While the charges of terrorism against Mullah Krekar have been dropped, his followers and friends in Ansar al-Islam are apparently stepping up their terrorist activities, and may have been responsible for the Jordanian embassy bomb in Baghdad a few days ago:

L. Paul Bremer III, the top civilian administrator in Iraq, said in an interview on Friday night that fighters from Ansar al-Islam, a militant organization that the United States tried to destroy during the war, had escaped to Iran and then slipped back across the border into Iraq. He said hundreds of the militants were now in Iraq, where they were preparing to attack the occupation forces or administration.

"The intelligence suggests that Ansar al-Islam is planning large-scale terrorist attacks here," Mr. Bremer said. "So as long as we have, as I think we do, substantial numbers of Ansar terrorists around here I think we have to be pretty alert to the fact that we may see more of this."

But, of course:

"Though it is hard on us here, I would rather be fighting them here than fighting them in New York."

And here's more on a possible Ansar-Saddam connection:

The U.S. believes that Ansar has ties to bin Laden - at least one Ansar prisoner in U.S. custody has confessed to being a member of al-Qaeda - but the relationship between Ansar and Saddam is still unclear. A senior intelligence official says the U.S. believes a Saddam "agent" infiltrated Ansar, but the group's leaders may not have known the agent was loyal to Baghdad.

Back home Mullah Krekar responds to the threat of Ansar al-Islam with unusually frank approval:

Mulla Krekar said he thinks Ansar al-Islam will respond to what they interpret as unmotivated attacks against them. [..] Mulla Krekar claims to no longer have any contact with Ansar al-Islam, but tells TV 2 he thinks there will be an attack from the organisation: "They might attack with grenades or with small bombs. I don't know", Krekar told TV 2. Asked if Ansar al-Islam still has military power, Krekar said he thinks they do and that he thinks Ansar al-Islam will use that power against the US.

Krekar was equally frank in an interview with NRK, according to document.no's Gunnar Nyquist, who fumes over the journalist's failure to ask even a single critical question:

In Krekar's statements there is more than enough to follow up on, which makes NRK's treatment of the case even more inexplicable. Krekar practically laughs over the Norwegian tolerance, which allows terrorists to walk freely about. Krekar appreciates the freedom he enjoys in Norway, but the next moment rejects basic human rights principles such as individual freedoms and rights. [..]

Krekar calls for more strong leaders among Muslims. Like Osama bin Laden, or Saddam Hussein? The question isn't asked. Krekar divides Muslims into four groups: The missionaries, the political Muslims, those who would change todays system without violance, and finally the jihadis. This last group is being oppressed both in Europe and in the countries they come from, and will change this with weapon in hand, he says. To the question of what he defines himself as, he answers jihadi. Straight talk, but no follow up questions here either.

Yup, it's the Oslo Syndrome all right. While reading about Walter Duranty, the New York Times journalist and Soviet collaborator who helped bury the truth about the Ukranian genocide of 1933, I finally realized what it is that Krekar and his lawyer Brynjar Meling are doing, and why it works so well: They've succeeded in making their version of the facts the Other Side of the story.

Most of us don't know much about anything, but we're forced to make judgments about things we're ignorant of all the time, and I believe the tendency when that happens is to seek out the golden mean. If A says that x is 3 and B fervently objects that x is 5, and I don't know anything about A, B or x, I'll likely conclude that the while on One Side, some believe that x is 3, on the Other Side many claim that it is 5, and the truth is probably somewhere in between. This may be a rational way to approach the unknown - imagine if it were any other way, if the tendency was to go for extremes - but it can be abused. Imagine if C comes along and says that x is 20. I still don't know the least thing about x, so now I might conclude that while on one side, x is considered to be somewhere between 3 and 5, on the Other Side many insist that it is closer to 20 - so the truth is probably somewhere in between. Then D comes along and says 200. Now A, B and C are the "one side", and D the other.

The challenge, then, for a propagandist on hostile territory is not to actually disprove the other view, to convince everyone that they are wrong, as this is almost impossible if that view happens to be right, but to play on people's ignorance and set your own version of the facts up as the Other Side of the story. Those who know much about the subject will catch your lie, but most people won't. That's where Krekar and Meling have succeeded. They've made this a discussion about whether Krekar is a dangerous terrorist and religious fanatic or an innocent victim of American propaganda and PUK intrigues, where it should have been about whether he's a danger to us or just a danger to his countrymen. Krekar's grandfatherly charisma and the current anti-American mood has helped to level the ground, to make him and the Bush administration about equally trustworthy. So has the fact that he is here, while Bush (we suspect) could hardly point us out on a map.

This, of course, is no excuse for the media's kid gloves treatment of Krekar, and it begs the question of why journalists have letten him get away with it. I still have no good answer to that.

Harboring the leader of a terrorist organization should be an embarrassment to most Norwegians, but I get the impression that that is not necessarily the case. It must be that people there are either (1) unconvinced that Krekar and his organization have killed or (2) are not particularly concerned about those killings. Though it seems to me, at times, that many in Norway do condone terrorism when they believe that the terrorists represent an oppressed group (Palestinians, for example), it is still hard to believe that many in Norway could sympathize with the goals and methods of Ansar-al-islam. On the other hand, if that organization claims to be a victim of American imperialism, then I imagine it might win some fans in Norway.

- Gill

Read Rantburg for more on Ansar al-Islam.

According to an article in the New York Times, Ansar al-islam may be playing host to a motley array of islamic terrorists who are all anxious to challenge the Americans. According to the Times article, "In much the same way as the Russian invasion of Afghanistan stirred an earlier generation of young Muslims determined to fight the infidel, the American presence in Iraq is prompting a rising tide of Muslim militants to slip into the country to fight the foreign occupier ... Iraqi officials say they expect a broad spectrum of Muslim militants to flood Iraq. They believe that Ansar al-Islam, a small fundamentalist group believed to have links with Al Qaeda, forms the backbone of the underground network ... Mullah Mustapha Kreikar, the founding spiritual leader of Ansar al-Islam, said in an interview on Sunday with LBC, the Lebanese satellite channel, that the fight in Iraq would be the culmination of all Muslim efforts since the Islamic caliphate collapsed in the early 20th century with the demise of the Ottoman Empire. "There is no difference between this occupation and the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in 1979," he said from Norway, where he has political asylum.

"The resistance is not only a reaction to the American invasion, it is part of the continuous Islamic struggle since the collapse of the caliphate," he said. "All Islamic struggles since then are part of one organized effort to bring back the caliphate." Such appeals appear to be attracting a wide range of militants ... the main group organizing an underground route of safe houses and coordinating the various efforts is believed to be Ansar al-Islam ... "

Norway ought to arrest that bastard Krekar. It is hard to understand how Norway can give asylum to the leader of a terrorist organization that is mobilizing to kill Americans and further destabilize Iraq and, at the same time, claim to be a friend of America and a champion of peace.

Here's a link to the Times article"

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/13/international/worldspecial/13ISLA.html?pagewanted=1&hp

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