Fighting Terrorism Page 7

  From the beginning of my involvement with the Jonathan Institute, and later in my tenure as a diplomat, I believed that the key to the elimination of international terror was having the United States lead the battle, and that this American leadership would harness the countries of the free world into line, much as a powerful locomotive pulls the cars of a train. But it was no simple matter to change the minds of American opinion makers on this subject. Since the view that prevailed in the United States in the late 1970s and early 1980s held that terrorism was the result of political and social oppression, the inescapable conclusion was that terror could not be eliminated without first bringing these conditions to an end. My colleagues and I rejected this view out of hand. We believed that the American position was not set in stone and that it could be changed by a vigorous effort to present the truth to the American public. At the heart of this effort was bringing to light basic facts about international terrorism, some of which were publicly unavailable. The evidence was checked and rechecked, and from it emerged a clear picture: International terrorism was the result of collusion between dictatorial states and an international terrorist network—a collusion which had to be fought and could be defeated.

  Israel played an important role in persuading the United States to adopt this stance. In the military sphere, Israel served as an example of an uncompromising fight against terrorism. The refusal of successive Israeli governments to capitulate to terrorist demands—a refusal that found expression in the repeated assaults by the Israel Defense Forces against terrorists in hostage situations from Maalot to Entebbe—and the Israeli policy of active military pursuit of terrorists into their strongholds, showed other nations that it was possible to fight terrorism.

  On the political level, Israel’s representatives in the United States waged a concerted campaign to convince American citizens that they should adopt similar policies. This effort began in full force during Moshe Arens’s tenure as ambassador to Washington in 1982. Arens arrived in the United States shortly before the Israeli campaign against the PLO terrorist haven in Lebanon. The United States was hostile to this operation, and the Reagan administration applied various pressures to rein in the assault, including suspending delivery of fighter planes to the Israeli Air Force. Arens did much to reverse the American position, especially through the special relationship he was able to establish with Secretary of State George Shultz and President Ronald Reagan.

  In July of that year, I joined the embassy as deputy ambassador and soon participated in the effort to persuade the American government to shift its policy to a more aggressive opposition to terrorism. When Arens returned to Israel in 1983 to serve as Minister of Defense, I served for six months as acting ambassador. During this period I kept up the contacts with Shultz. Both in diplomatic channels and in appearances in the media, I used every opportunity to attack international terrorism and the regimes and organizations that stood behind it. The West could defeat international terrorism, I insisted, provided that it adopt two principles as the foundation stones of its policy. First, it must refuse to yield to terrorist demands; and second, it must be ready to confront the regimes sponsoring terror. I repeatedly called for an active policy that would include diplomatic, economic, and even military sanctions against these states.

  One of the early supporters of an active American policy against international terrorism was Secretary of State George Shultz. Shultz was particularly shaken by the series of car bombings in 1983 aimed at the American embassy in Beirut, and the American and French servicemen stationed there as peacekeepers under the agreement negotiated for the PLO withdrawal. The bombings left many hundreds dead, including 240 American Marines. At one point during this terrible year, Shultz called me into his office and told me that he was extremely concerned about the spread of terrorism. “These terrorists aren’t human beings,” he said. “They’re animals.”

  He made it clear that he was determined to effect a change in American anti-terror policy from one of passive defense to a more active one, taking the battle against the terrorists to their bases abroad and to the countries supporting them, “even if there are some who are opposed to this.” (He meant primarily Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, who was hesistant about using America’s armed forces against terrorist targets.) Shultz suggested a series of meetings in which we could work to define what the United States could do in conjunction with the other countries of the free world to uproot the terrorist scourge. I told him that the Jonathan Institute would be holding a second conference, this time in Washington, and suggested that he speak at the conference and make his position clear.

