| Submit your comments on this article |
| Terror Networks |
| U.S. debriefed Ansar al-Islam prisoners... |
| 2002-10-04 |
| U.S. officials have visited part of northern Iraq controlled by Kurds to question Islamist prisoners suspected of links to al Qaeda, the head of one of the Kurdish factions controlling the region said on Friday. Northern Iraq is controlled by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP). PUK leader Jalal Talabani said Washington had considered a military strike against a small militant Islamist group called Ansar al-Islam but the Kurds had persuaded the United States that they would deal with the group. "Now, don't go flyin' off the handle, there. We'll whack 'em. We'll whack 'em..." Ansar's leader Mullah Krekar, whose real name is Najmuddin Faraj Ahman, was arrested by Dutch police in September, and PUK officials say the group has disintegrated since then, many of its members surrendering. "See? That wasn't so hard, was it?" "A U.S. team visited the area recently and debriefed Ansar prisoners," Talabani told reporters in Arbil at the reopening of a regional parliament. "With the help of the Islamic Republic of Iran, we will address this issue. The plan to attack Ansar is still on the table, but I don't think it will happen now." "We can always dust it off if we need it..." Relations between the PUK and Tehran had soured in recent months because Talabani initially encouraged the United States to attack Ansar, whose territory lies next to the Iranian border in the hills above the town of Halabja, Kurdish sources said. Iran was angry that U.S. forces would be engaged so close to its own territory, but to prove its opposition to Ansar and show goodwill, Iranian authorities tipped off European governments that the group's leader, Mullah Krekar, was travelling to the Netherlands, enabling Dutch police to arrest him. So that's how it happened? I love these little glimpses behind the scenes... A number of senior Ansar figures have deserted since Krekar's capture while a young Kurdish member of the group, on a suicide mission against PUK officials with explosives strapped to his body, gave himself up at the last minute, the sources said. Somehow it's not worth becoming flying meat when the Bigs are hanging the whole idea up. Those virgins'll still be there waiting fifty or sixty years from now... |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |