Word: ansar
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...latest in a running battle waged since Ansar had been driven from its front line in the lowlands. A day earlier, about 100 U.S. soldiers had joined with Kurdish peshmerga (those who face death) in an assault against Ansar's base. The U.S. bombs flattened a mosque in the village of Biarra that had been used as terrorist headquarters, replete with a gun pit on top. The assault capped a week of pummeling by American Tomahawk cruise missiles that prompted the al-Qaeda-linked militants to take to the snowy mountains bordering Iran. This corner of northeastern Iraq, near...
...assault clearly took a toll on Ansar's militants. Politburo member Mahmood Sangarwi of the pro-American Patriotic Union of Kurdistan says 60 dead were left behind after Friday's battles. In the rocky terrain of Saturday's exchange I saw eight more slain Ansar fighters. Some had died in their bunkers; others were cut down as they fled over open ground or among relatively exposed rocky outcrops. Their corpses remained where they had fallen throughout the assault...
...however, the battle for Halabja seemed inconclusive. President Bush last week referred to the destruction of Ansar's base as one of the war's important early achievements. But it may be a limited one. In Halabja, U.S. commando Mark says, "A lot of the senior cadre fled a long time ago, leaving a fanatical hard core to stay for the last stand. They had little intention of surviving." The Americans blasting away at the holdouts recognize this and lament opportunities lost. "This is my second time in northern Iraq," says a special-forces soldier. "I should be in Tampa...
...that for a week or two journalists became designated targets. The risk of falling victim to friendly fire - or getting killed in a road accident because we are too cool to buckle our seatbelts - is a risk that comes with this sort of work. But for a while Ansar al-Islam, a fundamentalist group that carved out an armed camp near the Iranian border, pointed its suicide bombers in our direction and succeeded in killing one journalist. In theory Ansar al-Islam was routed ten days ago, though I have my doubts (they lost at most half their fighters...
...succeed in meeting the local Sufis. Unlike Wahhabis, who feel that the world has been going downhill since the seventh century, Sufis love life, poetry, cheerfully embrace other religions and distrust authority. Not surprisingly, they have a rough time when people like the Taliban, or Taliban clones like Ansar, are in power...