Refresher on Al Qaeda in Iraq Pre War

9/1/1993 Fall 1993 Dr. Ayman Al Zawahiri is in Somalia acting as field commander of the "Afghan Arabs" and coordinator between those fighters, Iraqi fighters, Iranian intelligence, and the various Somali warlords… all against the US/UN forces.

1/1/94 Sudanese intelligence officials observed meetings between Iraqi intelligence agents and bin Laden starting in 1994, when bin Laden lived in Khartoum.

6/1/1994 June 1994 Bin Laden meets with Iraqi Director of Intelligence Services Farouq Hijazi in Khartoum. The intent of the meeting was to try and get Bin Laden to work more closely with Iraq, but Baghdad is still hesitant of Bin Laden's closer ties to Tehran.

circa 2/1/1998 Ayman Al-Zawahri traveled to Baghdad in February 1998 and met with one of Iraq's vice presidents. 'The goal of the visit was to arrange for coordination between Iraq and bin Laden and establish camps in an-Nasiriyah and Iraqi Kurdistan under the leadership of Abdul Aziz'

By mid-June, 1998, bin-Laden' s operatives were at the al-Nasiriyah training camp, receiving a four week course of instruction from the Iraqi intelligence and military.

circa 12/31/1998 The Arabic daily newspaper, Al-Quds al-Arabi, first raised the issue of cooperation between Saddam Hussein's Iraq and Osama bin-Laden's al-Qaeda in a late December 1998 editorial that noted that this type of cooperation was very likely considering that "bin-Laden was planning moving to Iraq before the recent strike."

circa 1/1/1999 Kuwaiti intelligence reports that hundreds of Arab "Afghans" are training in Iraq at the Nasariah camp and elsewhere. The training is being conducted by Iraqi Intelligence.

circa 1/1/1999 Saddam Hussein dispatched Faruq al-Hijazi to Kandahar, Afghanistan in order to meet with bin-Laden.

1/25/1999 Bin Laden dispatched abu-Ayub al Masri-one of his most trusted lieutenants to meetings in Dubai and Turkey. He travelled with a false Yemeni passport provided by Iraq's Farouq Hijazi .

3/15/1999 Mid March 1999; Al Queda's Hamoud Abaid al-Anezi showed up in Melbourne, Australia with a Saudi passport. Qusay Hussein-at the direction of Saddam Hussein-had formed a new Iraqi Intelligence unit called the Al-Nida force. It consisted of thousands of Iraqis around the world who were to be called upon in Jihad. al-Anezi met up with 4 Iraqi nationals in Australia, and together they started trying to recruit others in the local Muslim community.

4/1/1999 In April of 1999, the joint Iraq/Al Queda effort to attack the Australian Olympics was exposed and those involved arrested.

The Herald. By Ian Bruce. December 28, 1999 "The world’s most wanted man, Osama bin Laden, has been offered sanctuary inIraq if his worldwide terrorist network succeeds in carrying out a campaign of high-profile attacks on the West over the next few weeks."

Much more