  On July 4, 1984, seven years after the Entebbe rescue, Shultz made the following statement to the gathered diplomats and journalists at the conference:

  Many countries have joined the ranks of what we might call the “League of Terror” as full-fledged sponsors and supporters of indiscriminate, and not so indiscriminate, murder … The epidemic is spreading, and the civilized world is still groping for remedies.

  Nevertheless, there is also cause for hope. Thanks in large measure to the efforts of concerned governments and private organizations like the Jonathan Institute, the peoples of the free world have finally begun to grapple with the problem of terrorism, in intellectual and in practical terms …

  What we have learned about terrorism is, first, that it is not random, undirected, purposeless violence. It is not, like an earthquake or a hurricane, an act of nature before which we are helpless. Terrorists and those who support them have definite goals; terrorist violence is the means of attaining those goals … With rare exceptions, they are trying to impose their will by force, a special kind of force designated to create an atmosphere of fear. And their efforts are directed at destroying what we are seeking to build …

  Can we as a country, can the community of free nations, stand in a purely defensive posture and absorb the blows dealt by terrorists? I think not. From a practical standpoint, a purely passive defense does not provide enough of a deterrent to terrorism and the states that sponsor it. It is time to think long, hard, and seriously about more active means of defense—defense through appropriate preventive or preemptive actions against terrorist groups before they strike.9

  Shultz was as good as his word. He and President Ronald Reagan took the lead in mounting an unprecedented war against international terrorism. Under their leadership, the United States imposed diplomatic and economic sanctions against terrorist states such as Libya, Syria, and Iran. They fought with determination to apprehend the PLO gunmen who murdered a wheelchairbound American named Leon Klinghoffer aboard the hijacked cruise ship Achille Lauro in 1985—to the point of intercepting the terrorists’ escape plane in midair over the Mediterranean. Above all, they sent a powerful message to terrorists the world over when, together with Margaret Thatcher’s Britain, they bombed Libya, in a raid in which Qaddafi himself nearly lost his life.

  Later that year, a TWA airliner was hijacked by Arab gunmen to Beirut, where the passengers were held as hostages. In order to sharpen their demand for the release of terrorists jailed in Kuwait and Lebanese Shiites being held by Israel, the gunmen murdered an American passenger in cold blood and threw his body on the tarmac. Fearing that American troops would storm the plane, the terrorists subsequently scattered the hostages among safehouses in various parts of Beirut, in effect eliminating the option of an Entebbe-style rescue. At the start of the crisis, a special communications channel was established between Shultz and the two key leaders in the government of Israel, Prime Minister Shimon Peres and Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir (who, although of opposing parties, were jointly ruling in a National Unity Government); I was then serving as Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, and sensitive messages concerning the crisis were passed back and forth through my office. Shultz’s assistant Charlie Hill called me daily to brief the Israeli government on developments and consult with us as to how the United States should proceed. Even during the first stage of the crisis, I
had insisted that the key to escaping from the trap would be an unequivocal American refusal to give in to the demands of the terrorists under any circumstance. But when the hostages were dispersed throughout Beirut, the terrorists escalated their demands, threatening to begin killing the hostages immediately if these demands were not met. The day this ultimatum was issued, Hill called me to ask what I thought the American response should be.

  “Issue a counter-threat,” I told him. “Make it clear to the terrorists that if they so much as touch a hair on any of the hostages’ heads, you won’t rest until every last one of them has been hunted down and wiped out.”

  Hill said he would pass the message to Shultz. Days later, he called back to say that they had acted on this recommendation and that the results had been positive. Over the following days, the Americans were unrelenting in their firm and uncompromising posture. The terrorists eventually tempered their demands, and the tension began to subside. At the height of the crisis, the Israeli government had offered to release the Shiite prisoners in its custody—but according to the original timetable which had been set before the hijacking. Shultz had objected to this offer, because it sounded like a partial acceptance of the terrorists’ conditions. A few weeks later, a face-saving compromise was arranged, whereby the hostages were released, followed by the release of Israeli-held Shiite prisoners according to the original timetable. The central demand—the release of the terrorists’ comrades in Kuwait—was not met.

