Foreign Policy in Focus Special Report: Continuing Storm: The U.S. Role in the Middle East

The U.S. has highlighted the threat of terrorism from the Middle East, billing it as America’s major national security concern in the post-cold war world. Washington considers Iran, Iraq, Sudan, and Libya to be the primary sources of state-sponsored terrorism and has embarked on an ambitious policy to isolate these regimes in the international community. Syria’s status as a supporter of terrorism has ebbed and flowed not so much from an objective measure of its links to terrorist groups as from an assessment of their willingness to cooperate with U.S. policy interests, indicating just how politicized “terrorist” designations can be.

Figure 3
U.S. Trade Balances with Middle East, 1998 (billions of $U.S.)
Country	1998
Algeria	0.9530
Jordan	-0.2872
Kuwait	0.0700
Morocco	-0.3360
Tunisia	-0.3100
Israel	2.8000
Oman	-0.0538
Saudi Arabia	1.2000
Syria	-0.1400
United Arab Emirates	-1.4000
Regional Trade Balance with U.S.	2.4960
Note: The 1998 figure for Egypt was not available and would significantly affect the region’s trade balance. For 1997, Egypt had a trade deficit of $3.146 billion with the United States. Source: U.S. State Department 1998 Country Reports on Economic Policy and Trade Practices, Near East. Available at: http://www.state.gov/www/ issues/economic/trade_reports/ neareast98/index.html

Figure 4
Middle East Trade with U.S. (as % of total external trade)
Country	1998
Algeria	11.23
Jordan	5.52
Kuwait	14.89
Morocco	4.13
Tunisia	2.74
Egypt	N/A
Israel	26.33
Oman	4.73
Turkey	6.84
Saudi Arabia	N/A
Syria	2.60
United Arab Emirates	4.40
Regional % Trade with U.S.	13.365
Source: U.S. State Department 1998 Country Reports on Economic Policy and Trade Practices, Near East. Available at: http://www.state.gov/www/issues/ economic/trade_reports/

The U.S. war against terrorism has been hampered by double standards. During the 1980s, for example, the Nicaraguan contras—armed, trained, and effectively created by Washington—were responsible for far more civilian deaths than all terrorist groups supported by all Middle Eastern countries combined. In addition, the most serious single bombing attack against a civilian target in the history of the Middle East was the March 1985 blast in a suburban Beirut neighborhood that killed 80 people and wounded 200 others. The attack was ordered by CIA director William Casey and approved by President Ronald Reagan as part of an unsuccessful effort to assassinate an anti-American Lebanese cleric. The U.S. role in the bombing, which was widely reported throughout the Middle East and elsewhere, has lent Washington’s crusade against Middle Eastern terrorism little credibility in much of the world. (Though the initial report of U.S. involvement made the leading front-page headline of the New York Times and was described in detail in Bob Woodward’s book Veil, it is rarely ever mentioned by so-called experts on Middle Eastern terrorism in the United States.) The perpetrators have never been brought to justice.

Libya has long been a major target of the United States regarding international terrorism. In 1992 and 1993, the United States successfully pushed through a series of sanctions by the United Nations Security Council against the government of Libya for its failure to extradite two of its citizens to Great Britain or the United States, where they face criminal charges in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Scotland in 1988. Libya cited both the absence of any extradition treaty with the United States or Great Britain and concerns over the likelihood of an unfair trial. Libya and the United States reached a compromise agreement in 1999 to extradite the suspects to the Netherlands for trial before a Scottish judge; UN sanctions were suspended but unilateral U.S. sanctions continue.

What apparently provoked the terrorists who destroyed the airliner was the 1986 American bombings of two Libyan cities, in which scores of civilians were killed. The U.S. justified the air strikes on the grounds that they would prevent future Libyan-sponsored terrorism, an ironic justification given the subsequent event. What is less well-known is the fact that the U.S. has similarly refused to extradite several American citizens charged with acts of terrorism. Both Venezuela and Costa Rica, for example, have outstanding warrants for CIA-connected individuals linked to a series of terrorist attacks in Latin America, including the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner, in which several dozen passengers were killed.

