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Steven Simon
Thank you for your kind invitation to speak on "The New Terrorism and
the Peace Process." Under Efraim Inbar's inspired leadership the
Begin-Sadat Institute has consistently produced rigorous analysis of pressing
security issues that has been both useful and interesting, which is a high
standard for institutes of strategic studies in any country. So I am very
pleased to be here today.
I know that everyone in this auditorium understands what "peace
process" means, since Israelis have lived with it virtually every day for
thirty years. But what is the
"new terrorism" and what does it have to do with the peace process,
let alone Israeli interests?
Before I turn to this question, however, I think it would be worthwhile
to establish the backdrop of the new terrorism by saying a few words about the
old terrorism and the peace process. This
means, for the most part, talking about Hizballah and Hamas. To be sure, there
are other groups that could attempt to influence the peace process--Palestine
Islamic Jihad (PIJ), for example--but these lack the infrastructure, experience,
funds, and human resources to press a sustained campaign of terrorist attacks
within the green line or on the Israeli side of the Lebanese border. Indeed, PIJ
in particular seems to be in its weakest state in years, at least since the
death of Fathi Shqaqi; and its current leader, Ramadhan Shallah, seems
ineffectual in comparison to his predecessor.
So let us start with Hizballah. Since Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon,
Hizballah has exercised a significant degree of discipline in the south,
refraining from attacks against military or civilian Israeli targets. The group
has also quietly dropped claims to residual bits of disputed territory along the
border and refrained from inflammatory rhetoric. Its clear focus has been on
making effective political use of the widely held perception in Lebanon that it
forced the withdrawal of Israeli forces. Exploiting this perception
successfully, however, requires Hizballah to deliver the economic goods to the
impoverished south. Without an influx of funds from Beirut and revitalization of
economic life, Hizballah’s victory will not long inspire electoral loyalty.
By the same token, violent confrontation with Israel that invites
retaliation against local infrastructure will forfeit Hizballah’s hard-won
popular support. The inhabitants of south Lebanon want their peace dividend. The
elections of late August-early September have concentrated Hizballah’s mind on
these factors.
There is no doubt that the death of Hafiz al Assad and his replacement by
his untested son Bashar has contributed to this calm. Had the father lived on,
one would have expected Syria, following Israeli withdrawal, but in the absence
of a settlement, to encourage attacks across the border to maintain pressure on
the Barak government in the hope of ultimately compelling it to accept Syrian
sovereignty over the northeastern shore of the Kinneret while abandoning
security arrangements on the plateau itself. Assad the elder would have tested
Israel’s resolve by this point. Bashar
is in no position to risk a confrontation with Israel that he might, in the view
of those waiting to see him falter, lose.
A combination of circumstances--elections in Lebanon and succession in
Syria--have contributed to the fairly stable situation in Lebanon until now.
It is possible that this benign situation will prove durable.
Lebanese security forces could consolidate their role in southern
Lebanon, Hizballah could complete its transformation into a political party --
having achieved its objective of ridding Lebanon of Israeli forces -- and
continue to focus on the competition for state resources on behalf of Lebanon's
Shi'a community. Iran would be
forced to pursue its interests in Lebanon within a non-violent political process
by influencing Hizballah's legislative agenda and political platform.
And despite its diplomatic progress on the Arab side of the Gulf and
closer ties to western Europe, Iran elects not to challenge Syria in Lebanon
because it cannot afford to alienate its only ally in the Sunni world.
That is one scenario. In
another scenario, elements in the Iranian regime that cannot be reconciled to an
Arab-Israeli peace attempt to disrupt it, or simply to reduce Israeli security
by killing Jews. As Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in his New Year's
address, Syria is a traitor and the Zionist entity must be annihilated.
