As Turkey reels from last month’s suicide bombings in Istanbul—which killed 61 and seemed to open a new front in the war on terrorism—Turkish police are homing in on several obscure Islamic militant groups, notably Turkish Hizballah, a senior police official tells Time. Security analysts say Hizballah, not to be confused with the radical Lebanese organization that shares its name, is a loose association of some 20,000 extremists based in Bingol, an impoverished province bordering Iraq. Turkish officials say three of the four suicide bombers, and many of their accomplices, called Bingol home.
Bingol appears to be the Turkish version of Fallujah or Assir province these days; the local version of Peshawar.
| 20 thousand sounds like a really high number for a terror organization. A small army, yes; a terror organization, no... |
If Turkish authorities are right, Hizballah may be among the latest groups to have joined al-Qaeda’s roster of terrorist associates.
| That'd probably make it the largest terror organization in the world. That number's got to include the entire structure, to include all the potential the cannon fodder, their wives and kiddies. And maybe their dogs... |
A decentralized organization, al-Qaeda has traditionally outsourced its global operations to local groups, which is partly why it poses such a challenge to the world’s terrorist hunters. Turkish analysts say many of the 21 suspected militants charged so far in the bombings trained in al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan before 2001—and perhaps with Ansar al-Islam, an al-Qaeda-linked group that was based in the Kurdish areas of northern Iraq before the U.S. invasion.
| That part I can believe. That's what Ansar was there for... |
Mehmet Farac, an expert on Turkey’s Islamic militants, says Hizballah may have linked up with al-Qaeda planners over the past year to regain ground it lost after its leader, Huseyin Velioglu, was killed in a police shoot-out in 2000. "Mutual interest is key to this partnership," says Farac. "Al-Qaeda wants to hit U.S., British and Israeli interests; Hizballah wants to prove it is back."
That’s certainly possible, though some reports are saying that the Turkish Hezbollah and the Raiders were training with al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Chechnya, suggesting that the connections may go back a little further than just a year ago. The Ansar al-Islam connection fits even stronger with the role of Zarqawi as the pivot man and helps to explain all of those Turkish alerts after the Ansar fled to Iran like the brave jihadis they were ...
Hizballah’s involvement could prove embarrassing to Turkey’s security forces, which once cultivated the group as a proxy militia in their 15-year war against Kurdish separatists. That old association probably accounts for the astonishing speed with which police rounded up their suspects. "These men were known to (the police)," says Emin Sirin, a former minister in Turkey’s Parliament. "They are no strangers."
The difference is that this time the Turks seem to know what to do with their homegrown crazies now that they’ve turned violent. If Musharraf would exercise similar prudence in Pakistan, Kashmir might be well on its way to a negotiated settlement by now ...
| The Indons were just as speedy rounding up the Bali boomers, and the Soddies were quick to gun down or capture the turbans who stuck their heads up before and after the May bombings, and the Euros did some serious cleaning up after 9-11. Even the Paks did the same with al-Aalmi in the wake of the consulate and Sheraton bombings in Karachi. Each of these operations expends a round in the organizational weapon. That's probably why the attacks come in clumps, followed by a month or two of relative quiet, as the Bad Guys build the structure for the next round of hits. |
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