  These successes encouraged the Reagan administration to work for an overall change in the Western stance toward terrorism. In 1986, the United States called a summit conference of Western leaders in Tokyo, in which sweeping resolutions were adopted calling for an aggressive Western defense against international terrorism. And in 1987, Congress passed the firmest anti-terrorist legislation yet, ordering the closure of all PLO offices in the United States. The law stated that “the PLO is a terrorist organization, which threatens the interests of the United States and its allies.”

  After twenty years in which international terrorism under the leadership of the PLO had enjoyed virtually unrestricted freedom of action, the West had finally begun to grasp the principle that the terrorist organizations and their state sponsors should no longer be able to escape punishment for their deeds. The growing understanding of the nature of terrorist methods, combined with the very real threat of further American operations against terrorist bases and terrorist states around the world, undermined the foundations on which international terror had been built.

  Of course, the West’s battle against terrorism was not without its setbacks. The worst of these was the revelation in November 1986 that even as the United States had been stepping up its war against terrorism, elements in the Reagan White House had been simultaneously negotiating with Iranian-controlled terrorists in Lebanon for the release of American hostages in their custody. The agreed-upon price was shipments of American weapons to the regime in Iran. The media reported that three shipments had been sent—one for each hostage released—but that the terrorists, knowing a good deal when they saw one, had during the same period taken three new hostages. As the news of the American capitulation broke, Secretary of State Shultz told his assistant: “After years of work, the keystone of our counterterrorism policy was set: No deals with terrorists. Now we have fallen into the trap. We have voluntarily made ourselves the victims of the terrorist extortion racket. We have spawned a hostage-taking industry. Every principle that the President praised in Netanyahu’s book on terrorism has been dealt a terrible blow by what has been done.”10 (He was referring to Terrorism: How the West Can Win, which, according to Shultz, President Reagan had read on the way to the Tokyo summit on terrorism.) Fortunately, Shultz’s tenacious campaign to steer the United States away from its dealings with Iran paid off. Within a matter of weeks, he was able to reassert control over Middle East policy, and the American government returned to the original course he had set with President Reagan.

  Despite the setbacks, the Reagan–Shultz anti-terror policy of the 1980s was an immense overall success. International terrorism was dealt a stunning defeat. Its dictatorial affiliations were laid bare, its perpetrators unmasked. The sharp political, economic, and military blows delivered by the West against its chief sponsors caused them to rescind their support and rein in the terrorists. And the destruction of the PLO base in Lebanon deprived the Soviets and the Arab world of their most useful staging ground for terrorist operations against the democracies. The Soviet–Arab terrorist axis was on the verge of extinction. The West’s airlines, cities, and citizens seemed to be safe once again. After nearly twenty years of being subjected to continual savagery, the entire scaffolding of international terrorism appeared to have collapsed into the dust.

  IV

  The 1990s: The Rise of Militant Islam in America and the World

  Or had it?

  As with any form of aggression, deterring terrorist violence requires constant vigilance. There is no one-step solution available in which the democracies take forceful action against the sources of terror and then proceed to forget about the problem. For the problem as such will not go away. Terrorism is rooted in the deepest nature of the dictatorial regimes and organizations that practice it. That they are prone to violent coercion, including terror, is not an incidental characteristic of dictatorships; it is their quintessential, defining attribute. And as long as they retain their dictatorial nature, they will retain their proclivity for terror. Unless constantly checked and suppressed, this tendency will manifest itself again and again. Of course, when a regime like Soviet Communism is replaced by a democratically elected government, this has an immediate effect. Post-Communist Russia is no longer in the business of supporting international terror, and no action is required to ensure that this remains the case. But barring such a dramatic revolution in political philosophy and policy, the basic inclination toward terrorism remains deeply embedded in its chief practitioners and sponsors, and they must be constantly reminded that they will pay dearly for such conduct if they practice it against other societies.