Khamenei has de
facto control over the state agencies capable
of carrying out terrorist attacks against Israeli targets. The IRGC (Iranian
Revolutionary Guard Corps) and MOIS (Ministry of Intelligence and Security) can
act with tremendous audacity and effectiveness while effectively covering their
tracks in order to minimize the possibility of retaliation. Although it is true
that President Mahmoud Khatami has appointed both MOIS ministers during his
Administration, the assassination of regime opponents within Iran by MOIS
officers during this period show that his control over the agency is at best
incomplete. For this reason, Iran
remains a security concern for the US, even as it tries to repair relations with
Tehran, especially in view of Attorney General Janet Reno's 1999 statement that
the United States had information indicating the involvement of Iranian
officials in the 1996 bombing of the US Air Force Khobar Towers residence in
Dhahran, Saudi Arabia.
Iran's surveillance of its overseas adversaries gives Tehran the option
of striking them in a way that its military could not. Iran's 1997 attempt to
smuggle a 'super mortar' into Europe via the port of Antwerp appears to be of a
piece with these tactics: such a weapon would be ideal for an accurate,
devastating stand-off attack against a defended location, such as a US or
Israeli embassy. The same kind of
mortar was used by Iran in 1996 to demolish the headquarters building of the
dissident Mujahedin e-Khalq (MEK) in Baghdad.
Further evidence of Iran's activity was provided during 1996 when an
Allied unit raided an Iranian terrorism and sabotage training facility in the
Bosnian town of Fojnica. Established by official representatives of Iran, the
facility stored booby traps, explosives and assassination manuals. The Fojnica
discovery led NATO to demand that President Alija Izetbegovic sharply reduce the
official Iranian presence in Bosnia.
Iranian-sponsored violence in Europe has not only been directed at US and
NATO interests. The September 1992 killing of three dissidents and a translator
in the Mykonos restaurant in Berlin led a German court to issue an arrest
warrant for Ali Fallahian, former head of Iran's MOIS. The prosecutors charged
Supreme Leader Khamenei and then President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani with
approving the operation. Another dissident, Reza Maslouman, was murdered in
Paris in 1996 by an attacker allegedly linked to the MOIS, who has since been
extradited to Germany for trial. French investigators have also implicated
Iranian operatives in the 1991 murder of Shahpour Bakhtiar, a former official
and dissident, in Paris. Then, of course, there were the Hizballah attacks
against the Israeli embassy and Jewish cultural center in Buenos Aires and the
destruction of the US Embassy annex in Beirut as well as the US Marine Corps
barracks there.
The message here is that Iran is capable of fostering a violent backlash
against the peace process by extending the war to offshore targets, especially
if a combination of effective law enforcement, intelligence collection, and
counter-terrorism cooperation between Israel and the PA imposes real operational
constraints on Hamas and Palestine Islamic Jihad. There is evidence that Iran is
encouraging the formation of a shadow Hizballah, separable from the evolving
Hizballah political party in Lebanon, to carry on the fight even if Syria limits
militants' options within Lebanon. And the long-time head of Hizballah's Islamic
Jihad Organization's external operations, Imad Mughniyah, is probably capable of
making this work.
Why would this happen now, when reformers have swept conservatives from
power in the Majlis? The answer may well be that one thing has nothing to do
with the other. Reformist constituencies care in the first instance about
domestic political and social issues and have not yet focused on foreign policy.
Even there, what they see would not necessarily indicate that there were
problems. So the vote should probably not be construed as a referendum on the
regime's policies toward Israel. And Khatami has not yet consolidated his power;
indeed, he may never succeed. Yet until he has done so, he is unlikely to put
his modest gains at risk by challenging a determined effort by hard-liners to
undermine the peace process.
Turning from Hizballah to Hamas, we see a driven organization. First,
there are "inside" and "outside" leaderships with differing
agendas, both hit hard by the prospects for peace. To the external observer,
they do not appear to know just what to do. Is it a nascent political party, on
the verge of opting to maximize its interests through a political process--one
that will implicitly legitimize the Oslo process and the Palestinian authority
(PA)? Or is it engaged in a principled resistance that cannot end until the
occupation of Palestine ends? Both
these postures appear to be sustained, for the moment, simultaneously by the
leaders of Hamas. Thus, while Sheikh Yassin makes conciliatory statements vis
à vis the PA and Hamas puts forth, gingerly, proposals for a truce with
Israel, terrorist cells are engaged in pre-operational activities in various
locations, most recently, as we have seen, in Taibe.
