdish parties in the north of Iraq. The US has accused Ansar al-Islam as acting as a conduit for extremist foreign fighters into Iraq, and of involvement in suicide bombings, although Mullah Kreker has denied this.

Slogger sources in a northern district of Baghdad report a new wave of graffiti threatening the locally organized forces operating in conjunction with the US military in the area.

In the predominantly Shi'a neighborhood of Sha'b, residents say new writing on the walls of the area threatens the pro-US Sahwa forces. Sha'b is one of the few Shi'a areas of Baghdad where the predomantly Sunni Sahwa ("Awakening") forces operate regularly, and tensions have been high between the local population and the Sahwa fighters, local sources say. as well as between Sahwa forces and members of the Mahdi Army militia, which has a powerful presence in the district, and which has been the target of an aggressive US and Iraqi arrest and assassination campaign in the area for months.

While anti-Sahwa graffiti has appeared in Sha'b before, the most recent writings to appear bear the signature in Arabic "The Sniper of Sha'b" (Qanas al-Sha' b), locals say.

Sha'b residents point to the new concrete barriers protecting Sahwa checkpoints in the area as evidence of the chilly or hostile reception that the pro-US Sunni forces have met in the district.