<DIV> <BLOCKQUOTE class=replbq style="PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #1010ff 2px solid"> Did you read this? Juan Cole writes: "The Turkish Hizbullah originated in the radical Kurdish struggles of Eastern Anatolia. Its leader was a classmate of Abdullah Ocalan of the Marxist militia/party, the PKK, which carried out terrorist attacks especially in southeastern Turkey. It broke off from the Marxists, aiming at establishing an Islamist state instead, and for a while mainly targetted the PKK. Then it turned against the Turkish government, especially as the PKK subsided. See for background the Al-Ahram Weekly piece by Gareth Jenkins from a couple of years ago." His source, http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2000/467/re2.htm , writes: "Hizbullah grew out of the Kurdish Islamist movement of the early 1980s when Velioglu, ironically a former classmate of Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Ocalan, broke away to form his own group dedicated to using violence to establish a Kurdish Islamic state based on the model of Iran. Velioglu slowly built up a network of militants. Turkish security officials also claim, despite denials by Teheran, that the organisation received considerable financial and logistical support from Iran. Many captured Hizbullah militants have reportedly named both camps in Iran where they were trained and the names of Iranian officials who trained them." There's quite a difference breaking off from the Kurdish Islamist movement and the PKK. What he's saying is that TH was closely aligned at least ideologically to PKK (whether organizationally connected is left vague), but that it "spun" in an un-Marxist direction before arriving at its current coordinates. Decades ago, many Islamist groups were also Marxist in their orientation, hard as it is to believe today. So, yes, I did read it.</BLOCKQUOTE></DIV><hr SIZE=1> Do you Yahoo!? <a href="http://us.rd.yahoo.com/slv/mailtag/*http://companion.yahoo.com/">Free Pop-Up Blocker - Get it now</a>