Main News; Foreign Desk

THE CONFLICT IN IRAQ: PATH TO JIHAD; Jihad offered escape, but not sanctuary; A young Iraqi seeking a new life joins an extremist group. His rocky path lea= ds him deeper into despair.

Borzou Daragahi

Times Staff Writer

1810 words

18 March 2007

Los Angeles Times

Home Edition

A-6

English

HALABJA, IRAQ

The young blacksm= ith with an easy laugh and the looks of a Kurdish Sean Penn wasn't particularly devout or angry at the West. He didn't aspire to "martyrdom." But five years ago, Karzan Rasool made a decision that haunts him still: He bec= ame a holy warrior in the army of Islam.

He joined Ansar al Islam, an extremist group with links to Al Qaeda, almost on a whim. Unlike = true believers, he just wanted an escape from his desperate life.

"I didn't ha= ve any clear goal by going and joining them," the 24-year-old said during= an afternoon of conversation and watermelon in this Kurdish border town, offer= ing a rare peek into the capacities and organizational skills of one Sunni insurgent group operating in Iraq. "I wanted to go away from town and everybody there. I wanted to join a group from which there was no return.&q= uot;

He mastered the A= K-47 and the art of insurgency. He set out on patrols with his comrades. After a= few months, he fancied himself a mujahid.

But instead of escaping his demons, he wound up being consumed by them, an improbable holy warrior pushed to the brink of taking his own life.

Seeking an embrac= e

It was a rainy da= y in early spring when Rasool took a taxi to the checkpoint leading to the camp = of Ansar al Islam.

By all accounts, Rasool had been a gifted youngster, a mischievous boy who was a whiz with machinery and tools. He and his family fled to Iran during the final years = of Saddam Hussein's Anfal campaign, a military operation meant to stamp out the Kurdish insurgency in the north.

But when Rasool's father died, Iranian authorities deported the 19-year-old back to Iraq, whe= re he ended up with an abusive uncle. He was regularly beaten, he and relatives said, and he wanted to run away.

As Rasool approac= hed the checkpoint that day in April 2002, he said, the only thing he wanted wa= s to be embraced by someone.

"I had heard about them, stories from the men in the market," he said. "I had heard they were violent. But I didn't care. I was tired of the kind of life= I was living at the time."

Ansar al Islam's followers, holed up in the mountains along the border with Iran, subscribed= to the extremist strain of Islam that drives Osama bin Laden. Their scattered remnants have fused with other insurgent groups now operating in Iraq, especially Ansar al Sunna.

Former Secretary = of State Colin L. Powell described the group as an Al Qaeda affiliate that bolstered its ranks with veterans of the Afghan jihad, or "holy war,&q= uot; against the Soviets and possible operatives close to Bin Laden. =

For months, the g= roup had been fighting a war of attrition against the secular Kurdish government= in the north.

At the checkpoint, Rasool was ordered to get out of the taxi. He slowly stepped out. The driver pulled away.

"I told them frankly I had come to join Ansar," he said.

He was interrogat= ed.

What's your name? Where are you from? Which town? Anyone in your family belong to any politic= al parties? Who else do you know in Ansar? Who told you to come here?

He said he was bo= rn in the village of Derasheesh. A man from Derasheesh confirmed his identity. They let him stay in the Ansar al Islam stronghold of Biyare for a week. He= ate and slept with the fighters, getting to know their ideas and personalities.=

"The majorit= y of them knew what they were doing," Rasool said. "Everybody had a re= ason for being there. I wanted to get away from town and from everybody. Some wa= nted to do jihad."

Over the course of about six weeks, he was taught various combat techniques: how to patrol, ho= w to ambush, how to retreat and how to defend in hand-to-hand combat. He was tau= ght how to clean, care for, load and fire his AK-47.

Each day, he said, three or four young men would arrive, each asking to join Ansar al Islam. S= ome had been sent by clerics. Others came of their own volition.

Part of the team =

The new recruits = made Rasool feel good about his decision. He began to get a sense of the organization's size and strength. There were eight battalions, he said, each consisting of 30 to 150 men divided into three or four companies.

Though he ostensi= bly was in a militant Islamist group, Rasool said, there was never any religious indoctrination, just the rigors of military life. The men were arrayed in s= mall posts, protecting their turf against the forces of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, one of the two main parties dominating Kurdish life and politics= in the semiautonomous Kurdish region.

"All they sa= id was, 'We have to liberate the land,' " he said.

They ate in group= s, slurping down stews of okra, tomato and lentil. They received salaries of $= 30 to $60 a month. They grew long, bushy beards in the style of the Afghan mujahedin.

For the first tim= e in his life, Rasool felt at ease. No longer was he compelled to make hard decisions about himself and his life.

"I was satisfied," he said. "It was easy. I just stayed ready for my orders."

Many of the young recruits would sign up for suicide missions. They were called the "liv= ing martyrs," Rasool said.

"I never rea= ched the point where I would blow myself up," he said. "But I would ha= ve obeyed any other order, like going to the front and fighting."

But troubles star= ted.

"I was a lit= tle naughty," he said. "The majority of them were very serious. No joking. No laughing."

A falling-out ens= ued. While manning a checkpoint, he was scolded for wearing a pair of Western-st= yle olive-green pants instead of the traditional Kurdish trousers. "I said, 'If I can't wear what I want, then I quit,' " Rasool said. =

Impetuously, he l= eft the Ansar camp and joined a nearby militia called the Islamic Group. He was placed on guard duty. "We do the same thing as Ansar: jihad," one= of the commanders told him. "But we do it more slowly." <= /span>

Devastation =

Rasool awoke with= a start the evening of March 23, 2003. The explosions were deafening. He grab= bed his gun and ran out of the dormitory just as a U.S. Tomahawk missile struck= the building. It was the beginning of the Iraq war. At least 43 Islamic Group fighters were killed, including the young man who had relieved Rasool on gu= ard duty minutes earlier.

"I started crying," he said. "I cried for all I went through. I never cried = that much before. I thought I had reached my goal. I was a mujahid.... I was respected."

He shaved off his beard and went into hiding.

Rasool holed up i= n an abandoned office of the Islamic Group in downtown Halabja for three months = before he slowly began to venture out. Saddam Hussein had been overthrown. The Kur= dish region was part of the new Iraq, which in those first few months was a relatively safe place of promise and hope.

At a CD shop one = day, a security official asked Rasool for his identification card. Suspicious, he led him to an office to ask some questions. He inquired flat out whether Ra= sool was a member of Ansar al Islam. Rasool admitted that he had been. He was to= ssed into jail for a week.

The authorities didn't let up. He was arrested twice in the next several years, held one ti= me for 20 days and the other time for 41.

"Any time my name came up, they would arrest me," he said. "There were some beatings, but nothing very harsh."

By late 2005, with the insurgency raging, the outlook for Iraq had turned bleaker. On Nov. 1, Rasool was summoned to the main security office in the provincial capital, Sulaymaniya, and placed under arrest.

"We have information you went to Afghanistan," he was told. <= /p>

In a strange pris= on near the Kurdish town of Qala Chwaran, he was locked in a 3-foot-square cag= e, he said.

"They lowered you in and covered the top," he recalled. "The lid would go down = and make you crouch."

There were English-speaking interrogators who Rasool assumes were Americans.

"They were nice," he said. "They offered me tea and coffee and Pepsi -- and = then suddenly in the middle of the interview pinch my finger with pliers." =

The interrogators wanted to know whether he had trained in Iran and whether he had met Al Qae= da operatives there.

"They kept asking me about Iran," he said. "They wanted to know the names of intelligence officials supporting Ansar."

But he was never charged with a crime. "No one said anything about what I had supposedly done," he said. "There were no lawyers or judges."

Kurdish officials denied that the regional government operates such a prison but acknowledged that there could be secret prisons under the control of the intelligence apparatuses of the two main Kurdish parties.

Eventually Rasool= was sent to a prison with ordinary prisoners and guards. The International Committee of the Red Cross visited, giving him a set of clean clothes, whic= h he used to try to hang himself.

Hitting bottom

His fluttering fe= et caught the attention of one of the prison guards. He was half-conscious when they pulled him down.

"My goal all along was to escape my life," he said.

He was eventually transferred to a third prison, with even lower security. One day last May, = they let him go.

"We've done a lot of research," they told him. "We've discovered you're not the person we're looking for. We're not sorry. But you're free."

Since his release, Rasool has been striving to pursue an ordinary life, despite the scrutiny of authorities, who continue to keep an eye on him, he said.

He continues to p= ray five times a day, but he also listens to Iranian pop music from Los Angeles= and considers himself a movie buff. His time as a hard-core warrior for Islam h= as not transformed him, he said.

"Before join= ing them I didn't believe in jihad," he said. "During the time I was there I did.

"Afterward, I stopped believing."

daragahi@latimes.= com

PHOTO: BEEN THERE: Karzan Rasool, a 24-year-old blacksmith, tries to maintain an ordinary life after his harrowing journey. Authorities still keep an eye on him.;PHOTOGRAPHER: Ayub Nuri For The Times