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Taliban-Style Enclave Sets Up in Iraq
Friday, January 11, 2002
By Owen Bowcott
The Guardian

LONDON
Kurdish followers of Osama bin Laden, who are trying to establish a Taliban-style enclave in northern Iraq, have triggered a civil war estimated to have claimed more than 100 lives in four months.

Jund al-Islam (Soldiers of Islam) is operating in the mountains bordering Iran and defying calls by Kurdish nationalists, who control the region, to disband.

In one incident, more than 40 nationalist fighters were reportedly beheaded or mutilated.

The conflict flared soon after September 11 around Halabja, on the edge of territory controlled by the nationalist Patriotic Union of Kurdistan since the end of the Gulf War in 1991. The emergence of Jund al-Islam follows a splintering of Muslim forces in the region. The group is a hardline offshoot of the Iranian-backed Islamic Movement of Kurdistan, which once held territory near Halabja.

The first Jund al-Islam decrees ordered shops to close during the call to prayers and outlawed music, TV and portraits of people.
(More: TheAge,com.AU News Source)
2002 © The Guardian.

Dan