In late March, I watched as Kurdish peshmergas backed by American special forces and warplanes attacked positions along the Iraq-Iran border held by Ansar Al-Islam, an Islamist group allegedly linked to Al Qaeda.

A few days later I went to a press conference in Halabja, in which the Special Forces insisted they had routed the group.

An article in this week's Newsweek, however, confirms what many of us had suspected all along -- that hundreds of Ansar fighters slipped across the border into Iran.

Newsweek says the guerillas are now heading back into Iraq to continue their jihad -- and are prime suspects in some of the deadliest terrorist strikes against Americans and their allies in Iraq.

Ansar seems far from routed.