Jamaat Ansar al-Islam (JAI) was founded in 2007, after Jamaat Ansar al-Sunnah dissolved as an organization. Essentially, JAI was a revival of the original Ansar al-Islam (AAI), a short-lived Kurdish group founded and led by Mullah Krekar from 2001 to 2003. However, it was distinct in many ways.
JAI, while primarily composed of Kurdish fighters, was not as distinctly Kurdish as the AAI of Mullah Krekar, which had a strong nationalist agenda. Nevertheless, JAI was still the most Kurdish group among other Salafi jihadist organizations. It recruited Kurds from all four countries, even local Syrian Kurds, who are typically very religious, but generally disapprove of political Islamism and rarely join jihadist groups. In addition to Kurds, JAI also had Arab, Caucasian, and various other foreign jihadist members.
JAI was active in the Sunni Triangle of Iraq before the Islamic State (IS) emerged in 2014. The two groups instantly fought, losing dozens of fighters on each side, until JAI relocated to Syria. JAI regularly complained to Ayman al-Zawahiri, leader of Al-Qaeda, about the Islamic State. In Syria, JAI was based in Jabal al-Akrad. Aside from occasional attacks, almost always in collaboration with another group, JAI remained small and ineffective until the 2024 rebel overthrow of Bashar al-Assad. It participated in the campaign and was incorporated into the Syrian Ministry of Defense in January 2025.
The main difference between JAI and AAI was nationalism. Mullah Krekar, a veteran of Uthman Abdulaziz’s jihad against Iraq, had previously served as a Peshmerga commander in the Islamic Movement of Kurdistan (IMK). According to Mullah Krekar, the global Muslim community criticized the Kurds for being secular, yet they also failed to support those Kurds who fought from a religious standpoint, including figures like Sheikh Said, Mahmud Barzinji, and himself.
JAI was more Pan-Islamist in its approach, while AAI was primarily focused on Kurdish issues. Although AAI was nationalist, it distanced itself from aspects of nationalism that conflicted with Islam. When the United States captured the Islamic Emirate of Kurdistan (IEK) in Halabja province, the majority of AAI members simply fled to Iran where they lived among local Kurd. They were unwilling to move south and join the Iraqi jihad. Mullah Krekar defended their decision, stating that since the Muslim community did not support the Kurds, it should not expect support from the Kurds. He also advised Kurdish jihadists to not allow Arabs to exploit or take advantage of them.
The IEK was established following the Kurdish Civil War, which divided the Kurdistan Region into three zones: one controlled by the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), another by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), and the third by the IMK. In the late 1990s, the IMK agreed to operate under the jurisdiction of the Kurdistan Regional Government, causing many members to leave the organization. In 2001, amid ongoing instability, Mullah Krekar seized control of the IEK and founded AAI.
Mullah Krekar distanced himself from JAI when it was founded and claimed that he had no involvement with anything south of the Kurdistan Region. Many of the jihadists in Iraq were former Ba’athist army officers, whom Mullah Krekar despised. Having fought against the Iraqi army, he asserted that he would have personally killed Saddam Hussein if Iraq challenged the IEK.
On the other hand, Saddam Hussein regarded the IEK as separatists and sought intelligence on AAI in hopes of capturing Mullah Krekar. American intelligence confirmed it. After losing the IEK, Krekar criticized the PUK and questioned their commitment to Kurdistan, arguing that no true Kurd, especially not a Kurdish nationalist, would invite the United States to assist in defeating the only independent Kurdish state. Mullah Krekar and the AAI claimed that the IEK was a Kurdish state under Islamic law, not an Islamic state made up of Kurds.
Mullah Krekar urged AAI to differentiate between PUK leadership and PUK soldiers, advising AAI not to mistreat PUK prisoners, emphasizing that they were still Kurds and not the real enemy. He asserted that the true enemy was Iraq. He also expressed a strong dislike for Turkey, claiming that an AAI incursion in Turkey was inevitable if the IEK had not been captured.
After the loss of the IEK in 2003, Mullah Krekar fled to Norway, where he was later arrested and extradited to Italy, where he remains today. In 2016, he claimed that he reconciled with the Kurdistan Regional Government, confirmed by KDP veteran Hoshyar Zebari.
In 2017, a Kurdish nationalist group called the White Flags, also known as al-Sufyaniyyun, emerged in the disputed territories between the Iraqi Central Government and the Kurdistan Regional Government. Iraq claimed that the group was a revival of AAI, branding themselves “the Kurdish resistance”. The majority of Kurds believed that the group was a fabrication by the Iraqi government, although some claimed that it did exist but that the Iraqi government heavily exaggerated its significance. Regardless of whether the White Flags were a real group or merely a hoax, they disappeared after the situation in Kirkuk stabilized in early 2018.