Is this a good cop/ bad cop game, or is it the manifestation of deep
confusion, even crisis within the organization?
Hamas is under enormous pressure. Its
popularity is diminishing as Arafat's authority has stabilized; perhaps his
authority is even on the rise in the wake of his “principled” refusal to
negotiate sovereignty over Jerusalem. In Jordan, King Abdullah has expelled
important elements of the Hamas leadership and made it clear that Hamas
provocation would have to end. Abu
Marzuk, Khalid Mishal, Ghowsheh, are seeing their maneuvering room steadily
reduced. And Jordanian intelligence cooperation with Israel appears to have
recovered from the after-effects of the assassination attempt on Mishal. At the
same time, both Israel and the PA have scored notable successes against Hamas
operational capabilities by taking down bomb factories, killing Yihya Ayyash and
the Awadallah brothers, and preempting attacks by the Taibe cell and others.
Hamas itself has helped by apparently eliminating Muhi ad-Din Sharif, who may
have perished not by inadvertent suicide, but rather at the hands of Hamas
members seeking to tone down the violence and clear the way toward
legitimization of the organization.
My impression is that Hamas qua
Hamas will have to abandon terrorism in order to preserve and advance its
political gains and, by extension, the practical benefits that Hamas members
derive from their participation in the organization's activities. Whether this
journey will end in the transformation of Hamas into a bona
fide political party is, at this point,
difficult to predict. Tentative
steps have been taken in this direction through the creation of a so-called
front of essentially anti-Arafat opposition groups. Evolution into a party will
be a painful step for many in the group to accept and may be preceded by renewed
intramural violence, although the movement as a whole has been remarkably
successful in drawing the line on large scale violence among Palestinians. If
Hamas does make a decisive break with violence it has a fig leaf readily at hand
in the form of the doctrine of sabr,
sometime rendered as the strategy of stages, which would reassure skeptical core
constituencies. Strictly speaking, sabr
is the counsel of patience during times when jihad
must be suspended because conditions are too unfavorable to press the fight.
This suspension can, as a practical matter, last forever.
All this is well and good, but is it too optimistic?
A comparison with British experience with the Irish Republican Army
(IRA), the Spanish with the Basque resistance ETA, and French with the Corsican
liberation movement suggest that groups in the agonizing process of
transformation to political parties, or of dissolution, can splinter and
generate intense violence.
As the Provisional IRA moved toward Sinn Fein's strategy of political
participation in a devolved government in Belfast, part of the organization
broke away, reverting to the line that the IRA had originally followed in the
70s and 80s: The absolute necessity of expelling the British from northern
Ireland by making it impossible for them to rule by any means other than direct
administration -- and in such a way as to force them to take actions that would
be politically unsustainable in London, just as they delegitimized the British
presence in the eyes of even the uncommitted local Irish populace. (Many in this
audience will detect a strong similarity between this strategy and that of the
Irgun, especially after 1944.) It is easily forgotten now that up until fairly
recently, when the IRA and Sinn Fein learned to use one another to advance their
separate objectives by a good cop/bad cop strategy, that relations between
fighters and the politicians was fraught with tension.
With the 1998 Good Friday Agreement between the Loyalists, Sinn Fein,
Republic of Ireland and Great Britain, this tension re-emerged.
Two radical groups split from the IRA--the Continuity IRA and Real
IRA--rejected the political process and promised a return to war.
The result, four months after the Good Friday Agreement, was the horrific
bombing in the town of Omagh, which killed 29 and wounded hundreds.
The broad analogy with Hamas is clear: One part of a bifurcated
organization begins to develop a stake in the political process, leaving behind
the hard men, those with blood on their hands, who cannot make the necessary
psychological transformation, or who are guilty of too many crimes to escape
prosecution if they come in from the cold. (It is to encourage the
transformation of the latter group that prisoner releases and amnesties are such
an essential part of peace agreements.) These individuals remain underground,
increasingly isolated, leading an anxious, clandestine existence, which they and
their compatriots justify to themselves as the price of righteousness and of
victimization by traitors. Group psychodynamics reinforce these attitudes and
ultimately drive members toward greater levels of violence, which validate the
trajectory of the group's path, while ensuring that the eyes of the world, and
most especially the eyes of the comrades, who betrayed the cause, are upon them.
