HALABJA, Iraq — A radical Islamist group — with possible links to Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein — is growing and threatening the stability of the Kurdish region in northern Iraq.
The group — Ansar al-Islam — emerged just days before the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States. It delivered a fatwa, or manifesto, to the citizens in mountain villages against "the blasphemous secularist, political, social and cultural" society there, according to Kurdish party leaders.
Since, Ansar al-Islam has nearly doubled in size to 700, including Iraqis, Jordanians, Moroccans, Palestinians and Afghans — a composition similar to the multinational al-Qaida network. Villagers here claim it has ransacked and razed beauty salons, burned schools for girls, and murdered women in the streets for refusing to wear the burqa. It has seized a Taliban-style enclave of 4,000 civilians and several villages near the Iran border.
With the U.S. dedicated to rooting out al-Qaida's influence wherever it surfaces in the world, a group of Islamic extremists in northern Iraq with even loose ties to al-Qaida could complicate further any Iraq intervention. Already the United States is in a delicate dance with allies over how to handle Iraq, with many warning that the United States must consider the implications of possible instability that a move to topple Hussein could cause.
The emergence of the group comes as the United States ramps up pressure on the Hussein regime in Iraq over weapons development. In a White House press conference on Wednesday, President Bush said Hussein "is a problem, and we're going to deal with him."
The State Department did not have extensive information on Ansar al-Islam, but one official there said he was aware of its existence and connection to al-Qaida.