*Saddam And Bin Laden Help Fanatics,Say Kurds

Times
Mar 28, 2002
From Catherine Taylor Halabja, nothern Iraq
 
A TALEBAN-style Islamic group said to be linked to Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein is expanding its ranks at a stronghold in Kurdish northern Iraq. 

The Iraqi Kurds say that Ansar al-Islam (Supporters of Islam) is the world’s newest al-Qaeda cell, established under orders from bin Laden. Ansar al-Islam, which fights under the slogan “Ten minutes to Heaven”, a reference to the time followers believe that it will take for their souls to reach paradise after death in battle, might also have links to Baghdad, a Kurdish military commander said. 

“We have picked up conversations on our radios between Iraqi agents of Saddam Hussein and al-Islam,” Mustapha Saed Qada, a Kurdish military commander based in Halabja, said. “I believe that Iraq is also funding al-Islam. There are no hard facts as yet, but I believe that they are supporting them because it will cause further instability for the Kurds.” 

Kurdish military intelligence said that the group received about £200,000, weapons and Toyota Land Cruisers from the al-Qaeda network. Commander Qada said that Ansar al-Islam guerrillas, captured by Kurdish soldiers and held in the city of Sulimanieh, received training in al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan and had admitted that links between bin Laden and Saddam that go back to 1992. 

The two main political factions in Kurdish Iraq, the Kurdish Democratic Party and Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), recently said that they had settled their differences after spending much of the past 11 years fighting. They say that they are united against Ansar al-Islam, which is based in PUK territory. 

The enclave of ten Kurdish villages and about 4,000 civilians is in remote mountains near the border with Iran. Villagers who have escaped the area say that beauty salons have been ransacked and razed, girls’ schools bombed, men told to grow beards and women murdered for refusing to wear the burqa. 

On September 23 Ansar al-Islam insurgents ambushed a convoy of Kurdish soldiers and killed 42 men, which was taken as a declaration of war. Since then, Kurdish fighters have pushed Ansar al-Islam back towards the Iranian border. Both sides have suffered heavy casualties. 

Kurd military sources say that Ansar al-Islam's leader, Kreker, is a former member of a more moderate Kurdish Islamic political party. The group’s deputy, Abu Abdullah Shafae, is also an Iraqi Kurd who trained with al-Qaeda in Afghanistan for ten years. They say that the multinational group, with about 700 fighters, includes Moroccans, Jordanians, Palestinians and Afghans, some of whom fled the US attacks in Afghanistan.