For Hamas adherents in particular, the self-justifying functions of the attacks
are enhanced by the belief that death will guarantee them everlasting
redemption.
Hamas, it seems to me, is at this brittle and dangerous stage. Again,
predictions of how the group will cope with the intense pressures it faces
cannot be made with any confidence. But as Hamas copes, Israel will remain at
risk of potentially very bloody attacks.
The New Terrorism and the Peace Process
Some here who follow events in the US will recall that Americans woke up
at Christmas to learn that someone named Ahmed Ressam had been arrested trying
to smuggle a carload of explosives into the country. Although he had been
affiliated with an Algerian terrorist organization, it was soon revealed that he
was connected to Usama bin Laden and had accomplices already in the US as well
as one arrested at about the same time trying to enter the US elsewhere.
Recollections of the east Africa bombings and the World Trade Center
bombing flooded back.
What does this have to do with Israel and the peace process?
It emerged that the conspiracy I just described came to light after the
arrest by Jordanian authorities of 16 would-be terrorists of three different
nationalities who had gathered in Jordan from Afghanistan to carry out attacks
against Americans and possibly Israelis entering Jordan by bus. Under the false
floor of a farmhouse outside Amman, police uncovered 75 drums of explosive,
easily enough to achieve the group’s goal of the leveling the 400-room Amman
Radisson, which was scheduled to be filled with American tourists. The cell had
also amassed an arsenal of semi-automatic guns and ammunition, which were to be
used against tourists at two sites, one on the Jordan River, associated with
John the Baptist, and Mt. Nebo, the summit where, according to the Bible, Moses
died after glimpsing the land of Israel. Both places are favorites of American
evangelical Christians. The ringleader, Khalil ad-Deek, was subsequently
extradited by Jordan from Pakistan, which has become a hotbed of a particularly
radical kind of Islamist activity. (It has since emerged that the Lebanese
authorities have just sentenced 25 detainees for terrorist offenses, based on
their association with bin Laden.)
If the individuals arrested in Jordan were trained and indoctrinated by
bin Laden, then Jordan has a problem and if Jordan has a problem, so does
Israel; because these attempts will continue, and even intensify, as the old
paradigm of predominantly state-sponsored terrorism is joined by a new,
religiously-motivated terrorism that is unconstrained by the limits on violence
that state sponsors have observed themselves or placed on their proxies; or that
national liberation movements seeking a place at the bargaining table have
adopted on their own. Militants of this kind are unlike those in Hamas or
Hizballah, let alone secular groups such as the Democratic Front for the
Liberation of Palestine or the PLO of prior years. They are animated not by a
practical political agenda, or negotiable secular concerns, but by religious
passion. Until now, they have focused their animus on the US, but their sudden
appearance in Jordan suggests that their focus is broadening to include Israel,
which, as I will show, is believed to control America; and the Hashemites,
which, like Sadat are believed to have forfeited their right to rule by making
peace with Israel. As the peace process lurches towards a denouement, these
jihadists -- who originate in other lands -- will not be bought off by an
Israeli-Palestinian agreement that Muslims in their view have no right to make;
or seduced into a Jordanian political process which they believe is
fundamentally illegitimate. If this turns out to be the case, Israel is in for a
potentially rough ride.
In discussing this phenomenon, I will necessarily be dwelling on the
American experience with it, because, as I have pointed out, it is America that
has been the main focus of these groups until now. Bear with me, nevertheless,
and keep those December arrests in Jordan in mind as you do so.
The new terrorism has emerged during the 1990s: the 1993 World Trade
Center bombings in New York, and related conspiracies; the 1996 Oklahoma City
bombing; the 1998 East Africa bombings; and the Tokyo sarin-gas attack in 1995.
