Fields of Jihad

摘要

The kurds had laid out bait for their prey. In early January, Kurdish security officials spread word in the villages along Iraq's bor-der with Iran that one stretch of the moun-tainous frontier was lightly guarded and thus safe for travelers who had reason to slip unnoticed in or out of fee country, Then the Kurds waited. "It was like, dropping seeds for a chicken, saying 'Come, come,' and then catching it," a Kurdish official involved in the sting told TIME. It was a crisp morning in mid-January when The tall man in an open-neck shirt, jacket and trousers looked like any of the traveling merchants . who frequent the area. When he was stopped at a Kurdish checkpoint near Kalar, officials made an intriguing discovery in his travel bag: two CDs and a computer flash disc the size of a cigarette lighter. With a hunch who their catch was-the CIA had given them a heads-up that he might be in the area-the Kurdish officials snapped a digital mug shot of the traveler and e-mailed it to their American intelligence contacts. The confirmation came back quickly; the Kurds had nabbed Hassan Ghul, one of the key al-Qaetla operatives still on the run. "When Washington heard we had him," said a Kurdish official in Baghdad, "they were doing cartwheels."