Nearly four months after bombing his compound and killing 43 of his armed followers, U.S. forces acknowledged Monday that they had arrested one of northern Iraq's most colourful and enigmatic Muslim leaders, a move likely to inflame tensions in a mountainous corridor along the Iranian border.
| Hmmm... Those nails are pretty tough, ain't they? |
Handcuffed and blindfolded, Ali Bapir and three members of his Komaly Islami party were whisked away in a U.S. helicopter. The arrest was part of a trap and occurred Thursday after Bapir and his men had accepted a U.S. invitation to a meeting at a nearby resort. American soldiers stopped Bapir's vehicle on the way to the hotel and took Bapir and his entourage into custody. Bapir is one of the most charismatic lunatic fringe leaders in northern Iraq. In many ways, he represents the challenge U.S. forces face in coaxing radical clerics away from militantism. Bapir has long said he desires a relationship with the West, but his suspected links to Ansar Al-Islam - a radical group with ties to Al Qaeda - often have made his overtures suspect.
| When you sleep with pigs, don't complain about the stench... |
Bapir and 3,000 to 5,000 of his followers lived in the village of Khurmal in northeastern Iraq. About 200 Ansar families lived in Khurmal, and many of Ansar's guerrillas would appear nightly in the village to take refuge from battles with the Washington-backed militia controlled by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. Bapir repeatedly denied that his band of armed men supported Ansar.
| But they gave them shelter, which is support... |
But the PUK — which gave Bapir hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in hopes that his group would abandon its radical tendencies — determined before the U.S. invasion that Komaly Islami was too closely aligned with Ansar.
| I wish to hell somebody would try to bribe me to do something with hundreds of thousands of dollars. Maybe I oughta buy a turban? |
U.S. forces widened the scope of its cruise-missile attacks to include several of Bapir's compounds in the foothills near Khurmal. Bapir surrendered, and days later he and his surviving followers were taken to the town of Ranya. Bapir said: "I don't know if the U.S. hit us because we are Islamic. If we have done anything wrong, the U.S. must tell us. ... If there is no reason, the U.S. must apologise." |