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.Since the January30 elections, some MCA clerics have indicated that Sunnis should take part at leastin the constitutional drafting process, and join the security forces.This moremoderate position appears to have the support of another Sunni Islamist group, theIraqi Islamic Party (IIP) of Muhsin Abd al-Hamid.The IIP participated in the IGCand registered for the January 30 election, but pulled out of the vote in December2004, shortly after the U.S.assault on Fallujah (see below).Other more moderate,non-Islamist Sunnis are already participating in the new government, as discussedpreviously. CRS-28The Zarqawi Faction/Foreign Fighters.43 A major component of theinsurgency is composed of non-Iraqis.The U.S.military is holding over 300 foreignfighters captured in Iraq.As noted above, CENTCOM believes that perhaps 1,000of the insurgents in Iraq are foreign.The foreign contingent is believed led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a 38-year-oldJordanian Arab who reputedly fought in Afghanistan during the 1980s alongsideother Arab volunteers for the jihad against the Soviet Union.Zarqawi s faction hasbeen the subject of substantial U.S.counter-efforts because of its alleged perpetrationof several major terrorist attacks suicide and other attacks against bothcombatant and civilian targets.It claimed responsibility for the April 2, 2005 attackon Abu Ghraib prison (44 U.S.soldiers were wounded) and the U.S.garrison nearthe Syrian border ten days later, in which the outer perimeter was breached.Theseattacks were deviations from the faction s previous small unit, suicide tactics.Previous major attacks attributed to this faction include the August 2003 vehiclebombings in Baghdad of the embassy of Jordan (August 7) and U.N.headquarters atthe Canal Hotel (August 19).44 An August 29, 2003, car bombing in Najaf killedSCIRI leader Mohammad Baqr Al Hakim and 100 others.The group, and relatedfactions, have also kidnaped a total of about 180 foreigners, many of whom havesubsequently been killed.The most notable such killing was the October 20, 2004,capture of British-born director of the CARE organization in Iraq, Margaret Hassan,prompting a pullout by that organization; she was subsequently killed.Other relieforganizations, including Doctors Without Borders, have also pulled out of Iraq.More recently, the group has targeted Iraqi Shiite festivals and ceremonies, mostlikely hoping to provoke civil conflict between Sunnis and Shiites.Zarqawi came to Iraq in late 2001 after escaping the U.S.war effort inAfghanistan.He fled, through Iran, to northern Iraq, taking root with a Kurdishfaction called Ansar al-Islam,45 near the town of Khurmal,46 and occasionally clashingwith PUK fighters around Halabja.He was encamped with about 600 Arab fighterswho had also fled the Afghanistan battlefield.More recently, Zarqawi is using otherorganizational names, including the Association of Unity and Jihad, which wasnamed as an FTO on October 15, 2004.In early 2004, U.S.forces captured a letterpurportedly written by Zarqawi asking bin Laden s support for Zarqawi s insurgentactivities in Iraq47 and an Islamist website broadcast a message in October 2004,reportedly deemed authentic by U.S.agencies, that Zarqawi has formally allied withAl Qaeda.Since then, he has changed his organization s name to Al Qaeda Jihad43See CRS Report RL32217, Iraq and Al Qaeda: Allies or Not?44Among the dead in the latter bombing was the U.N.representative in Iraq, Sergio Vieirade Mello, and it prompted an evacuation of U.N.personnel from Iraq.45Ansar al-Islam originated in 1998 as a radical splinter faction of a Kurdish Islamic groupcalled the Islamic Movement of Iraqi Kurdistan (IMIK).Based in Halabja, the IMIKpublicized the effects of Baghdad s March 1988 chemical attack on that city.Ansar isnamed by the State Department as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO).46Chivers, C.J. Repulsing Attack By Islamic Militants, Iraqi Kurds Tell of Atrocities. New York Times, Dec.6, 2002.47For text, see [http://www.state.gov/p/nea/rls/31694.htm]. CRS-29in Mesopotamia (Iraq s name before its formation in the 1920s).It is named as anFTO, assuming that designation from the earlier Unity and Jihad organizational title.There have also been recent press reports that bin Laden has asked Zarqawi to planoperations outside Iraq, possibly against targets in the United States.His currentwhereabouts are unknown, but some reports since February 2005 have said that U.S
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