These attacks were the harbingers of a new and more threatening terrorism, one
that aims to produce casualties on a massive scale.
Although the new terrorism stems from many causes, and cannot be
considered the invention of any one individual, the face of this phenomenon
belongs to Usama bin Laden, the exiled Saudi who has marshaled a network of
operatives in more than 50 countries. Some believe that religiously motivated
terrorism will persist for many years, and that its Islamic manifestation will
remain a threat regardless of bin Laden's fate.
Four developments mark the advent of this new form of terror:
The emergence of religion as the predominant
impetus for terrorist attacks;
the increasing lethality of attacks;
the increasing technological and operational
competence of terrorists; and
the demonstrated desire of these terrorists to
obtain weapons of mass destruction.
RAND terrorism expert Bruce Hoffman has shown that the proportion of
terrorist groups motivated predominantly by religious concerns has increased
sharply. More importantly, he has demonstrated that the increase in religious
motivation correlates with an increase in lethality. For 1995, Hoffman's data
show that religiously motivated terrorists were responsible for a quarter of all
incidents in that year, but caused nearly 60 percent of all fatalities.
Moreover, he says that in 1996, the last year for which he has data, 'Groups
driven in whole or in part by a salient religious or theological motive
committed 10 of the 13 most lethal terrorists attacks'. These groups, he notes,
put 'political issues and struggles within a sacred context', thus giving them
the most charged ontological significance. The solution they seek amounts to the
restoration of a golden age of religious belief and practices, whose passing
left the community vulnerable to the depredations of the enemy. The essentially
religious goal of moral restoration becomes the basis of a political response in
the form of a confrontation with the enemy within and without. In this
framework, the warriors believe themselves to be engaged in a struggle ordained
by God, to restore the world to a perfect state. The violent acts they must
carry out are 'sanitized' because they are symbolic, enacted on a cosmic stage.
Given these stakes, the intensity of the violence cannot be confined by
prudential calculations.
Although jihadists are a significant problem, the threat of intensified
violence posed by terrorists motivated by other radical religious traditions,
including the American Christian Patriot movement, Israel's Jewish messianic
militants and Japan's Aum Shinrikyo. All these share a world-view characterized
by a life-or-death struggle with the 'other' in order to redeem the world.
The Oklahoma City bomber thought he was engaged in a struggle to free the
US from the grip of Jews and Freemasons and restore it to a religiously and
racially pristine state. Aum Shinrikyo intended to precipitate an eschatological
battle that would destroy a corrupted world but leave the group's members
intact. Yigal Amir sought to restore the perfect world that existed in the
second century BC, when the Hasmonean state, which had overthrown an infidel
occupier and its Jewish collaborators to take power, ruled a large and unitary
land of Israel.
In the case of the jihadists, the restored world would recreate the early
Caliphate of the seventh and eighth century when, in their understanding of
Islamic history, a righteous leader ruled over an undivided umma (community of believers), achieving a perfect unity of religious and
political authority over the lands of Islam. In the modern recreation of this
ideal, non-believers would be subdued or destroyed, the Quran would form the
sole legitimate basis for governance and community life, and Muslim leaders who
did not strive to restore the sovereignty of God to his lands would be judged
apostates, and condemned.
These were the beliefs of the conspirators in a series of Jihadist
conspiracies directed against the US, which, if successful, would have caused
casualties in the tens of thousands. The
cleric connected to many of the conspirators in these cases, Sheikh Umar abd
ar-Rahman, has provided the inspiration for these acts of radical, religiously
motivated violence. The so-called 'Blind Sheikh', abd ar-Rahman had emigrated to
the US from Egypt. It was he who articulated the justification of apostasy for
the 1981 murder of President Anwar al-Sadat and attempted murder of President
Mubarak in 1995. He also led al Gama'a al Islamiyya, an extremely violent group
responsible for the massacre of 72 people, mostly Western tourists, at Luxor in
Upper Egypt in 1998.
In a planning session for bombing targets in New York City, he put the
imperative of jihad to his co-conspirators as follows: