| Submit your comments on this article |
| Terror Networks |
| A bit of detail on Ansar al-Islam... |
| 2002-08-20 |
| Ansar al-Islam, which reportedly experimented with deadly toxin on animals and killed at least one man, is an extremist alliance of Muslim guerrillas including some who fought in Afghanistan with links to al-Qaeda. "They are extremists who have no match anywhere in the Arab world, even the Taliban are not like them ... they are even worse than the Taliban," according to Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani. That makes them pretty bad. Too bad there's not more information on them... A hardcore of 100-120 Arab Afghans have allied themselves to dissidents of the Kurdistan Islamic Movement and holed up in the remote mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan, Talabani, head of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), told Asharq al-Awsat newspaper Tuesday. Two small Islamist groups who are active in northern Iraq, Hamas and al-Tawhid, are also part of the alliance. Presumably this is a different Hamas than the one in Palestine — though it could be the same one. Al-Tawhid's a small group of "It's not a homogenous group because it has al-Qaeda sympathisers and others who trained in Afghanistan but are not pro-al-Qaeda," said Talabani, whose PUK controls a region of Iraqi Kurdistan bordering Iran. Talabani noted that one of the Ansar al-Islam leaders calls himself "the vindictive soldier". The group are present across a dozen Kurdish villages in "a small mountainous zone on the Iraq-Iran border," he added. That way they can pop across the border in either direction, depending on who's chasing them... The PUK chief said he "could not be sure" if Ansar al-Islam, meaning Supporters of Islam, had links to the regime in Baghdad. "According to some information, elements of Iraqi intelligence are in their ranks but we do not know if these elements are gathering information on the group or acting as a liaison between the organisation and Baghdad," he admitted. Or both. Most likely both. A PUK official told AFP in May that both the PUK and rival Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) led by Massoud Barzani were cooperating to combat some "terrorist" groups, and particularly Ansar al-Islam. They struck a security cooperation, including the establishment of a joint operations centre, in April. The official said among the elements making up Ansar al-Islam were 200-300 members of the so-called "Jund al-Islam" (Soldiers of Islam), "some of whom admit to having had links" with Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network and received training in Afghanistan. "Jund al-Islam" are suspected of being behind an April 2 attempt on the life of a top PUK official that left five bodyguards and two attackers dead, he added. I had thought Ansar and Jund were the same organization. Seems I was wrong... In Washington, a US official said Monday that the administration had received information Ansar al-Islam may have experimented with the deadly toxin ricin on animals and at least one person. ABC News reported that President George W. Bush had rejected a proposal for an attack on the group. Probably a good idea at this point — talk about nightmarish logistics and indignant neighbors! The ayatollahs would collectively calve on live teevee... The official, who spoke to AFP on condition of anonymity, said Ansar al-Islam had been conducting the experiments with ricin, a deadly biological agent derived from the castor bean, over the past couple of months. The person experimented on was reported to have died, the official said, adding that the report could not be verified. According to ABC News, the Ansar al-Islam members exposed a man in a market place to the toxin and then followed him home, where he later died. Just another egg for the omelette... |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |