Sunday, August 25, 2002

A young man who nearly brought the terror of suicide bombing to Kurdistan changed his mind at the last minute. Either he did not say what changed his mind or the reporter did not pass it along. He does write why the Kurds think this new brand of extremism is affecting the youth.

Mullah Majjed and his secular counterparts blame a campaign of preaching linked to aid distribution by Islamic charities backed by wealthy Gulf governments - including that of Saudi Arabia - and private donors. Last week the ruling family of Saudi Arabia was sued by victims of the September 11th attacks for their role in fomenting the radical Islamic movement that bred men like Mohammed Atta, the leader of the hijackers.

"These people are stealing our youth. They are preaching intolerance where once there was tolerance," said Sadi Ahmed Pire of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), one of the two main parties who split the government of the Kurdish enclave.

The charities have been targeting Kurdistan ever since senior hardline Islamist clerics announced that the flood of Western NGO's into the area after the 1991 Gulf War was a ploy to undermine the Kurds Islamic faith. Most tie their aid distribution explicitly to observance of the strict rituals of the 'Whahabi' strand of Islam followed in Saudi Arabia and, increasingly, elsewhere in the Middle East. Students are subsidised on the condition that they attend prayer meetings and women in their family wear the veil. For orphans to receive aid they have to study the Koran. Wahabi literature is widely printed and disseminated. Thousands of mosques have been built in villages that do not even have schools. Opponents of the Wahabi groups claim the mosques have been deliberately built in highly visible locations.

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