DAR AL HARB - IRAQ: A BIRTH OF A JIHADIST

Seeking a new life, Iraqi finds jihad
A Kurd looking for escape joins an extremist group, but it doesn't offer the sanctuary he expected.
By Borzou Daragahi

HALABJA, IRAQ — The young blacksmith 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 became 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 have 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, offering 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."

He mastered the AK-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.

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