  Yet it is precisely this message, potently delivered by the United States and its allies in the second half of the 1980s, that has been obscured and enfeebled in the 1990s. After their impressive victories, some of the Western security services quickly relaxed their anti-terror posture in the pursuit of terrorist cells on their home turf. For example, in Germany the authorities let up the pressure on neo-Nazi groups, with the result that they began to have a renaissance of sorts. Equally, the all-out effort to deter naked aggression in the Gulf War convinced some in the West that they had resolutely defused the potential for aggression from the Middle East. But this was not the case. The results of the Gulf War were hardly decisive in discouraging terror from the Middle East.

  First, while the conquest of Kuwait by Iraq was a clear act of aggression for the entire world to see (and punish), terrorism is invariably secretive, relying on its deniability for impunity. The deterrent effect that applies to aggression carried out in broad daylight does not necessarily apply to aggression carried out in the dark.

  Second, that very deterrent effect with regard to Iraq was itself eroded by the inconclusive end of the Gulf War. The punishment meted out to Saddam Hussein was not, as it transpires, that severe after all; a monumental American blunder at the end of an otherwise brilliantly executed war left the fifty-one-year-old tyrant in power in Iraq, sparing him to rise and possibly fight another day.

  Third, Iraq’s enemy to the east, Iran, a terrorist state par excellence, paid no price whatsoever in the Gulf War and was even accorded considerable legitimacy as a tacit ally.

  Fourth, Iraq’s enemy to the west, Syria, another classic terrorist state, also benefited enormously from the war. For the privilege of seeing its archenemy Iraq crushed by the West, it received badly needed economic assistance, and was offered great respectability in the attainment of its strategic objectives, such as pushing Israel off the Golan Heights an
d digesting what remained of Lebanon. Since the Madrid Peace Conference convened by the United States and Russia after the war, the Western countries have seldom, if ever, demanded that Syria clearly cease its sponsorship of terror or that it dismantle the headquarters of the dozen terrorist movements based in Damascus, lest such “upsetting” efforts drive the Syrian dictator, Hafez Assad, away from the Western orbit.

  Fifth, after the Gulf War, a new base was added to the roster of terrorist havens in the form of PLO-controlled Gaza, which quickly became a safe haven for several Islamic terrorist movements.

  The result of all this was that by the mid-1990s international terrorism’s major Middle Eastern sponsors were far from defeated and prostrate. Some of them got up, dusted themselves off, and were ready to resume their former practices, admittedly with greater caution and concealment this time. Most important, they were joined by new bullies on the block. Undoubtedly the most important new forces propelling international terrorism in the 1990s have been the Islamic Republic of Iran and the militant Sunni Islamic movements that have assumed an international character. Already active in the 1980s, these forces have escalated their activities in recent years, providing the spiritual and material wellspring of an evergrowing gallery of Islamic terrorist groups. Most prominent is the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, who rose to prominence in the Khomeinist Shiite revolution in Iran in 1979 and soon afterward sent expeditionary forces to Lebanon. Once in Lebanon, they were instrumental in spawning the Shiite terror organization Hizballah, the Party of God, which with Syrian and Iranian sponsorship masterminded the terrorist attacks that drove the American forces out of the country in the mid-1980s. Hizballah is presently the major terrorist force in south Lebanon, launching incessant attacks against Israel’s northern border. It is suspected of involvement in a number of bombing attacks around the world, including the 1988 midair destruction of a Pan Am airliner over Lockerbie, Scotland, which claimed 258 lives, and the 1994 bombing of the Jewish community building in Buenos Aires, which left nearly a hundred dead and hundreds more wounded. Together, the Iranians and Hizballah have begun nurturing additional affiliate groups such as the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which operates against Israel, and similar groups active in other countries.