THE REDIRECTION
by SEYMOUR M. HERSH
Is the Administration's new policy benefitting our enemies in the war
on terrorism?
Issue of 2007-03-05
Posted 2007-02-25
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To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush
Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities
in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with
Saudi Arabia's government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations
that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is
backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations
aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has
been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant
vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al
Qaeda.
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The new American policy, in its broad outlines, has been discussed
publicly. In testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
in January, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that there is "a
new strategic alignment in the Middle East," separating "reformers"
and "extremists"; she pointed to the Sunni states as centers of
moderation, and said that Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah were "on the
other side of that divide." (Syria's Sunni majority is dominated by
the Alawi sect.) Iran and Syria, she said, "have made their choice and
their choice is to destabilize."
Some of the core tactics of the redirection are not public, however.
The clandestine operations have been kept secret, in some cases, by
leaving the execution or the funding to the Saudis, or by finding
other ways to work around the normal congressional appropriations
process, current and former officials close to the Administration
said.
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[Vali] Nasr [a enior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations]
compared the current situation to the period in which Al Qaeda first
emerged. In the nineteen-eighties and the early nineties, the Saudi
government offered to subsidize the covert American C.I.A. proxy war
against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. Hundreds of young Saudis were
sent into the border areas of Pakistan, where they set up religious
schools, training bases, and recruiting facilities. Then, as now, many
of the operatives who were paid with Saudi money were Salafis. Among
them, of course, were Osama bin Laden and his associates, who founded
Al Qaeda, in 1988.
This time, the U.S. government consultant told me, [Prince] Bandar
[bin Sultan] and other Saudis have assured the White House that "they
will keep a very close eye on the religious fundamentalists. Their
message to us was 'We've created this movement, and we can control
it.' It's not that we don't want the Salafis to throw bombs; it's who
they throw them at—Hezbollah, Moqtada al-Sadr, Iran, and at the
Syrians, if they continue to work with Hezbollah and Iran."
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The Bush Administration has publicly pledged the Siniora government a
billion dollars in aid since last summer. A donors' conference in
Paris, in January, which the U.S. helped organize, yielded pledges of
almost eight billion more, including a promise of more than a billion
from the Saudis. The American pledge includes more than two hundred
million dollars in military aid, and forty million dollars for
internal security.
The United States has also given clandestine support to the Siniora
government, according to the former senior intelligence official and
the U.S. government consultant. "We are in a program to enhance the
Sunni capability to resist Shiite influence, and we're spreading the
money around as much as we can," the former senior intelligence
official said. The problem was that such money "always gets in more
pockets than you think it will," he said. "In this process, we're
financing a lot of bad guys with some serious potential unintended
consequences. We don't have the ability to determine and get pay
vouchers signed by the people we like and avoid the people we don't
like. It's a very high-risk venture."
American, European, and Arab officials I spoke to told me that the
Siniora government and its allies had allowed some aid to end up in
the hands of emerging Sunni radical groups in northern Lebanon, the
Bekaa Valley, and around Palestinian refugee camps in the south. These
groups, though small, are seen as a buffer to Hezbollah; at the same
time, their ideological ties are with Al Qaeda.
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Alastair Crooke, who spent nearly thirty years in MI6, the British
intelligence service, and now works for Conflicts Forum, a think tank
in Beirut, told me, "The Lebanese government is opening space for
these people to come in. It could be very dangerous." Crooke said that
one Sunni extremist group, Fatah al-Islam, had splintered from its
pro-Syrian parent group, Fatah al-Intifada, in the Nahr al-Bared
refugee camp, in northern Lebanon. Its membership at the time was less
than two hundred. "I was told that within twenty-four hours they were
being offered weapons and money by people presenting themselves as
representatives of the Lebanese government's interests—presumably to
take on Hezbollah," Crooke said.
The largest of the groups, Asbat al-Ansar, is situated in the Ain
al-Hilweh Palestinian refugee camp. Asbat al-Ansar has received arms
and supplies from Lebanese internal-security forces and militias
associated with the Siniora government.
In 2005, according to a report by the U.S.-based International Crisis
Group, Saad Hariri, the Sunni majority leader of the Lebanese
parliament and the son of the slain former Prime Minister—Saad
inherited more than four billion dollars after his father's
assassination—paid forty-eight thousand dollars in bail for four
members of an Islamic militant group from Dinniyeh. The men had been
arrested while trying to establish an Islamic mini-state in northern
Lebanon. The Crisis Group noted that many of the militants "had
trained in al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan."
According to the Crisis Group report, Saad Hariri later used his
parliamentary majority to obtain amnesty for twenty-two of the
Dinniyeh Islamists, as well as for seven militants suspected of
plotting to bomb the Italian and Ukrainian embassies in Beirut, the
previous year. (He also arranged a pardon for Samir Geagea, a Maronite
Christian militia leader, who had been convicted of four political
murders, including the assassination, in 1987, of Prime Minister
Rashid Karami.) Hariri described his actions to reporters as
humanitarian.
In an interview in Beirut, a senior official in the Siniora government
acknowledged that there were Sunni jihadists operating inside Lebanon.
"We have a liberal attitude that allows Al Qaeda types to have a
presence here," he said. He related this to concerns that Iran or
Syria might decide to turn Lebanon into a "theatre of conflict."
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The Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, a branch of a radical Sunni movement
founded in Egypt in 1928, engaged in more than a decade of violent
opposition to the regime of Hafez Assad, Bashir's father. In 1982, the
Brotherhood took control of the city of Hama; Assad bombarded the city
for a week, killing between six thousand and twenty thousand people.
Membership in the Brotherhood is punishable by death in Syria. The
Brotherhood is also an avowed enemy of the U.S. and of Israel.
Nevertheless, Jumblatt said, "We told Cheney that the basic link
between Iran and Lebanon is Syria—and to weaken Iran you need to open
the door to effective Syrian opposition."
There is evidence that the Administration's redirection strategy has
already benefitted the Brotherhood. The Syrian National Salvation
Front is a coalition of opposition groups whose principal members are
a faction led by Abdul Halim Khaddam, a former Syrian Vice-President
who defected in 2005, and the Brotherhood. A former high-ranking
C.I.A. officer told me, "The Americans have provided both political
and financial support. The Saudis are taking the lead with financial
support, but there is American involvement." He said that Khaddam, who
now lives in Paris, was getting money from Saudi Arabia, with the
knowledge of the White House. (In 2005, a delegation of the Front's
members met with officials from the National Security Council,
according to press reports.) A former White House official told me
that the Saudis had provided members of the Front with travel
documents.
Jumblatt said he understood that the issue was a sensitive one for the
White House. "I told Cheney that some people in the Arab world, mainly
the Egyptians"—whose moderate Sunni leadership has been fighting the
Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood for decades—"won't like it if the United
States helps the Brotherhood. But if you don't take on Syria we will
be face to face in Lebanon with Hezbollah in a long fight, and one we
might not win."
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The Bush Administration's reliance on clandestine operations that have
not been reported to Congress and its dealings with intermediaries
with questionable agendas have recalled, for some in Washington, an
earlier chapter in history.
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