To: Hawkmoon who wrote (37299 ) 8/12/2002 1:42:19 PM From: Hawkmoon Read Replies (2) | Respond to Something else you may not be seeing, that I'm seeing:They even filmed themselves picking over the bodies of their victims, some of whom had their hands tied behind their backs. The PUK later captured the film when they staged a counter-attack. In a rare interview with a Kurdish newspaper, the Ansar leader Mullah Krekar, with his long black beard and black and white turban, outlines the stark vision of Islam which his followers adhered to. "Democracy is based on four principles which are not permissible in Islam. As far as Islam is concerned, democracy from beginning to end is heresy". The Ansar control a belt of territory stretching up to the mountain ridge that marks the border with Iran. Kurdish sources believe the Ansar get both weapons and training from Iran - though Tehran denies this. With the Ansar perched right on the Iranian border, there must at least be a degree of tolerance. "There was relation between them and Afghanistan, al-Qaeda and Taleban. a captured Iraqi intelligence officer of 20 years standing, Abu Iman al-Baghdadi, insisted that one of the top Ansar leaders, Abu Wail, is an active Iraqi intelligence officer and that the group is heavily infiltrated by Baghdad. "Their basic allegiance is to al-Qaeda but some of them were trained in Iraq and went to Afghanistan. When the Americans attacked, they came here. Iraq is supporting them and using them to carry out attacks."If Iran, Iraq and al-Qaeda are all indeed involved with the Ansar in one way or another, they certainly make strange bedfellows. But the common denominator is that they are all opposed to the Americans, so there is logic to it. puk.org
