-Caveat Lector- http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/01/12/wirq12.xml&; sSheet=/news/2003/01/12/ixworld.html
Chemical war threat by Iraq's 'Taliban' By Damien McElroy in Nicosia (Filed: 12/01/2003) Mullah Mohammad Hasan is the new leader of Ansar Al-Islam, a radical Taliban-style mini-state in Northern Iraq where ricin and other chemical agents have been been tested as potential weapons. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/graphics/2003/01/12/wirq12big.gif Click to enlarge He has vowed to use his arsenal to fight America and its allies if a war is launched against Saddam Hussein. Ansar has also given shelter to Abu Musaab al-Zarqawi - the al-Qaeda quartermaster responsible for planning the terrorist group's attacks - in its camps, according to Kurdish officials in the area. The group has told recent visitors to its enclave that it holds stocks of the deadly chemical agents ricin, cyanide gas and aflatoxin. Some of its weapons are what the group calls "spoils of war" - stocks captured as it has expanded the territory under its control - while others, thought to include chemical agents, have been smuggled into the enclave from Iraq, almost certainly with Saddam's blessing. Its threat last week to use this arsenal against American-led invasion forces fighting the Saddam regime could seriously disrupt the Pentagon's plan for a battle front pushing south from the Turkish border - either by direct chemical attack on American troops or by diverting Kurdish fighters, hostile to the Iraqi dictator, into a backyard battle against an Islamic enemy. Baghdad lost control of the three Kurdish provinces of northern Iraq after the domestic uprising set off by Iraq's 1991 defeat in Kuwait. The region has been ruled since then by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), two anti-Saddam factions that adhere to a moderate interpretation of Islam. The mountainous tracts near the border with Iran have traditionally held to a strict religious way of life, however, and Iraqi Kurds from these villages were recruited to al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan in the late 1990s. On their return home to PUK territory, they merged a variety of radical organisations into the Ansar movement in 2001 and established their breakaway anti-PUK enclave. Following the fall of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, scores of Arab al-Qaeda fighters have joined them after escaping through Iran. Saddam is believed to have been secretly supporting the Ansar enclave with money and military assistance because they share an enemy in the PUK. The Telegraph reported last year that members of his Republican Guard had been seen in two Ansar- run villages by Western intelligence officials on a reconnaissance mission. Ansar's founder, Mullah Fatih Kraker, was arrested in Holland last September, but the group has continued to grow rapidly and now has 2,000 fighters, compared with fewer than 600 six months ago - many of them Arabs who fled from Afghanistan. "If America invades Iraq, we will attack its troops," Hasan told the Turkish journalist Namik Durukan, who was smuggled into the Ansar "capital", Biyare, last week. "Our relations with others is based on their attitude to God. If they are against our God, we will attack them." Durukan reported seeing hundreds of foreign fighters in the region. "Bearded warriors with arms on their backs walk in the streets with their children, followed by their wives wearing the chador," he said. "They say they have come for jihad and a government that rules with sharia." A sprawling wooden mosque complex dominates the centre of the town from where the mullahs of the radical Islamic group are spreading a reign of terror across the eastern part of the Kurdish territory. >From Ansar's stronghold on the Sharazoor Plains, its fighters have moved across the Shineray mountains to capture dozens of villages, where they have imposed the strict rules of the Shariat. The strategic passes into the mountains, which are pockmarked with caves and ravines, command access to the Iran-Iraq border. Ansar territory is guarded by units equipped with mortars, heavy machine guns and rocket launchers. The area has been described as an Iraqi Tora Bora, the mountainous stronghold where al-Qaeda made its last stand in Afghanistan. Much of Ansar's stock of chemicals was smuggled in by Abu Wa-il, a former agent of the Iraqi secret service, Mukhabarat; his present whereabouts are unknown. He provided the logistics for smuggling from Saddam-controlled areas, and the funding to acquire weapons and materials, almost certainly with Baghdad's approval. Kurdish officials say that Ansar is experimenting with chemical weapons on animals and humans. Since the arrival of al-Zarqawi, Ansar has dispatched at least one team of would-be suicide bombers, wearing tailored waistcoats studded with TNT, in a failed attempt to assassinate a Kurdish leader. The devastating effects of chemical weapons are well known in the area. At the foot of the mountains lies the city of Halabja which suffered an Iraqi chemical weapon attack in 1988. Residents are now afraid that a second batch of deadly poisons will descend from the mountains, this time from the radical Islamic group. "Ansar has taken chemical weapons left over from the Iran-Iraq war," said Mohammad Aziz, a Kurdish official in Halabja. "We feel the pressure of waiting in fear that they will throw chemicals on us again and hell will return." Behind the Shineray range, the valley's civilian life has been extinguished. Even villages nominally controlled by the PUK fear the spread of the mullahs' rule. The fighters of the PUK, expected to be a Washington ally, are engaged in a desperate battle to contain Ansar but Mullah Mohammad claims that his group has killed 1,000 Kurdish peshmerga - mountain fighters - since last year. "We have the videos of hundreds of dead PUK," Mullah Mohammad boasted. "We slit their throats and leave them on the roads for the PUK to come and bury them." 11 January 2003: Blair warns America of Muslim backlash over war on Iraq 23 December 2002: Saddam's agents launch bloodbath against West's allies 5 October 2002: US delight as rival Kurds accept peace deal 10 September 2002: Rival Kurdish groups form common front 22 August 2002: US fears al-Qa'eda threat is growing in Iraq 21 April 2002: Saddam 'sends troops to help bin Laden men' Next story: 1,300 die on roads in South Africa's Christmas carnage Related reports Dad's Army to save Saddam 'We shoulda nuked Saddam' Iraq factfile External links Kurdistan Observer Turkishpress.com Amsterdam: arresting the leader of Ansar al-Islam [14 Sep '02] - Arabic News Taliban-style group grows in Iraq [15 Mar '02] - Christian Science Monitor Ricin: essential data - CBWInfo.com Saddam Hussein's Iraq - The White House � Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2003 A<:>E<:>R ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Forwarded for your information. 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