More recently, the United States has focused attention on the activities of Osama Bin Laden, the exiled Saudi millionaire orchestrating a number of terrorist cells operating out of the Middle East. Ironically, many of the key players in these terrorist networks originally received their training and support from the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency when they were mobilized to fight the Soviet-backed communist regime that ruled Afghanistan in the 1980s. In August 1998, the United States bombed suspected terrorist bases in Afghanistan—originally built by the CIA—in an effort to cripple Bin Laden’s movement. The U.S. simultaneously bombed a civilian pharmaceutical plant in Sudan under the apparently mistaken belief that it was developing chemical weapons that could be used by these terrorist networks. Given the highly questionable strategic value of such air strikes, these responses seem to be little more than foreign policy by catharsis. Though strong intelligence and interdiction efforts are important in the fight against terrorism, such impulsive military responses are likely to merely continue the cycle of violence.

Another source of concern for the Clinton administration is the use of terrorism by Palestinian extremists determined to disrupt the peace process. Although both suicide and the taking of civilian life are explicitly proscribed in the Islamic faith, such prohibitions have not stopped underground movements from organizing several deadly suicide bombings against civilian targets in Israel. The United States has pressured Palestinian authorities to crack down still harder on Islamic dissidents, including those not directly involved in acts of violence. Repression alone, however, will not work. Such desperate acts of terror erupt not from any outside conspiracy or from any inherent cultural or religious base, but from a people frustrated that the economic prosperity and national independence promised by Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat as a reward for Palestinian nonviolence and moderation has not been forthcoming. Some Palestinians have committed acts of terrorism for the same reasons as did some Kenyans, Algerians, and Zimbabweans: they feel that they are prevented from attaining their national freedom nonviolently. Indeed, the Zionist movement produced its share of terrorist groups during the Israeli independence struggle against Britain in the 1940s, with two prominent terrorist leaders—Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir—later becoming prime ministers. As long as the U.S. and Israel oppose Palestinian statehood, such attacks will not end.

Table 4a
Major Middle East Arms Importers: 1994-1996
Country	$U.S. billions	% of World	% from U.S.

Saudi Arabia	26.6	22.2	44
Egypt	5.7	4.7	67
Turkey	5.0	4.2	64
Kuwait	3.4	2.8	56
Israel	2.9	2.4	91
United Arab Emirates	2.2	1.9	35

Source: U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, World Military Expenditures and Arms Transfers 1997 (Washington, DC: U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, February 1, 1999)

In addition, historically—and even since the Oslo Accords in 1993—far more Palestinian civilians have been killed by Israelis than the reverse. Extremist Jewish settlers—who are much like Islamic extremists in their zealotry, intolerance, and propensity toward violence—routinely conduct vigilante actions against the local Palestinian population. The difference is that these extremist Jewish groups are officially sanctioned, are issued arms by the Israeli government, and are often directly supported by elements of the Israeli military and private American contributors. A sizable number of these Jewish terrorists are American émigrés, openly recruited in the United States during the 1980s while the U.S. banned even moderate Palestinian leaders from coming into the country.

The Israelis use periodic acts of Islamic terrorism as an excuse to refuse to withdraw more of their occupation forces from the rest of the West Bank as promised under the Oslo Accords and subsequent agreements, even though the majority of the attackers have come from areas under Israeli control and the rate of terrorist attacks has actually declined since its peak in the 1970s. In addition, after largely destroying the indigenous Palestinian economy during almost thirty years of occupation—in order to create a cheap labor force—the Israelis have closed off Israel and greater Jerusalem from Palestinian workers, creating widespread unemployment and increasing the anger and frustration of the Palestinian population. The United States has refused to challenge these policies. Essentially, the Clinton administration, even more than its predecessors, sees Israeli security and Palestinian rights as mutually exclusive. In reality, however, they are mutually dependent.

Continuing Storm: The U.S. Role in the Middle East

Terrorism

Continuing Storm:
The U.S. Role in the Middle East